Review Samsung 990 Pro SSD Review: The Return of the King

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It doesn't read like a bad drive at all, but I can't say its performance blows my socks away. From a value perspective, the P5+ and 980Pro are still really good from what I can see here.

Definitely a drive to look for when it goes on sale, but at full price, it's kind of hard to say I'd buy it for myself. Then again, I suppose I'm not an "ultimate performance seeker".

Regards.
 
Jesus Christ these prices. $200 for a 1TB SSD. I thought SSD were supposed to get cheaper over time.

The recent prices of DDR5 memory, SSD, Motherboards, GPU, etc...are pushing me over the edge to buy a console this holiday season, and just forget about wasting tons of money on PC hardare.
 
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PlaneInTheSky said:
Jesus Christ these prices. $200 for a 1TB SSD. I thought SSD were supposed to get cheaper over time.

The recent prices of DDR5 memory, SSD, Motherboards, GPU, etc...are pushing me over the edge to buy a console this holiday season, and just forget about wasting tons of money on PC hardare.
Click to expand...

You can buy a 1 TB Samsung 980 on Newegg for $100 and a 980 Pro for <$150.
 
"It would be great inside a PC, a laptop, or your PS5. An optional heatsink with RGB is the cherry on top."

Remember when these Samsung Pro drives earned their price by being high endurance/performance drives for workstations?
I guess strike this up to being yet another "pro" branded product that is in no way intended for professionals.
It's probably time for the dictionary curators of the world to add "overpriced consumer electronics" as an official definition for "pro".
 
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PlaneInTheSky said:
Jesus Christ these prices. $200 for a 1TB SSD. I thought SSD were supposed to get cheaper over time.

The recent prices of DDR5 memory, SSD, Motherboards, GPU, etc...are pushing me over the edge to buy a console this holiday season, and just forget about wasting tons of money on PC hardare.
Click to expand...

You are surprised that the most cutting edge PC hardware money can buy is expensive? IIRC my Samsung 970evo 1TB M.2 cost like $250 4 years ago. But yeah consoles will always be cheaper of course.

Not sure what your current build is but a lot of prices are actually relatively low compared to the last 5 years.

Here is a great build for about $1700: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/bRhTDq
You could save a couple hundred bucks buying the 3080 second hand too.

Here is a thrifty but good build for $900: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wRy9Bj

And all that is assuming you have no current parts you could reuse.

Or you could buy the PS5 AND a Steam Deck for like $1000-$1200. Have a beast console and a baby beast mobile console/PC.
 
_dawn_chorus_ said:
You are surprised that the most cutting edge PC hardware money can buy is expensive? IIRC my Samsung 970evo 1TB M.2 cost like $250 4 years ago. But yeah consoles will always be cheaper of course.

Not sure what your current build is but a lot of prices are actually relatively low compared to the last 5 years.

Here is a great build for about $1700: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Dawn_Chorus/saved/yBJ3wP
You could save a couple hundred bucks buying the 3080 second hand too.

Here is a thrifty but good build for $900: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wRy9Bj

Or you could buy the PS5 AND a Steam Deck for like $1000-$1200. Have a beast console and a baby beast mobile console/PC.
Click to expand...

This is NOT cutting edge at all. Gen 5 SSD's would be cutting edge. Thats everyone's utter disapointment here.
 
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TechieTwo said:
It's overwhelming to see all of the Gen 5 SSDs that were suppose to be available by now. /s
Click to expand...
I got ads for two different Gen 5 drives when I pulled up this article, including one on the main banner. Being old enough to have been through many generational changes for many standards, it sure seems we are in the midst of one now for both SSDs to Gen 5 and memory to DDR 5. Memory is just a bit farther along, but the storage transition is underway as well. I’ve seen at least 4 announcements for Gen 5 M.2s. With the motherboards supporting Gen 5 starting to roll out in Q4, I expect more Gen 5 SSDs to be released in the next 6 months. Spending big money on Gen 4 seems a waste. I’d at least wait to see if Gen 5 releases force a price drop.
 
"King", nah, not a chance. That title still goes to the P41 2TB easy (2ndp WD series), and only a bump in speed (which many rigs won't even notice by comparison for the LONG-TERM) is not enough to warrant the inevitable Sammy's headaches which they are quite known for sadly.
 
ITs way too expensive. Do you need a 990 Pro.... My answer is no.... I started with the SATA 850pro, thne 950Pro, 960Pro and lastly 970Pro.

I didn't notice any difference between the 850 Pro and 950 Pro when loading windows and apps....
 
