Samsung Launches the 990 EVO Plus SSD, Comes in Sizes up to 4 TB

[TheLostSwede]

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced the release of the 990 EVO Plus, adding to its lineup of leading SSD products. With PCIe 4.0 support and latest NAND technology, the 990 EVO Plus is an ideal solution for consumers seeking enhanced performance and power efficiency on their PCs. Optimized for gaming, business and creative endeavors.

"Our daily lives are increasingly demanding more data with the images we share on social media and high-quality video streaming," said Hangu Sohn, Vice President of Memory Brand Product Biz Team at Samsung Electronics. "The 990 EVO Plus is built for laptop and desktop PC users seeking faster processing speeds and expanded storage capacity."




Enhanced Performance and Power Efficiency
The 990 EVO Plus is built on decades of Samsung's pioneering semiconductor technology with proven reliability. Sequential read speeds come up to 7250 megabytes-per-second (MB/s) and write speeds up to 6300 MB/s, an enhancement of up to 50% over the previous 990 EVO. The performance boost is thanks to Samsung's latest 8th generation V-NAND technology and 5-nanometer (nm) controller, while an innovative nickel-coated heat shield minimizes overheating, allowing 73% higher power efficiency than its predecessor.

The 4 TB model has an industry-leading random read speed of 1,050K IOPS and 1,400K input/output operations per second (IOPS) for random write. This remarkable performance nearly rivals that of SSD products with DRAM, despite not using DRAM cache, making it an optimal solution for gaming and AI tasks that require high performance.

Expanded Storage Capacity
The ever-increasing demand for high-capacity storage devices is driven by managing large-sized files, high-quality video editing and next-generation gaming. To meet today's growing storage requirements, the 990 EVO Plus offers ample capacity with a 4 TB model, exceeding the storage limits of the 990 EVO. The 990 EVO Plus is equipped with Samsung's intelligent TurboWrite 2.0, revamped for maximized performance, offering rapid file transfer speeds and reduced lag.

Samsung Magician Software Support
Samsung Magician software presents a suite of optimization tools for enhanced functionality for all Samsung SSDs, including the 990 EVO Plus. Users can streamline the data migration process for SSD upgrades effortlessly and securely. In addition, Samsung Magician protects valuable data, monitors drive health and offers customized performance optimization.

The 990 EVO Plus will be available to consumers worldwide at a manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $109.99 for the 1 TB model, $184.99 for the 2 TB model, and $344.99 for the 4 TB model.



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[yfn_ratchet]

Aaaaaaand too expensive. Classic Samsung. If the price stack was something like $80/$150/$280 they MIGHT have had something interesting on offer but as is this is just not it.

 

[Battler624]

Meh, really wish that x2 becomes the standard.

 

[natr0n]

Kind of ironic how a jack of all trades memory chip maker makes an ssd/m2 without ram/cache.

 

[mechtech]

Waiting for 8TB for $400cad

 

[lexluthermiester]

Aaaaaaand too expensive. Classic Samsung. If the price stack was something like $80/$150/$280 they MIGHT have had something interesting on offer but as is this is just not it.

These are premium performance model drives. You can't expect bargin-basement prices...

 

[mechtech]

These are premium performance model drives. You can't expect bargin-basement prices...

Got the 4TB version of this last year for $330cad (~$245usd)

Corsair MP600 Pro LPX 2 TB Review - Superb Game Load Times

The Corsair MP600 Pro LPX is optimized for gaming on Sony PlayStation 5 and the PC. In our review's real-world game load tests we saw a clear lead in load times compared to other flagship SSDs like the Samsung 980 Pro and WD Black NVMe. Thanks to the preinstalled heatsink there's no thermal...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[yfn_ratchet]

These are premium performance model drives. You can't expect bargin-basement prices...

And I would agree with that, but the pricing I spitballed is relative to extant competitors, namely the WD Black SN850X and Hynix Platinum P41/Solidigm P44 Pro, both of which offer comparable performance and durability in that price bracket. What little extra they offer is support for equal bandwidth to 4.0 x4 on esoteric 5.0 x2-only slots and better 'power efficiency', which as far as I can tell means better idle unless they miraculously reduced the peak power draw to an astounding 1W.

 

[ymdhis]

Dang, and I just bought a couple of 990 Pros too this month. Oh well, it seems like they are not so different in price that I'd have to worry.

 

[Wirko]

Meh, really wish that x2 becomes the standard.

But why?

