Samsung SSD 990 PRO Spotted in the Wild: PCIe Gen5 Flagship Client Drive

[btarunr]

Samsung prepares regulatory filing for its next-generation 990 PRO flagship client-segment SSD. The M.2 NVMe drive will leverage PCI-Express Gen 5. It remains to be seen if the drive will be an "all-Samsung" solution (in-house controller + NAND flash + DRAM cache); or if it will use some of the first crop of third-party Gen 5 controllers; although the former seems more likely. At least two capacities are known so far—1 TB and 2 TB. Samsung will be gunning to compete with flagship Gen 5 M.2 SSDs powered by next-generation Phison and Silicon Motion controllers that will be combined with 3D NAND flash chips with over 144 layers. The drive succeeds the current 980 PRO, the company's flagship Gen 4 SSD.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Hoopi]

Looks promising but I'm still wondering how hot pcie gen5 consumer ssds are going to get, especially the controllers.

 

[Ravenmaster]

That's all well and good but this time around they need a 4TB version like just about every other manufacturer offers.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

it's gonna be both blazing fast and blazing hot for sure. XD Guess water-cooling an SSD is a viable thing to tame those PCIe Gen5 controllers, eh?

 

[Chaitanya]

Looks promising but I'm still wondering how hot pcie gen5 consumer ssds are going to get, especially the controllers.

Looking at size of heatsinks on Gigabyte X670 boards shown few months back, these SSDs dont inspire confidence. It just might be that thrse SSDs will remain for desktop and Servers categories for next few years before trickling into mobile sector.

 

[bonehead123]

That's all well and good but this time around they need a 4TB version like just about every other manufacturer offers.

^^THIS^^

And an 8TB model too !

Personally I think it's a conspiracy to keep prices high and screw the end users into buying multiple small drives when 1 larger one would do just fine...

Yea yea I know larger nand chips aint cheap atm, but like everything else in pc parts, the moar they make & the moar people buy, the moar the prices will drop......

 

[EatingDirt]

^^THIS^^

And an 8TB model too !

Personally I think it's a conspiracy to keep prices high and screw the end users into buying multiple small drives when 1 larger one would do just fine...

Yea yea I know larger nand chips aint cheap atm, but like everything else in pc parts, the moar they make & the moar people buy, the moar the prices will drop......

Keep prices high? 4.0 NVME drives are ~$1 per GB up to 2TB drives. The prices aren't high anymore. They're in parity with SATA SSD's.

As for making more, how many people do you know that are willing to pay $2,000 for 1 NVME drive? Because that is how high the initial cost of a 8TB Samsung Pro would cost.

 

[efikkan]

The one important question is whether this MLC, TLC or QLC. If it's not MLC, it doesn't deserve the "PRO" designation.

 

[docnorth]

Keep prices high? 4.0 NVME drives are ~$1 per GB up to 2TB drives. The prices aren't high anymore. They're in parity with SATA SSD's.

As for making more, how many people do you know that are willing to pay $2,000 for 1 NVME drive? Because that is how high the initial cost of a 8TB Samsung Pro would cost.

Even large SATA SSDs are relatively expensive. Right now I can buy a 870 evo 1tb for 100-101 EUR including shipping costs, but the 4tb version for 420 EUR.
I don't know if we were talking about 4 or 8tb PCIe 5 SSDs, but even 4tb PCIe 4 SSDs are much more expensive per gb than the 1tb versions.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

The one important question is whether this MLC, TLC or QLC. If it's not MLC, it doesn't deserve the "PRO" designation.

Samsung stopped using MLC on the 970 pro.... It would be cool if they made an MLC version for the 990 pro though, but this would probably mean that capacity would be maxed out at 1TB perhaps. They should come out with an MLC version called the 990 Pro Plus, and have the 990 Pro as TLC... Wonder what kind of low queue depth random r/w's could be achieved with MLC on a PCIe 5.0 drive with a Samsung controller...

