The high-performance SSD market is one where you have to be very careful when choosing a quality SSD model! The new PCIe 4.0 makes a big difference compared to the previous version, which is why manufacturers have started including new SSDs in their catalogs. Perhaps a little late? Samsung is doing the same with its high-end model, which is entering the fray, but with specifications that may disappoint the most demanding users.
Is it up to scratch? What is the speed of this Samsung 980 Pro SSD?
“Over the years, Samsung has continually challenged the limits of high-speed flash memory storage solutions,” says Mike Mang, vice president of Samsung Electronics’ “Memory Brand Product Biz” division and head of solid-state drives.
“The new 980 PRO SSD reflects our continued commitment to delivering the exceptional products that consumers expect from us as a company.”
Samsung 980 Pro, next-level performance
Samsung certainly hopes this SSD will become the leader among professionals and gamers who work with high transfer rates or large files. More specifically, Samsung is referring to 4K and 8K content, and therefore has serious aspirations to dominate the high-performance PC market.
To achieve this, it will have a fully customized Elpis driver, apart from V-NAND and DRAM as one can understand, all designed to extract the best performance from the PCIe 4.0 bus, but does it succeed?
Largely, as Samsung itself indicates, sequential read and write speeds will reach 7000 MB/s and 5000 MB/s , with IOPS rates reaching 1000K in both read and write.
According to the company, these figures offer twice the performance of PCIe 3.0 and 12.7 times the performance of SSDs under SATA 3.0.
Better thermal control, but fewer capacity options
One of the key strengths of this Samsung 980 Pro will undoubtedly be its temperature. The vast majority of PCIe 4.0 SSDs are equipped with integrated heatsinks ; otherwise, they would go into "throttling" mode within minutes and their performance would plummet.
Most current mid-range and high-end motherboards have their own heatsink as a cover, so the standard heatsink needs to be replaced by the board, but in the lower range this is not possible.
Samsung does not have this problem with its 980 Pro, as it will arrive without a heat sink and with improved thermal control solutions, where early data indicates that even without a heat sink, it will not reach 60 degrees Celsius.
The reason for this significant leap in heat dissipation is due to two key factors: a nickel coating on the Elpis controller and a heat diffuser in the form of a small label on the back of the SSD, which improves thermal efficiency. Add to that patented Dynamic Thermal Guard technology , which ensures the SSD's temperature is always at its optimum, without exceeding the company's threshold for any performance loss.
Models and prices
Unfortunately, the Samsung 980 Pro will only be offered in three different storage capacities: 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB , with the latter becoming available this month. A 2TB model will be available by the end of the year . Regarding pricing, only the 250GB model has been announced, at $89.99 , meaning the 500GB model could cost slightly more than double and the 1TB model slightly more than triple.
