Our Verdict
This Samsung 990 Pro pushes the 4x PCIe 4.0 interface to its limit, and it's incredibly fast in sequential read and write tests. However, it’s too expensive to be competitive in this very crowded market, and its real-world gaming benefits are minimal.
- Huge sequential speeds
- Decent warranty and endurance rating
- Good 4K random speeds
- Very expensive
- Slower than competition in some tests
- Gets too hot without heatsink
With an enviable reputation in the SSD market, Samsung is another manufacturer to have snuck out one more PCIe 4.0SSD, just when we thought everyone was moving to PCIe 5. Like the WD Black SN850X, the Korean tech firm is vying for both PC and console markets with the Samsung 990 Pro, which is available with or without an RGB-enabled heatsink.
Samsung is making some bold claims about the performance of this drive too, which looks set to be the best gaming SSD you can get for a PCIe 4.0 system, at least in terms of raw speed. It’s the heatsink-less version we’re reviewing here, and while the 2TB WD Black SN850X has seen a substantial price cut and costs around $200, the 2TB 990 Pro still hovers around the $280 mark.
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Specs
| Samsung 990 Pro | |
| Max capacity | 4TB |
| Controller | Samsung Pascal |
| RAM | 2GB LPDDR4 |
| NAND | Samsung V-NAND TLC |
| Warranty | Five years |
| Endurance | 1,200TBW (2TB drive) |
| Interface | 4 x PCIe 4.0 |
| Connector | M.2 |
The Samsung 990 Pro uses an in-house Samsung controller, codenamed Pascal, along with 2GB of LPDDR4 memory as a cache for its V-NAND TLC memory. Like the WD Black SN850X, it also sports a software feature called TurboWrite 2, which acts as a buffer to boost performance.
This buffer sits at 10GB on the 2TB model we tested but can be enlarged to up to 226GB using Samsung’s software. Speaking of capacities, while WD already has a 4TB version of its Black SN850X available, Samsung has said a 4TB model of the 990 Pro won’t arrive until 2023, meaning 2TB is the current limit for this drive.
The 990 Pro’s specifications are otherwise similar to those of the WD SSD, though, with both drives offering an endurance rating of 1,200TBW and a five-year warranty.
Benchmarks
While the WD Black SN850X failed to top 7,000MB/s, no matter which M.2 port we used on our test motherboard, if we hooked up the 990 Pro to the CPU-linked port on our X570 motherboard, we managed to coax 7,198MB/s out of it in the CrystalDiskMark sequential read speed test, and 6,754MB/s in the write test. These are blisteringly quick sequential speeds and noticeably quicker than those of the WD SSD.
The Samsung was also slightly quicker in the random 4K 32-queue-depth 16-thread test in CrystalDiskMark, peaking at a read speed of 3,105MB/s vs 2,840MB/s for the WD drive, and also recording a slightly higher write speed. It also managed 520MB/s in the PCMark 10 full storage benchmark average speed test, compared to 463MB/s for the WD drive.
However, elsewhere it was the WD Black SN850X that sat out in front, despite its much lower price. The WD drive beat the Samsung 990 Pro in both read and write speeds in the random 4K single-queue-depth single-thread tests and was much faster in the 3DMark game load time performance.
In Battlefield V it managed a 1,154MB/s load time vs 1,035MB/s for the Samsung drive, while in Call of Duty: Black Ops it hit 965MB/s vs 739MB/s for the Samsung drive, and the WD drive’s access times were far lower too. The 990 Pro also needs a heatsink to operate at full speed, quickly hitting 75°C in our stress test without one.
Price
The 2TB Samsung 990 Pro currently goes for around $280, which is around $80 more than the WD Black SN850X. That’s a sizeable difference, and even the 1TB model’s $154 price tag dwarfs the sub-$120 price tag of the similar WD model.
Value isn’t the 990 Pro’s strong point, then, but you do always pay a premium for the fastest product, and the 990 Pro is definitely the fastest PCIe 4.0 drive you can buy in terms of sequential performance.
Alternatives
WD Black SN850X
WD absolutely nailed the PCIe 4.0 SSD formula with the SN850X. It’s not as quick as the Samsung 990 Pro in those often-quoted peak sequential speeds, but its real-world performance is superb, particularly in games. Add in the great value for money and you get the best balance of being per buck you can get from a PCIe 4.0 SSD right now.
Read our full WD Black SN850X review.
Verdict
We’ve dished out plenty of awards to Samsung SSDs in recent years, with its last PCIe 4.0 drive impressing us in our Samsung 980 Pro review. However, we feel the company has dropped the ball with the 990 Pro. It’s incredibly fast in theory, with the highest sequential speeds we’ve ever seen, but this doesn’t translate into chart-topping performance across the board, and it’s certainly not fast enough all round to justify its hefty price.
It’s a seriously fast SSD, especially for those shifting lots of data around regularly, but the WD Black SN850X isn’t much slower and costs significantly less money. If the 990 Pro comes down significantly in price, however, then it’s definitely worth considering if performance is your top priority.