NVMe SSD offers significant improvements in performance and power efficiency compared to 980 Pro
Samsung has announced the Samsung SSD 990 Pro, a new high-performance PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD designed for desktop and mobile workstations and high-end PCs.
Featuring Samsung’s latest V-NAND memory and a new proprietary controller, Samsung claims the 990 Pro series offers the highest speed currently available from the PCIe 4.0 interface.
The SSD is said to deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,450 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 6,900 MB/s, respectively. This compares favourably with its predecessor, the 980 Pro (up to 7,000 MB/s read and 5,000 MB/s write), but the biggest gains come from random read / write performance, with Samsung reporting 1,400K and 1,550K IOPS respectively, up to a 55% improvement over the 980 Pro.
Built on a low-power architecture, Samsung’s newly designed controller is also said to dramatically improve the SSD’s power efficiency by up to 50% compared to the 980 Pro.
Additionally, the 990 Pro employs a nickel coating on the controller and a heat spreader label on the drive for ‘reliable thermal management’.
Samsung’s Dynamic Thermal Guard technology is also designed to further ensure the drive’s temperature stays in the optimal range. A special ‘Heatsink’ version of the 990 Pro also offers an additional layer of thermal control.
The Samsung 990 PRO will be available worldwide starting October with the manufacturer’s suggested retail prices (MSRP) of £155 for the 1TB model and £284 for the 2TB. A 4TB capacity version will become available from next year.
