Samsung's flagship client M.2 NVMe SSD, the 980 PRO, finally has a stock heatsink in new SKUs. Its design calls for what appears to be an aluminium monoblock with ridges for fins that join at the top. This heatsink is held in place by a metal shroud that covers the sides and back of the drive. The drive comes with its own retail SKUs and name—"980 PRO with Heatsink," much like how Western Digital segregates SKUs with or without heatsinks for its flagship WD Black SN850 drives. Retail channel availability of these variants remains to be seen, as The Verge reports that these drives will be sold as PlayStation 5-compatible drives. When they come out on October 29, the 1 TB variant is expected to be priced at $250, with the 2 TB variant going for $450.

Samsung's latest 980 Pro SSD is not unlike the hypercar of solid state storage: ridiculously fast, ludicrously expensive. The company had announced that a 2 TB version would be available sometime near these holidays, and Scan.co.uk has just listed one such 2 TB part. If you want one of the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs money can buy, and one of the only ones based on TLC (Triple Layer Cell) technology, then you might be in luck.

The reseller is listing the 2 TB version of the 980 Pro for a cool £443 (including tax), which translates to about $590. That's more than double the pricing of some very interesting PCIe 4.0 solutions. Considering the 1 TB version ticks at read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s and write speeds at up to 5,000 MB/s with an endurance of 600 TBW, expect the 2 TB version to be even faster and more consistent. Maybe improve your storage subsystem while we are faced with the current gaming hardware shortages? Consider, however, that delivery is estimated for early January 2021.

Samsung's hotly anticipated 980 PRO M.2 NVMe flagship client-segment SSD is the company's first "PRO" branded SSD to feature TLC NAND flash memory, breaking from a unique tradition of using MLC (2 bits per cell) NAND flash. Product pages of the drive went live, and its specifications clearly state the use of "Samsung V-NAND 3-bit MLC," which is another way of saying TLC. "MLC" generally referred to as NAND flash memory that stores 2 bits per cell, even through the term "Multi-level" is amorphous.

The product page lists other juicy specs of Samsung's first M.2 NVMe client SSD that takes advantage of PCI-Express gen 4. The drive uses Samsung's in-house design "Elpis" controller, which uses NVMe 1.3 protocol over PCI-Express 4.0 x4, and an LPDDR4 DRAM cache. The 980 PRO comes in capacities of up to 1 TB, with up to 1 GB of DRAM cache. Samsung rates the 1 TB version as capable of up to 7000 MB/s sequential reads, up to 5000 MB/s sequential writes, and up to 1 million IOPS 4K random reads/writes at QD32. The use of TLC impacts endurance adversely in comparison to that of the drive's immediate predecessor, the 970 PRO, with the 1 TB 980 PRO warranty covering only up to 600 TBW, in comparison to 1200 TBW of the 970 PRO 1 TB, and the 500 GB 980 PRO offering just 300 TBW warranty coverage in comparison to 600 TBW of the 970 PRO 512 GB.