Samsung’s solid-state drives are popular with players for their high quality and high performance, and are recognized as benchmarks in major evaluations. As the successor of the 980 PRO, the 990 PRO adopts PCIe 4.0 x4, NVME 2.0, and has a maximum read speed of 7450MB/s. The maximum write speed is 6900MB/s, which is 50% higher performance per watt than 980 PRO. With Samsung’s management magician to monitor the operation status, it squeezes out all the performance of Gen 4 SSD.
Specification
Interface: PCIe 4.0 x4
NVMe：2.0
Size: M.2 2280
Capacity: 1TB, 2TB
Controller: Samsung Pascal
Flash memory: 176-layer 3D V-NAND TLC
DRAM cache: LPDDR4-1866 1GB (1TB version)/2GB (2TB version)
Dimensions: 80 x 22 x 3.2mm
Weight: 9.0g
Power: 55mW(standby)/5.5W(average)/8.5W(burst mode)
Software: Samsung Management Magician
Warranty: 5 years or 1200TBW limited warranty
Gaming performance MAX Samsung 990 PRO 1TB out of the box
Samsung 990 PRO adopts exclusive Pascal control chip, Samsung 8nm process, supports PCIe 4.0 x4, NVME 2.0, the official claims that the random read and write performance is increased by 55%, but the power consumption is greatly reduced (compared to 980 PRO), and the flash memory is also Samsung’s latest The seventh-generation 174-layer V-NAND TLC, a single 512GB, and also has low power consumption characteristics.
The packaging of Samsung 990 PRO 1TB is similar to that of previous Samsung SSDs. It used to be a pure black background. This time, it adds an electronic-style background to add a sense of technology. The slogan below reads Blistering speed, endless victory. It means that top players will use top SSDs.
In the upper right corner, there is a sticker of the agent Xingruiqi, which provides 5 years or 1200TBW of total writing capacity, whichever expires first, and an invoice is required for repairing, and there is no warranty for SSDs purchased from unknown sources.
▲Samsung 990 PRO packaging.
▲The back of the package.
▲Inner packaging.
The Samsung 990 PRO 1TB is a standard M.2 2280 size. The single-sided grain is more friendly to notebook computer users. The double-sided grain is too thick for some laptops to fit. The back label uses copper foil to assist in heat dissipation.
▲Samsung 990 PRO 1TB body.
▲Single-sided particles.
▲ Photo on the machine.
▲AORUS Z790 XTREME motherboard comes with heat sink.
Samsung SSD Utility Software – Samsung Management Magician
Samsung’s management magician can check the basic information of the SSD, including temperature, cumulative read and write volume, and the diagnosis mode can check whether the disk is faulty. If there is a firmware update, you can update it here as soon as possible. In addition, Secure Erase (safety clearing) ) to permanently delete the data.
▲ Samsung management magician.
▲Disk diagnosis.
▲Secure Erase。
Samsung 990 PRO 1TB performance test
All tests use Intel Core i7-13700K, GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS XTREME, Kingston DDR5-6000 16GB*2, Samsung 990 PRO 1TB installed in the first M.2 slot of the motherboard, directly connected to CPU PCIe 4.0 x4 channel, system installation On another SSD, and use the M.2 heatsink that comes with the motherboard.
testing platform :
Processor: Intel Core i7-13700K
Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS XTREME
Memory: Kingston DDR5-6000 16GB*2
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
Power supply: FSP Hydro Ti PRO 1000W
OS: Windows 11 Pro 22H2
After 990 PRO 1TB is formatted, the actual usable space is 931GB.
▲Usable capacity after formatting.
Check the basic information in CrystalDiskInfo, the firmware is the latest 1B2QJXD7, PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, NVME 2.0 specification.
▲CrystalDiskInfo。
CrystalDiskMark test default profile, NVME mode, sequential read up to 7155MB/s, sequential write 6611MB/s, 4K random read 92MB/s, 4K random write 374MB/s.
▲CrystalDiskMark。
ATTO Disk Benchmark uses different I/O sizes to test the maximum performance of the device, 512B~64MB, Direct I/O queue 8-layer test, Samsung 990 PRO reads a maximum of 6.6GB/s, and writes 6.2GB/s.
▲ATTO Disk Benchmark。
PCMARK10 Full System Drive Benchmark will simulate a series of daily operations, including booting, launching Adobe programs, operating Office software, copying files, etc., and gives scores, as well as data such as average bandwidth, access time, etc. Samsung 990 PRO scored 4405, the average The bandwidth is 703 MB/s, and the average access time is 38 microseconds.
▲PCMARK10 Full System Drive Benchmark test.
In the 3DMARK Storage Benchmark, which represents game performance, the speed of game opening, recording, installation, archiving, etc. will be tested, and scores will be given, as well as various bandwidth and access time. Samsung 990 PRO scored 3842, with an average bandwidth of 662MB/s , the average access time is 47 microseconds.
▲3DMARK Storage Benchmark test.
Microsoft DirectStorage technology only supports NVME SSD, and it needs to match the supporting system and driver. Players can open the Xbox GAME BAR by WIN+G, and check whether their hardware supports DirectStorage in the Settings > Game Features interface.
Using the Bulk Load Demo provided by Microsoft to test the effect of DirectStorage, it only takes 0.36 seconds to read a 4.3GB file, the CPU usage is 0.64%, and the bandwidth is 12GB/s.
▲Xbox GAME BAR interface.
▲Bulk Load Demo。
The AIDA64 Linear Read & Write test reads and writes data until the disk is full. The average reading speed of the Samsung 990 PRO 1TB is around 4670MB/s, which is quite stable. The writing speed is 5300MB/s from the beginning, and it will drop to 2000MB/s when writing about 100GB, and it will return to 5300MB/s after a while. This is Samsung’s own garbage collection algorithm. Some SSDs are caching After using it, it will maintain a relatively low speed until the writing is finished, but the 990 PRO can release the cache while writing, and return to high-speed writing. Overall, even slow writing is close to 2000MB/s The performance is quite excellent among SSDs.
▲AIDA64 Linear Read。
▲AIDA64 Linear Write。
The temperature test uses the M.2 heat sink of Z790 AORUS XTREME to conduct three rounds of CrystalDiskMark tests. HWinfo64 measures the highest temperature of sensor 1 at 58 degrees and the average temperature of 49 degrees, and the highest temperature of sensor 2 at 86 degrees and the average temperature of 67 degrees. High, but after three rounds of testing, it did not slow down.
▲HWinfo64。
Summarize
As the flagship PCIe 4.0 SSD, the Samsung 990 PRO has powerful read and write performance. What’s even more rare is that the power consumption of PC hardware is exploding. The performance of the 990 PRO is enhanced while the power consumption is also reduced a lot. With its own management The magician allows users to easily grasp the operation status of the SSD. In addition, Samsung has always had a high tolerance for the total write volume. It is suitable for gamers and professionals who pursue extreme performance. The current promotional price is 4899 yuan for 1TB / 6999 yuan for 2TB Yuan, which is lower than the listed price of 980 PRO, it is better to act now!
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