So glad I passed on the 2TB Samsung 980 Pro that was $199 on the first day of Amazon Prime day, then it get reduced to $189 on the 2nd day. I got the faster XPG Gammix S70 that was $199 for 2TB, and look my read speed matching this newer more expensive Samsung 990 Pro 🤣
 
PlaneInTheSky said:
Jesus Christ these prices. $200 for a 1TB SSD. I thought SSD were supposed to get cheaper over time.
Click to expand...
Samsung's SSDs have always commanded a price premium. Their Pro-line has consistently been some of the most expensive SSDs on the market, since the very first generation.

One of the main reasons for this is their use of lower-density NAND, in order to achieve better performance (although their lead has been slipping for the past couple generations, after they stopped using MLC). This drive uses TLC, whereas you're probably comparing it to drives using QLC.

Another reason is their use of an internally-designed controller, whereas most drives use a 3rd party controller from someone like Phison. The in-house route means more NRE costs, while potentially increasing margins. So, whether it's a cost savings or not depends a lot on volumes and the size of the engineering effort involved.

The performance they're able to provide with the above combination gives them command of pricing, similar to how Nvidia can sell the most expensive GPUs when they're the fastest.

Finally, Samsung SSDs just have a good reputation, period. So, the name on the label is another thing you're paying for.
 
I was expecting this to be a PCI-E 5.0 drive, but turns out to be yet another PCI-E 4.0 drive. Which leads me to wonder why Samsung even bothered to make small incremental sequential speed improvements, which most people won't even realize in their day to day use. I mean even if you are transferring huge files all the time, the difference in the sequential write speed is not going to make a huge difference. It is more likely to run into thermal throttling if there is insufficient cooling to allow it to sustain its write speed. So while the title says the return of the "king", its barely faster than the fastest PCI-E 4.0 SSD out there. In my opinion, there is nothing special about it.
 
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watzupken said:
I was expecting this to be a PCI-E 5.0 drive, but turns out to be yet another PCI-E 4.0 drive. Which leads me to wonder why Samsung even bothered to make small incremental sequential speed improvements, which most people won't even realize in their day to day use.
Click to expand...
Costs savings, due to denser V-NAND? If they can add enough performance to try and keep up with the competition, plus launch a new model in time for the holidays, that should make business sense. I'd imagine that a lot of people just default to buying the latest Samsung Pro SSD, but they don't expect to pay quite the same premium price if it's over a year old.

watzupken said:
In my opinion, there is nothing special about it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the past couple generations haven't been the stand-out SSDs that we're used to, from the Samsung Pro line.

What stands out to me is just how underwhelming their performance is on sustained writes. They're almost non-competitive, there.
 
JDJJ said:
it sure seems we are in the midst of one now for both SSDs to Gen 5 and memory to DDR 5. Memory is just a bit farther along, but the storage transition is underway as well.
Click to expand...
It's obviously different with storage, because you can still use older-gen storage on a newer board, whereas motherboards only accept a single gen of DDR memory.

Undoubtedly, the bigger difference is that DDR5 actually delivers very tangible benefits, on multithreaded workloads. With SSDs, it's harder to see the performance impact of the interface change. Not only that, but you can have a fast model using an older PCIe standard outperform a slower drive using a newer PCIe standard.
 
_dawn_chorus_ said:
You are surprised that the most cutting edge PC hardware money can buy is expensive? IIRC my Samsung 970evo 1TB M.2 cost like $250 4 years ago. But yeah consoles will always be cheaper of course.

Not sure what your current build is but a lot of prices are actually relatively low compared to the last 5 years.

Here is a great build for about $1700: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/bRhTDq
You could save a couple hundred bucks buying the 3080 second hand too.

Here is a thrifty but good build for $900: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wRy9Bj

And all that is assuming you have no current parts you could reuse.

Or you could buy the PS5 AND a Steam Deck for like $1000-$1200. Have a beast console and a baby beast mobile console/PC.
Click to expand...

Where? I got a 1TB 970 evo for $160.49 about three years ago.

That said I would not pay the "Samsung tax" anymore. Too many good alternatives. Also, I think it's crap they use TLC on the Pro line these days. The whole difference between the Pro and evo was MLC vs TLC back then. I think they are the ones that marketed TLC as "3 bit MLC" as well.
 
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Thunder64 said:
Where? I got a 1TB 970 evo for $160.49 about three years ago.

That said I would not pay the "Samsung tax" anymore. Too many good alternatives. Also, I think it's crap they use TLC on the Pro line these days. The whole difference between the Pro and evo was MLC vs TLC back then. I think they are the ones that marketed TLC as "3 bit MLC" as well.
Click to expand...

You can see the amazon price history at this site: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B07BN217QG

It just made me a little sick to my stomach seeing as I bought one in 2018 too... lol -_-'
Looks like you bought at the right time!

I believe there was a memory shortage at the time and I had just bought a laptop that needed a storage upgrade.
 
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