Samsung SSD 990 Pro Review – Awesomely Fast Powerhouse SSD Performer for Work and Play

Beyond smartphones, home appliances and displays, Samsung is also a reputable purveyor of solid state drives too. We managed to get our hands on the latest Samsung SSD 990 Pro review sample with a 1TB capacity and put it to the test to see if it’s worth its substantial price tag. 

Samsung SSD 990 Pro Review – Specifications

The new Samsung SSD 990 Pro PCIE 4.0 NVMe M.2 solid state drive is the successor to the prior SSD 980 Pro that we tested earlier this year and is intended for heavy tasks like triple-A gaming and heavy 4K video editing. 

The Samsung SSD 990 Pro uses their latest V-NAND and is rated for up to 7,450 MB/s sequential read and up to 6,900 MB/s sequential write speeds with up to 1,400K and 1,550K IOPs random read and write speeds while implementing a nickel-coated Pascal controller built on an 8nm process that succeeds the 980 Pro’s Elpis controller , a heat spreader label and a Dynamic Thermal Guard thermal control algorithm to efficiently manage heat. 

There are only two available storage capacities officially available in Malaysia for the SSD 990 Pro SSD with your choice of either 1TB or 2TB storage. Our Samsung SSD 990 Pro review sample is the former which has 1GB LPDDR4 RAM. The 2TB variant has slightly more at 2GB LPDDR4 RAM. Samsung also issues the 990 Pro SSD in a variant with integrated heatsinks for in both 1TB and 2TB options as well for a higher price point.

On paper, the SSD 990 Pro is rated to offer a 55% improvement in random read and write performance and is 50% more power efficient than its predecessor the SSD 980 Pro. A variant with a head sink exists but our SSD 990 Pro review sample is the baseline version without one.

Much like their prior offerings, the Samsung SSD 990 Pro also has substantial software support with TCG Opal encryption on offer and their optional Samsung Magician application to manage performance, health and power usage for the SSD itself. 

At the time of writing, an official retail price was not available for our 1TB SSD 990 Pro review sample nor for its larger 2TB sibling but a look on Shopee and Lazada reveals that the 1TB version retails around the circa RM838-RM868 mark while the 2TB version clocks in at about RM1,500- RM1,700. It’s a substantial chunk of cash and comes at a premium over other SSDs in the market.

Samsung SSD 990 Pro Review – Setup and Performance

Intended for intensive gaming and 4K video editing, the Samsung SSD 990 Pro is made to go toe to toe with the best SSDs in the industry and win. For our review, we installed it in the ROG Strix SCAR G733 gaming laptop which has a 12th Gen Intel Core i89-12900H CPU, 32GB RAM, a hefty NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU with 16GB GDDR6 vRAM and a spare SSD slot alongside the main SSD.

When subjected to the following benchmarks, our Samsung SSD 990 Pro review sample did not disappoint with significantly improved performance over its SSD 980 Pro predecessor even factoring in the disparity in storage sizes as higher capacity SSDs tend to perform better in read and write speeds than smaller sized ones.

In Crystal Disk Mark, our test sample managed to achieve close to its official stated read and write speeds with 7,045.07MB/s in sequential write and 6,758.65MB/s in write speeds as well as 7,866.83MB/s with a mixture of reading and writing. 

The AS SSD Benchmark and Anvil SSD Benchmark had some slight deviations with slightly slower sequential reading and writing speeds but were still respectably nippy.

To test it under practical conditions, a huge 66.6GB chunk of data was transferred to our Samsung SSD 990 Pro review sample and completed in about 25 seconds at about 2.97GB/s which is excellent.

Should you buy the Samsung SSD 990 Pro?

The Samsung SSD 990 Pro 1TB is an impressively engineered offering that offers excellent performance but it also comes at a premium price point but you get what you pay for. It remains a premium choice for those seeking uncompromisingly high read and write performance for demanding tasks like high-end gaming and video editing work.

Specifications
Price RM838 – RM868 (Approximate)
Interface PCIe Gen 4.0 x 4 NVMe 2.0
Storage Memory Samsung V-NAND 3-bit TLC
Capacity 1TB w/ 1GB LPDDR4 DRAM / 2TB w/ 2GB LPDDR4 DRAM
Sequential Read/Write Speed Up to 7,450MB/s, Up to 6,900 MB/s
Random Read/Write speed (QD32) Up to 1,400K IOPS, up to 1,550K IOPS
Total bytes written 600TB (1TB variant) / 1,200 TB (2TB variant)

Samsung SSD 990 Pro review sample courtesy of Samsung Malaysia, for more details and to purchase please visit https://www.samsung.com/my/memory-storage/nvme-ssd/990-pro-2tb-nvme-pcie-gen-4-mz-v9p2t0bw/