Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs launched

by Mark Tyson on 23 September 2020, 10:11

Tags: Samsung (005935.KS)

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Samsung has at last unveiled its first PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD for consumers. The new Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 SSD is aimed at gaming and high-end PC applications and can deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,000MB/s and 5,000MB/s respectively. According to Samsung's own testing these devices, available in capacities ranging from 250GB to 1TB later this month, are up to 12.7 times faster than SATA SSDs.

"The new 980 PRO SSD reflects our continuing commitment to delivering exceptional products consumers have come to expect from Samsung," said Dr. Mike Mang, a senior memory business VP at Samsung. The drives are optimised for handling data-intensive applications, and thus ideal for gamers who play demanding modern AAA titles, as well as for consumers and professionals who work with 4K and 8K content.

To realise this product Samsung has pulled together advances in several key in-house component designs such as; the custom Elpis controller, V-NAND, and DRAM. As well as being able to achieve sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,000MB/s and 5,000MB/s respectively, the 980 Pro can deliver a device with random read and write speeds of up to 1,000K IOPS. These stats make the 980 Pro up to twice as fast as a PCIe 3.0 SSD.

To keep the Samsung 980 Pro cool under pressure, Samsung has employed a nickel coating on the controller, as well as a heat spreader label on the back side of the SSD. These measures plus Samsung's Dynamic Thermal Guard technology keep the slim form factor from bloating and is claimed to keep the drive temperature optimal to minimise performance fluctuations.

Samsung says it will be making the 980 Pro series SSDs available worldwide this month in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities. A 2TB model will become available before the year is out. Pricing starts at US$89.99 for the 250GB model.



HEXUS Forums :: 13 Comments

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Wow, 7GBps/5GBps its a slow RAM territory. I would love to see a review :)
Very surprised to see that it tops out with a 1TB drive. That's not very “Pro”.
Anandtech has done some testing:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16087/the-samsung-980-pro-pcie-4-ssd-review/6

A number of the Hynix and Seagate SSDs hold up well to it.

Hoonigan
Very surprised to see that it tops out with a 1TB drive. That's not very “Pro”.

Neither is the change from MLC to TLC NAND. It makes me wonder whether the 980 EVO will end up being QLC! ;)
Still pretty expensive compared to HDDs. :(
Aren't we already at the stage where between these and SSD speeds? That suggests to me that a reduction in price per TB would be the better focus at this point, rather than this ‘So fast, it’s faster than fast' quest for imperceptibly higher speeds.

Hoonigan
Very surprised to see that it tops out with a 1TB drive. That's not very “Pro”.
“A 2TB model will become available before the year is out”.
Ttaskmaster
Still pretty expensive compared to HDDs. :(

Aren't we already at the stage where between these and SSD speeds? That suggests to me that a reduction in price per TB would be the better focus at this point, rather than this ‘So fast, it’s faster than fast' quest for imperceptibly higher speeds.

The problem is cheaper QLC NAND,has performance penalties(they can be as slow as HDDs!) and endurance penalties over TLC NAND. Also companies such as Samsung instead of passing the savings onto consumers,price their QLC NAND drives the same as competitors TLC NAND drives. In the end QLC was supposed to push prices down,but has ended up being a bit of damp squib.