Tuesday, September 22nd 2020
Samsung Delivers Next-Level SSD Performance with 980 PRO
Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today unveiled the company's first consumer PCIe 4.0 NVMe solid state drive (SSD) - the Samsung SSD 980 PRO. The new 980 PRO is designed for professionals and consumers who want cutting-edge performance in their high-end PCs, workstations and game consoles.
"Over the years, Samsung has continuously challenged the limits of high-speed flash memory storage solutions," said Dr. Mike Mang, vice president of Memory Brand Product Biz at Samsung Electronics. "The new 980 PRO SSD reflects our continuing commitment to delivering exceptional products consumers have come to expect from Samsung."
Optimized for handling data-intensive applications, the 980 PRO is ideal for consumers and professionals who work with 4K and 8K contents, and play graphics-heavy games. All the key components, including the custom Elpis controller, V-NAND and DRAM, are completely designed in-house to deliver the full potential of PCIe 4.0. This allows the 980 PRO to provide sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s and 5,000 MB/s respectively, as well as random read and write speeds of up to 1,000K IOPS, making it up to two times faster than PCIe 3.0 SSDs and up to 12.7 times faster than SATA SSDs.
In addition to enhanced performance, the 980 PRO comes with outstanding thermal control solutions for improved reliability. While most of today's high-performance NVMe SSDs rely on external copper heatsinks to diffuse heat, Samsung's 980 PRO employs a nickel coating on the controller as well as a heat spreader label on the back side of the SSD for efficient thermal management. These innovative heat-dissipating functions also allow the drive to maintain its compact and slim M.2 form factor. Samsung's Dynamic Thermal Guard technology further ensures that the drive's temperature stays at the optimal level, minimizing performance fluctuations over the long haul.
The Samsung SSD 980 PRO comes in 1 TB, 500 GB and 250 GB models, and will be available worldwide starting this month, while the 2 TB capacity model will be available by the end of this year. The 980 PRO's manufacturer's suggested retail prices start at $89.99 for the 250 GB model.
"Over the years, Samsung has continuously challenged the limits of high-speed flash memory storage solutions," said Dr. Mike Mang, vice president of Memory Brand Product Biz at Samsung Electronics. "The new 980 PRO SSD reflects our continuing commitment to delivering exceptional products consumers have come to expect from Samsung."
In addition to enhanced performance, the 980 PRO comes with outstanding thermal control solutions for improved reliability. While most of today's high-performance NVMe SSDs rely on external copper heatsinks to diffuse heat, Samsung's 980 PRO employs a nickel coating on the controller as well as a heat spreader label on the back side of the SSD for efficient thermal management. These innovative heat-dissipating functions also allow the drive to maintain its compact and slim M.2 form factor. Samsung's Dynamic Thermal Guard technology further ensures that the drive's temperature stays at the optimal level, minimizing performance fluctuations over the long haul.
The Samsung SSD 980 PRO comes in 1 TB, 500 GB and 250 GB models, and will be available worldwide starting this month, while the 2 TB capacity model will be available by the end of this year. The 980 PRO's manufacturer's suggested retail prices start at $89.99 for the 250 GB model.
60 Comments on Samsung Delivers Next-Level SSD Performance with 980 PRO
Yes, three bits per cell is normally called TLC, but MLC could be used for anything with more than one bit per cell.
That likely means:
500GB: $180
1TB: $360
2TB: $720
Honestly at these speeds and with TLC (if it turns out to be TLC afterall). Good luck with these prices Samsung. Tbh the Phison E18 controller based SSD's look a lot more appealing right about now. Likely much cheaper too. Essentially Samsung went from MLC to TLC while keeping the prices of MLC.
We will have to wait for reviews but right now it does not look good either from pricing or performance perspective.
Although if you want the full PCIe gen 4 speed, you need a board that supports it. ;)
If you want closest to SLC then these days you have to look at Intel's Optane. Insane durability, low latency and uniform speeds regardless of the chip size/amount.
I'd love a review showing the difference in IOPS on these between gen 3 and gen 4.
I never thought I'll see the day when I will have to turn to Sabrent to get a decent drive.
Not sure why they would post a review of a PCIe4 drive not using it.