 

[TheLostSwede]

Even large SATA SSDs are relatively expensive. Right now I can buy a 870 evo 1tb for 100-101 EUR including shipping costs, but the 4tb version for 420 EUR.
I don't know if we were talking about 4 or 8tb PCIe 5 SSDs, but even 4tb PCIe 4 SSDs are much more expensive per gb than the 1tb versions.

4 TB drives seem to be more than twice the price of 2 TB drives, which are now, often less than twice the price of 1 TB drives.

 

[EatingDirt]

Even large SATA SSDs are relatively expensive. Right now I can buy a 870 evo 1tb for 100-101 EUR including shipping costs, but the 4tb version for 420 EUR.
I don't know if we were talking about 4 or 8tb PCIe 5 SSDs, but even 4tb PCIe 4 SSDs are much more expensive per gb than the 1tb versions.

Yes, everything above 2TB is expensive. I'd expect it has to do with larger NAND packages and their yields. It's just like any other chip, the larger/more dense you make it, the harder it is to get good yields out of it. NVME's in particular have a very limited space for the NAND itself, so their larger 4TB+ counterparts are more expensive than their respective 2.5" drives because they need to use denser NAND(and are also much faster and because of that, thermally limited). 2.5" drives have less of a problem in terms of space for NAND, but often as cost saving measures the actual board inside a lot of 2.5" drives aren't much larger than an NVME(inside of an 870 EVO).

4TB+ drives are also simply very low volume products right now. As a gamer that keeps a lot of large games(~100gb) installed, I personally would love affordable 4TB+ drives(current system has 4.5TB of SSD/NVME storage), but larger 4TB+ drives are pointless for general users. Only gamers and professionals need anything approaching over 2TB. As games and programs continue to get larger we may eventually what we see in then ~2TB drives I expect to see in larger drives, but right now the demand is low because general users simply don't need larger drives.

 

[RegaeRevaeb]

The one important question is whether this MLC, TLC or QLC. If it's not MLC, it doesn't deserve the "PRO" designation.

Hey, hold on... All anyone really needs is some TLC (ZING! I'll be here all week).

 

[chrcoluk]

Need more capacity not more speed.

 

[Minus Infinity]

There is no 980 Pro, this is a 980 EVO in every way shape and form. Samsung needs to stop the marketing BS. I won't be buying Scamsung again. 980 is slower than 970 in some benchmarks, and did not advance the game in any meaningful way and the prices! Samsung need to stop believing they are the best and only game in town for SSDs. That was true once, but they are just another player in a strong field now.

All we know is PCI-E 5 SSD's will run hotter, throttle more, cost more and still barely improve random performance. Stick to PCI-3/4 and wait and see if PCI-E 6 can bring actual improvements to the user experience.

 

[efikkan]

There is no 980 Pro, this is a 980 EVO in every way shape and form. Samsung needs to stop the marketing BS. I won't be buying Scamsung again. 980 is slower than 970 in some benchmarks, and did not advance the game in any meaningful way and the prices! Samsung need to stop believing they are the best and only game in town for SSDs. That was true once, but they are just another player in a strong field now.

All we know is PCI-E 5 SSD's will run hotter, throttle more, cost more and still barely improve random performance. Stick to PCI-3/4 and wait and see if PCI-E 6 can bring actual improvements to the user experience.

I'm not happy with the regression from 970 Pro to 980 Pro either, but can you tell me who is better than Samsung then?
And please not all those no-brands selling white label products, those don't count. Who makes better SSDs with better firmware?

 

[EatingDirt]

I'm not happy with the regression from 970 Pro to 980 Pro either, but can you tell me who is better than Samsung then?
And please not all those no-brands selling white label products, those don't count. Who makes better SSDs with better firmware?

I'd say Sandisk/WD have equally good controllers/firmware, since just like Samsung, they also make their own controllers. You can look at what they did with the DRAM-less SN770 to see that their firmware/controller division is very good at what they do.

