Table of Contents
The Samsung 980 Pro is the first SSD from Samsung to use PCIe 4.0. This is a technology that became popular with the AMD Ryzen 3000 processors and the X570 chipset. It lets SSDs have much faster speeds and much more memory than even the best SSDs could before. The Samsung 980 Pro is, therefore, the fastest SSD we’ve ever tested. As with any other big SSD release, the Samsung 980 Pro comes in three storage sizes: 250GB for $89, 500GB for $149, and 1TB for $229.
At first look, those prices seem high, especially if you’ve been paying attention to how quickly SSD prices have been dropping over the last few months. But if you compare the price to other drives with the same amount of space, like the $199 1TB Gigabyte Aorus Gen4 SSD or the $229 1TB Sabrent Rocket, it’s a great deal. A 2TB model will also come out sometime in 2020, but we don’t know how much it will cost yet.
Samsung 980 Pro Specifications
| Specification | Description |
|---|---|
| Interface | PCIe 4.0 NVMe |
| Capacity | 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB |
| Sequential Read Speed | Up to 7,000 MB/s |
| Sequential Write Speed | Up to 5,000 MB/s |
| Random Read Speed | Up to 1,000K IOPS |
| Random Write Speed | Up to 1,000K IOPS |
| MTBF | 1.5 million hours |
| Warranty | 5 years |
Design & Features
Adding a heatsink is the main improvement. The 980 Pro’s overall thickness rises to 8.5mm as a result, but it’s made that way on purpose so that it can fit into the M.2 SSD slot in the Sony PS5. The Samsung 980 Pro with Heatsink, like all other M.2 2280 SSDs, is incompatible with the Microsoft Xbox Series X. Also, many PC motherboards offer M.2 cooling solutions that are only compatible with bare SSDs, so the extra money for this 980 Pro version isn’t really necessary. Samsung claims that the heatsink is tuned with data centre technology to effectively remove heat from the nickel-coated controller chip inside the device.
The 1TB version is being tested here, however there is also a 2TB version. Besides that, the 980 Pro offers much the same features as its predecessors. What was once among the most cutting-edge M.2 SSDs is now surpassed by the likes of the Western Digital Black SN850 and the legion of drives based on the Phison E18 controller, including the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, the PNY XLR8 CS3140, the Kingston Fury Renegade, and, more recently, the Seagate Firecuda 530.
Samsung 980 Pro: Performance
Most of the time, this new version of the Samsung 980 Pro will work about the same as the original. That means it’s a very fast SSD, but not as fast as the newest PCIe 4.0 M.2 drives. In our tests, the most it can read is about 6.7GB/s and write is about 4.9GB/’s. The fastest 1TB drives for writing in CrystalDiskMark 7 were the WD Black SN850 and the PNY XLR8 CS3140. They can reach 7GB/s and 5.2GB/s, respectively.
If that’s not the kind of performance data you’ll ever see in real life, the 980 Pro is even slower when it comes to 4K random access, especially when it comes to writing. The 980 Pro can only go up to about 200MB/s, but the WD BLACK SN850 can go up to more than 300MB/s. That is a big change. You can buy this ssd from its official website
Final Words
In addition to its many other advantages, the Samsung 980 Pro’s low price makes it a compelling option. Even though it’s not the quickest PCIe 4.0 drive on the market, you probably won’t even notice the difference in everyday use. The addition of this Heatsink variant is great news for Sony PS5 owners.
When you consider how slow it is to write random 4K data and how low the write endurance rating is, the new PC version becomes a little less appealing. This updated model could still be a top SSD for a high-performance gaming PC, especially if the pricing is good and your motherboard doesn’t have its own M.2 drive cooling.
Samsung 980 Pro review: The good and The bad
The Good
- Extreme performance
- Competitive price
The Bad
- Can get warm
FAQS
On average, the SSD is predicted to last 150TB, which is enough for at least 5 years. This SSD is up to 10 times faster than a 2.5-inch SSD because it can write data at 5.1GB/s.
The 980 PRO is made for speed because it uses Samsung’s own driver for PCIe 4.0 SSD. It can read at up to 7,000 MB/s, which is twice as fast as PCI 3.0 SSDs and 12.7 times as fast as SATA SSDs. The 980 PRO’s top speeds are reached on PCIe 4.0, but they may be different in other situations.