Introduction

As one of the world leaders in digital technology, Samsung pretty much makes any type of electronic device you can think of. Their products are used by millions of people around the world.

Being a leader in DRAM and flash memory production, it comes as no surprise that they are also a huge player in the SSD business. Their EVO and PRO Series SSDs are highly popular among upgraders, system builders, and enthusiasts.



The Samsung 980 non-Pro was announced end of March 2021 and made waves because it is a DRAM-less SSD, a design choice usually reserved for value drives without maximum performance, yet Samsung picked the "980" name, which is used on their flagship "980 Pro." Under the hood, the Samsung 980 in today's review uses a relatively new controller called "Pablo," or S4LR033—a 4-channel PCIe Gen 3 controller design we've seen on some external Samsung SSDs before. The flash chips are 128-layer 3D TLC, same as on the Samsung 980 Pro. As mentioned before, a DRAM chip is not present, which is a cost-optimization measure, but has the drawback that random write performance is reduced.

The Samsung 980 comes in capacities of 250 GB ($55), 512 GB ($60), and 1 TB ($140). Endurance for these models is set to 150 TBW, 300 TBW, and 600 TBW respectively. Samsung includes a five-year warranty with the 980 non-Pro SSD.

Packaging

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which makes it 22 mm wide and 80 mm long.


Like most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the Samsung 980 connects to the host system over a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface.


Samsung has put a little copper foil on the back of the SSD it calls "a heat spreader label to deliver effective thermal control of the NAND chip." Yeah, not really, as I doubt it makes any significant difference. It certainly doesn't have much thermal capacity simply because it has so little mass. Also, the hottest component of the drive is the controller chip, not the flash, so the label isn't positioned correctly.


On the PCB, you'll find the controller and one flash chip.

Chip Component Analysis

The Samsung S4LR033 "Pablo" controller is a value-oriented 4-channel design without support for DRAM. .


On the Samsung 980, only a single flash chip is installed, a 8 Tbit 128-layer 3D TLC NAND chip.

Test Setup