 

[Chaitanya]

Aaaaaaand too expensive. Classic Samsung. If the price stack was something like $80/$150/$280 they MIGHT have had something interesting on offer but as is this is just not it.

Give it 5-6 months and you will find these drives at those prices.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Too expensive for dramless.

 

[Bwaze]

Give it 5-6 months and you will find these drives at those prices.

This is price movement of Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB. For the majority of time since it's release in autumn 2022 it has been more expensive than at release.

You"d need a crystal ball to predict price movements now. The fact is, storage makers don't even need PC enthusiast market, that's very small portion of their income.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

When these launched, they were around the R2500 mark:

https://www.wootware.co.za/crucial-ct2000t500ssd8-t500-2tb-m-2-2280-pcie-4-0-nvme-solid-state-drive.html

Everyone is price gouging these days. What annoys me the most is:

HDD's are much more expensive to manufacture. Moving parts, magnets, read heads, platters, PCB, screws, casing, heavier to ship, takes more space to ship etc. etc. etc.

Yet here we are, it's all so tiresome. Can we just get an honorable business that doesn't price gouge?

 

[A Computer Guy]

When these launched, they were around the R2500 mark:

https://www.wootware.co.za/crucial-ct2000t500ssd8-t500-2tb-m-2-2280-pcie-4-0-nvme-solid-state-drive.html

Everyone is price gouging these days. What annoys me the most is:

HDD's are much more expensive to manufacture. Moving parts, magnets, read heads, platters, PCB, screws, casing, heavier to ship, takes more space to ship etc. etc. etc.

Yet here we are, it's all so tiresome. Can we just get an honorable business that doesn't price gouge?

It's 2024, I wish they would kick R&D up a notch. By this time we were supposed to have superman style memory crystals to store data.

 

[Bwaze]

When these launched, they were around the R2500 mark:

https://www.wootware.co.za/crucial-ct2000t500ssd8-t500-2tb-m-2-2280-pcie-4-0-nvme-solid-state-drive.html

Everyone is price gouging these days. What annoys me the most is:

HDD's are much more expensive to manufacture. Moving parts, magnets, read heads, platters, PCB, screws, casing, heavier to ship, takes more space to ship etc. etc. etc.

Yet here we are, it's all so tiresome. Can we just get an honorable business that doesn't price gouge?

It has been years since anyone from the tech media dared to draw a graph about when SSDs will achieve parity with HDDs for capacity and for cost per GB - it used to be a very popular topic that produced lots of forecasts and nice graphs, of which absolutely none really held true. We have been forecasted price parity "in a few years" practically since 2012, but 12 years later journalists have apparently gave up.

This graph was produced on Reddit, and it's again showing price parity in about 5 years. It is of course using cheapest price per TB available, so it of course looks at cheaper, older drives and lower capacity. I guess if you made it for maximum available capacity the SSD line would practically flatline for the last 4 years - which wasn't the case before 2020, arrival of M.2 and total stagnation of maximum available capacity.

It also looks at best value with one data point per year, so even if it would be up to date (it's one year old), it wouldn't even show the terrible price gouging we had from last autumn until recently, when SSD prices finally fell to nearly pre-price hike levels. So it would take price levels for 2023 from pre-price hike, and for 2024 after it, maybe from some limited deals (Black Friday, end of year sales etc.). Right now the cheapest price per TB is still at 47.50 EUR, 53 USD - more than 50% higher than last year's entry.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

It's 2024, I wish they would kick R&D up a notch. By this time we were supposed to have superman style memory crystals to store data.

We should have easily seen 20TB M.2 Drives by now and near the same pricepoints we currently pay for this "Latest gen tech", they are milking the living hell out of this, it's disgraceful and unethical if you ask me.

 

[Bwaze]

As I wrote before, and I doubt it will become outdated anytime soon:

I paid 165 EUR for my Super Talent Ultradrive ME 64GB SSD in 2009, and in the next 10 years the available size really exploded to 8TB! And now we are at more than 5 years of same available capacity - and that capacity still hasn't become widely available or affordable, and everyone acts like this is completely normal...

Imagine, from 64 GB to 8.000 GB in 10 years, that's 62% growth every year, we could be at:

2020: 13TB
2021: 21TB
2022: 34TB
2023: 55TB
2024: 89TB
2025: 144TB

You think we could get 1/10 of that in the next year, please?

