Samsung 990 Pro SSD in review: Fast, faster, Pro?

With the “Pro” series of its SSDs, Samsung usually shows what solid-state storage is capable of. Compared with the predecessor 980 Pro, the data transfer rates have increased by 40%, at least when writing, according to the manufacturer.

However, the lack of a large heat sink seems to be much more noticeable. Only a kind of heat-conducting sticker is found on the SSD’s underside. The fact that this is sufficient is due to the significantly reduced power consumption. According to Samsung, only half the power is needed for writing, which reduces heat development significantly.

In addition, the working memory size in the memory controller has been reduced from 2 to 1 GB. In the following, we have tested how the M.2 SSD works with this and behaves in practice. However, it remains to be seen whether Samsung will also present an SSD 990 Pro with an additional heat sink at a later time.

The SSD 990 Pro is safely packaged in any case. Three nested plastic elements should almost exclude transport damages, but they also present a lot of trash. Apart from the small warranty statement, there is no other accessory.

We would have at least wished for the small screw to lock it in the M.2 slot.

At least with the AS SSD tool, we could not achieve the promised sequential transfer rates. We stopped at just over 5,000 MB/s even after several attempts. In return, Samsung’s SSD 990 Pro showed its potential with DiskSpd. Even in the long run, the read performance remained at more than 7,100 MB/s.

The results with H2testw are remarkable. The small program can simulate a particularly high write and read volume. In practice, it will rarely happen that 1.5 TB has to be written in one go. The fact that the Samsung SSD still manages more than 1,500 MB/s impressively shows the performance of the storage controller. The test with only 200 GB in one go also resulted in a write speed of 2,490 MB/s.

Further tests during copying and formatting turned out similarly. Among other things, creating a copy of an extensive folder from Steam succeeded with pretty much exactly 2,000 MB/s. The Crucial P3 Plus with PCIe 4.0 interface, for example, needed 30% more time for this.

In other words: The Samsung SSD 990 Pro is fast, achieves the promised data rates, and can also convince with its performance in larger copy and write volumes.

The 990 Pro is of course aimed at users of high-end systems and particularly ambitious gamers. Even these should not be able to really utilize the enormous transfer rates in most cases. At the same time, this naturally means that the SSD will not become a slowing factor in the gaming PC, game console, or workstation in the long run. The high load capacity also contributes to this. According to Samsung, the total write performance is 1,500 TB and thus about twice the usual value of 800 TB.

The heat development remains in place: our endurance test with DiskSpd (shown below in the first diagram) shows that the SSD gets hot. Here, the transfer rate repeatedly drops to just under 3000 MB/s, although such a load will rarely occur in practice.

We measured with the infrared thermometer (Ridgid micro IR-200) and found almost 90 °C surface temperature, as expected. In contrast, it was never more than 60 °C in the more realistic write and copy tests. Thus, the small glued heat sink really seems to be sufficient. However, the other components, such as the graphics card and CPU, were less stressed in the test and accordingly did not contribute to further heating. An additional heat spreader would not hurt in any case.

However, it seems that the more energy-saving design pays off. The good performance rates are not bought with excessive heating.

The Samsung SSD 990 Pro performs as promised. It offers excellent sequential write and read rates. Much more, it can stand out from the competition in permanent load. At the very least, it should be difficult to achieve better values in copying, writing, and the total amount of terabytes written.

As fast as promised and reasonably cool at the same time: The Samsung SSD 990 Pro convinces with performance and efficiency, but costs accordingly.

It can also stand out from its predecessor, the 980 Pro, with its more efficient design. Only a few milliwatts can be saved, but excessive heat development can be prevented – with remarkable write performance.