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 990 Pro was announced late last year. While everybody expected it to be a PCI-Express 5.0 solid-state-drive it’s actually built using the PCI-Express 4.0 interface. While the 980 Pro used a controller called “Elpis,” the 990 Pro is built using “Pascal”—not much else is known, except that Pascal is optimized for energy efficiency and uses the same 8 nanometer production process as Elpis. The NAND flash has been upgraded, too, to the company’s seventh generation 176-layer 3D TLC NAND (the 980 Pro uses 128-layer flash). As expected for a high-end drive, a DRAM cache chip is included, too.

The Samsung 990 Pro is available in capacities of 1 TB ($80) and 2 TB ($150), a 4 TB version was promised last year, but never materialized. Endurance for these models is set to 600 TBW and 1200 TBW, respectively. Samsung includes a five-year warranty with the 990 Pro SSD.