How Much Does it Cost?
The Samsung 990 PRO 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 is available now from Amazon, with prices of around £280 for the model we tested. However, the 1TB is available for around £155. I actually think that’s a pretty great price, especially given the performance figures we’ve seen, and Samsung has a rock-solid reputation with their reliability and warranty too.
Overview
While motherboards have now moved onto support PCIe Gen 5.0, there aren’t actually any PCIe Gen 5.0 M.2 drives available for consumers just yet. However, PCIe Gen 4.0 is delivering such killer performance for content creation and gamers, that we’re not hard-pressed to upgrade to the next-gen just yet. This drive promises performance of up to 7450 MBs sequential read and 6900 MBs sequential write and we got very close to that. That’s pretty damn fast, and a far cry from the approximately 550 MB/s read/write you can get from 2.5″ SATA6 SSDs. If you did replace an old SSD, you could see game load times be reduced from 30+ seconds to around 2 seconds… I hope you can speed-read those tooltips on the loading screens!
High Performance
Of course, you may not get the maximum speeds from your system, and in some rare cases, you may even exceed the speeds Samsung promises. It’s a high-end drive, so a good quality motherboard, a fast CPU, and having your RAM setup right can all have some impact on it. However, without a doubt, it’ll always be a fast drive. Getting the best out of it on your PC shouldn’t be too hard though. Furthermore, with it supporting the PlayStation 5, you can upgrade the storage of your console without making a compromise on those super-fast console load times.
The Samsung Family
Samsung is a prime choice for high-end SSD components, and it’s no surprise that their in-house models are some of the best on the market. It uses the latest Samsung in-house controller, Samsung V-NAND TLC memory, and Samsung 2GB LPDDR4 DRAM cache, all working in imperfect harmony. With that in mind, Samsung gives these drives a 5-years limited warranty with the 1TB a 600TBW and the 2TB a 1200TBW lifespan.
Should I Buy One?
PCIe 4.0 has been with us for a while now, but that means Samsung has had both time and experience on their side to make this one of the fastest and most efficient PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 SSDs we’ve ever seen, it’s a clear improvement in all respects over the also fantastic Samsung 980 Pro. Class-leading performance is always going to get a big thumbs up from us, so it’s easy to say we highly recommend the Samsung 990 Pro M.2 SSD.
