We’ve previously taken a look at Samsung’s 990 Pro SSDs before. But now equipped with a 4TB variant and new firmware, can this SSD manage to stand out?
When we last took a look at the Samsung 990 Pro, there was a creeping doom for the company, as soon as an issue was discovered with the drive, where you could accidentally overwrite data repeatedly, causing them to wear down rapidly over time. Now with a firmware fix, the company is back with a bigger, badder variant that’s fully equipped with a heatsink.
But, is it worth your hard-earned cash, to pop into your gaming PC, external storage, or even PS5? We’ve tested it out extensively to see if this speedy storage solution is worth the price.
Key specs
- Capacity: 4TB
- DRAM Cache: 4GB LPDDR4 (1TB)
- Form factor: M.2 2280
- Max sequential read: 7450 MB/s
- Max sequential write: 6900 MB/s
- TBW: 2400 TB
- Warranty: 5 years
Design
When it comes to SSD design, externally speaking, there’s not much to talk about. But, this changes with the heatsink variant of the Samsung 990 Pro. The arched design and metal construction allow for effective heat dissipation throughout, and you’re even treated to a red LED that showcases when the SSD is being accessed of this 2280 drive. Take note, Steam Deck users, this won’t fit. But, it will manage to easily slot into the PS5’s SSD slot.
What’s much more interesting is the SSD’s internal design. This is a rare single-sided high-capacity SSD, which means that you can safely install it into your laptop, without worries. However, one thing to note is that the arched heatsink can interfere with slots that are slightly smaller, meaning that you might have clearance issues if your NVMe slots have coverings, or additional heat speaders on top.
Our PC’s motherboard suffers from this, and we would have liked to have seen a flatter solution come to market that’s a bit slimmer. With that in mind, we would also hope that Samsung releases the SSD without a heatsink, allowing you to use whatever aftermarket solution suits you best.
While PCI 5.0 NVMe drives are beginning to come to market, devices using the new standard are still only starting to be released, so unless you have a bleeding-edge PC with the latest motherboard, you’re probably going to want to stick with PCI 4.0 for the time being.
TurboWrite 2.0
Samsung has also included an enhanced version of Turbowrite, which intelligently speeds up transfer speeds thanks to being able to allocate up to 432 GB as an SLC buffer. In theory, this should translate to the faster transfer speeds that you would come to expect from a brand with a reputation such as Samsung.
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Efficiency
Samsung’s new 990 Pro uses an 8nm “Pascal” controller in order to keep up drive performance, while also being able to cut down on power demands for the drive. The company states that this is an up to 37% improvement when compared to other 4TB Gen 4 drives from the likes of Sabrent. In our testing, we saw the Samsung 990 Pro top out at around 5.5W, when compared to the 7W of our 4TB Sabrent Rocket.
Performance
We benchmarked the Samsung 990 Pro SSD using CrystalDiskMark, in addition to 3DMark’s PC storage benchmark, and it performed admirably.
Sequential read: 7280 MB/sSequential write: 6791 MB/s3DMark Score: 3678
Through HWInfo, we observed that the drive heated up to around 96 degrees, while this is high, it’s still within safe operational levels. In our own tests when transferring files to our PC, the drive managed to sustain its speeds, too. We were flicking from games our PC to Ayaneo 2 in minutes, which is no small feat, given the 100GB size of Baldur’s Gate 3. By our count, it took the 990 Pro around 25 seconds to complete the transfer. Given that there were smaller files in this transfer, it’s not always about the size of the overall folder or file, but the number of files being accessed, too.
Should you buy it?
If you’re in need of a large-capacity storage drive with the fastest transfer speeds that PCIe 4.0 can offer you, then the 990 Pro is very much your endgame drive. It has enough storage to fit just about anything, including being placed into a PS5. However, some quirks with its heatsink design, which might not be compatible with smaller slots, in addition to its eye-watering price could turn many off.
The Verdict: 4/5
The 990 Pro is one of the fastest PCI 4.0 NVMe drives we have tested, performing admirably across a wide range of tasks, which allows for large file transfers in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. This is one of the better options out there, alongside Sabrent’s Rocket, which does offer more value than Samsung’s comparatively high-end offering. With PCI 5.0 on the horizon, this is about as good as a 4.0 drive is going to get, maximizing the possible bandwidth that the slot can muster.
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