 

[TumbleGeorge]

As I wrote before, and I doubt it will become outdated anytime soon:

I paid 165 EUR for my Super Talent Ultradrive ME 64GB SSD in 2009, and in the next 10 years the available size really exploded to 8TB! And now we are at more than 5 years of same available capacity - and that capacity still hasn't become widely available or affordable, and everyone acts like this is completely normal...

Imagine, from 64 GB to 8.000 GB in 10 years, that's 62% growth every year, we could be at:

2020: 13TB
2021: 21TB
2022: 34TB
2023: 55TB
2024: 89TB
2025: 144TB

You think we could get 1/10 of that in the next year, please?

Wait! This is faster increases than Moore's "law" before it's death. Slow down please.

 

[Bwaze]

Wait! This is faster increases than Moore's "law" before it's death. Slow down please.

Gordon Moore in 1965 noted that the number of components per integrated circuit had been doubling every year. So 62% of growth per year should be doable, SSD capacity increase is linear with the component count increase, and even higher when there is a switch to flash memory type, from TLC to QLC to upcoming PLC and beyond...

Also, should we start building a time machine to tell SSD makers from 2009 to 2019 they're breaking laws?

It's also interesting to project "Jensen's Law", when he proclaimed Moore's Law dead and defended the 50% price increase with 50% performance increase, to SSD storage.

By that logic, from a 64 GB 165 EUR drive a 62% yearly capacity increase does bring you 8 TB in 2019, but it would cost nearly 13.000 EUR (12.679 EUR).



And people don't see a problem in that.

 

[_roman_]

No DRAM Cache on the storage means more writes over the PCI express bus and less host DRAM Memory. In my point of view you put more stress not really needed on the pci bus because of the usually assembled and missing 1GiB DDR4 RAM Chip on the storage. I'll also assume that the main processor wastes more cycles also because of the lack of dram on the storage(please feel free to give additional information or corrections).

Shame on SAMSUNG to sell a less qualifying product on the proper brand tag "SAMSUNG EVO".

The lack of 16TB NVMe drives is another point.

@Bwaze using geizhals.at or DE or UK or PL counterparts is not really valid. The sellers, e.g. nbb.com, pay geizhals to get listed there. Sometimes parts are cheaper and not listed there. Sometimes you can subtract 10-20 percent average from the price.

 

[Bwaze]

@Bwaze using geizhals.at or DE or UK or PL counterparts is not really valid. The sellers, e.g. nbb.com, pay geizhals to get listed there. Sometimes parts are cheaper and not listed there. Sometimes you can subtract 10-20 percent average from the price.

For me it's the other way around. I'm not from Germany, and all the stores with cheapest prices don't sell their products outside of Germany, or Germany plus select couple of countries. They even went so far to prohibit package forwarding services. So I can only shop from vanishingly few stores that do offer international shipping, but are usually 10 - 20% more expensive that cheapest ones on Geizhals.eu (usually Mindactory or similar). But it's still cheaper than buying locally. Stores not listed on Geizhals almost never have international shipping options.

So much for the "European Common Market".

 

[GabrielLP14]

Did they mention the controller name @TheLostSwede ?

 

[Chrispy_]

Give it 5-6 months and you will find these drives at those prices.

I haven't bought a Samsung drive in so long it's ridiculous. I procured a NAS which came with Samsung 980 EVO SSDs and those failed in months because I needed a write cache for terabytes of data a day and blew through their endurance in a matter of months. Once I had my own choice of SSD I put some Solidigm P4511's in there because those have literally 15x the endurance of DRAMless nonsense that should never have been put in a storage array in the first place!

Samsung's consumer SSDs have not been competitively priced in the UK in years - frequently 20-50% more expensive than the equivalent performance/tier TLC+DRAM offerings like SN850X, P41+, or KC3000.

KC3000 might be an older drive, but it's £118 right now for 2TB whilst Samsung's 980 non-Pro, and EVO models don't even use DRAM and they're more expensive. The cheapest DRAM drive is the ancient Gen3 970 EVO Plus and that's selling for £159 from retailers, you can find it for £152 from marketplace sellers which simply isn't appealing against the faster/better/newer KC3000 at over £40 less...

 

[L'Eliminateur]

Too expensive for dramless.

this, pretty much this alone kills them.

You can't have a DRAMless drive and call it "premium" by any stretch of the imagination no matter how much marketing gymnastics you pull, that is simply not premium, it's lipstick on a pig.

The prices presented i would expect for a DRAM drive, i'm not going to pay above 100USD/TB for a dramless drive when other much better compelling alternatives exists.

Hell, i can find older enterprise drives either m2 or u2 for that same 2TB price