Samsung’s new 990 Pro M.2 SSD pushes PCIe 4.0 to the limit

A week ago, a PCI-SIG listing showed that Samsung is working on a new 990 Pro PCIe 5.0 SSD. As it turns out, the Samsung 990 Pro is actually a PCIe 4.0 SSD, but the new combination of V-NAND and Samsung's new controller tech enable the company to get as much speed out of the drive as possible. 

Today at Gamescom, Samsung officially announced the 990 Pro M.2 SSD, featuring the company's latest V-NAND and a new proprietary controller. Together, this allows the SSD to reach sequential read/write speeds of up to  7,450 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s, respectively.

Random read and write speeds come in at up to 1,400K and 1,550K IOPS, respectively – a 55% improvement over the 980 Pro SSD, making the new 990 Pro particularly well suited for gaming and creative/productivity tasks. In games, Samsung tested the SSD with upcoming JRPG, Forspoken, allowing the game to be loaded in one second, versus 28 seconds on a HDD.

Here is a gallery of photos taken from Samsung's launch presentation at Gamescom:

You can see the full specs in the table below:

Category	Samsung SSD 990 PRO | 990 PRO with Heatsink
Interface	PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0
Form Factor	M.2 (2280)
Storage Memory	Samsung V-NAND 3-bit TLC
Controller	Samsung in-house controller
Capacity	1TB	2TB	4TB
DRAM	1GB LPDDR4	2GB LPDDR4	4GB LPDDR4
Sequential Read/Write Speed	Up to 7,450 MB/s, Up to 6,900 MB/s
Random Read/Write Speed (QD32)	Up to 1,400K IOPS, Up to 1,550K IOPS
Management Software	Samsung Magician Software
Data Encryption	AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption, TCG/Opal V2.0, Encrypted Drive (IEEE1667)
Total Bytes Written	600TB	1200TB	2400TB

The Samsung 990 Pro M.2 SSD will be available starting in October, priced at £154.99 for the 1TB model and £283.99 for the 2TB model. The 4TB version will become available next year and pricing has not yet been confirmed.

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KitGuru Says: The last few years have seen huge gains for M.2 SSD speeds. The 990 Pro looks to carve out a spot as one of the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market. Later down the line, it'll be interesting to see what Samsung can deliver with PCIe 5.0, which is slowly taking over as the new standard. 

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