 

[efikkan]

I'd say Sandisk/WD have equally good controllers/firmware, since just like Samsung, they also make their own controllers. You can look at what they did with the DRAM-less SN770 to see that their firmware/controller division is very good at what they do.

But is it any more reliable than SN850? (96L TLC vs. 112L TLC it seems to me)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but to me it seems like Samsung 970 Pro is still the better choice for storage and these from WD might be better for OS drives.

 

[Minus Infinity]

I'm not happy with the regression from 970 Pro to 980 Pro either, but can you tell me who is better than Samsung then?
And please not all those no-brands selling white label products, those don't count. Who makes better SSDs with better firmware?

I can't tell you who to trust, but I'm happy with products from Corsair and Sabrent, zero problems and 5 year warranties. I see no evidence Samsung is the only name you can trust for reliability anymore, which was a huge part of why I trusted them. I certainly think the San Disk Firecuda range are also excellent. Do your homework and and look at the brands that have been offering products for several years. I Agree I won't just buy something on spec from some company I've never heard of though.

 

[EatingDirt]

But is it any more reliable than SN850? (96L TLC vs. 112L TLC it seems to me)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but to me it seems like Samsung 970 Pro is still the better choice for storage and these from WD might be better for OS drives.

We were talking about reliability of firmware/controllers, not the NAND package itself. These days though, realistically, almost all controllers are reliable, as long as you get them from a reasonably well know company.

You can't get the 970 Pro retail anymore, but yes, nothing will be better than MLC drives for read/write durability. However, the only consumer MLC's these days I found in a quick search are SATA drives, so you have to sacrifice money(MLC is more expensive) and speed for endurance. Even NAS NVME's & SATA SSD's are made with TLC now.

 

[efikkan]

I can't tell you who to trust, but I'm happy with products from Corsair and Sabrent, zero problems and 5 year warranties. I see no evidence Samsung is the only name you can trust for reliability anymore, which was a huge part of why I trusted them. I certainly think the San Disk Firecuda range are also excellent. Do your homework and and look at the brands that have been offering products for several years. I Agree I won't just buy something on spec from some company I've never heard of though.

My concern is data loss, either as a result of controller bugs or unreliable flash memory. I don't think either are often covered by warranties. While I've been successful at RMAing one SSD with lots of SMART-errors, quite often I've observed endurance rating is exceeded (if it's visible), or there are just a lot of SMART errors, even though I'm pretty sure the user haven't written hundreds of GB every day. I've seen this a lot with developer workstations at one of my previous employers, there were stacks of bad SSDs piling up, many of which went bad long before 2 years of use, and that's just by writing code, which is text. I've also seen the same with my own hardware and various home computers that I've troubleshooted. I'm pretty sure tiny writes causes the endurance of SSDs to be used up much quicker than most people think. And the endurance ratings of SSDs these days are ridiculous.

We were talking about reliability of firmware/controllers, not the NAND package itself. These days though, realistically, almost all controllers are reliable, as long as you get them from a reasonably well know company.

It is worth mentioning that even Samsung have screwed up with firmware. Some years ago they had some bad firmware which caused major data loss for Linux users.
TRIM-support has also been a cause of concern with many SSDs (not Samsung though), and buggy implementation here can cause a lot of data loss and wear.
I don't trust any company that outsorces development of their storage products, it's a little different than outsourcing a keyboard, a PSU or monitor, there is much less need for support and updates there.

You can't get the 970 Pro retail anymore, but yes, nothing will be better than MLC drives for read/write durability.

They are still obtainable in my area, and I am considering buying one extra for an upcoming build, but it's probably a matter of weeks before they're gone. I will probably use a PCIe4/5 drive for the OS though, and I always build with a separate OS drive both due to high wear and risk of corruption due to hardware or software.

But considering how large SLC caches some SSDs have, why wouldn't they release a pure SLC "pro" SSD? This would be even better than MLC, and I think this is an excellent untapped market, instead of focusing on the race to the bottom with these "bargain bin" QLC SSDs.