Dynamic Thermal Guard:
While Samsung's NVMe SSDs offer impressive performance, they also generate a good amount of heat. To keep them from overheating, Samsung has implemented what they call Dynamic Thermal Guard (DTG). This technology monitors the temperature of a drive and will reduce its performance once it reaches a certain point.
This thermal throttling was a big issue when we reviewed Samsung's first consumer NVMe SSD, the 950 PRO. Even with basic benchmarks like CrystalDiskMark or ATTO, the drive's temperature would reach a point where DTG would kick in and reduce its performance. It got to a point where I needed to position an 8cm fan directly over the 950 PRO so that I could complete the tests.
The 980 PRO is also equipped with Dynamic Thermal Guard. However, Samsung has tried to delay the inevitable drop in performance by dissipating heat more efficiently. The 980 PRO has a copper heat spreader built into the label on the back of the drive as well as a nickel coating on the Elpis controller that helps dissipate heat faster.
Compared to Samsung's previous NVMe SSDs, the 980 PRO runs fairly cool. At idle, the drive's temperature hovered around 29 ºC. Under heavy loads, the 980 PRO reached temperatures as high as 55 ºC when reading and 54 ºC when writing. These temperatures had no impact on the drive's performance. No matter how hard I pushed it, the 980 PRO did not throttle its read or write speeds in any noticeable way.
Final Thoughts:
The 2TB version of Samsung's 980 PRO SSD is finally here and, like the other drives in the series, it's an excellent choice for the enthusiast, gamer or professional looking to boost the performance and storage capacity of their computer. Designed and built entirely in-house, this M.2 form factor SSD is powered by Samsung's "Elpis" controller and is equipped with 2TB of the company's latest 3-bit MLC V-NAND flash. Combine this with Samsung's Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 technology, a large DRAM cache and a PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.3c interface and you have one of the fastest consumer NVMe SSDs on the market today. The 2TB 980 PRO flew through our sequential transfer rate tests, reading at speeds as high as 6,782 MB/s and writing at more than 4,900 MB/s. The drive also did fairly well in our random write tests, producing more than 163,000 IOPS at low queue depths.
Of course, impressive performance isn't the only thing the 980 PRO has to offer. Along with support for Samsung's Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 technology, the drive features AES 256-bit full disk encryption and is compliant with both the TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE 1667 specifications. Instead of a bulky heatsink, the 980 PRO also employs a nickel coating on the controller as well as a heat spreader label for efficient thermal management. To top it all off, the 980 PRO is covered by a 5 year warranty with an endurance rating of up to 1,200 terabytes written (TBW) for the 2TB model.
The 980 PRO is available now in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. Prices on Amazon.com currently range from $90 up to $430 for the 2TB version reviewed here.
Highs:
- PCIe 4.0 x4 interface with NVMe protocol
- Available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities
- Equipped with Samsung's latest 3-bit MLC V-NAND technology
- Excellent sequential read and write speeds
- Good random read and write performance
- Small M.2 2280 form factor
- Features Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 technology
- Large DRAM cache
- Supports TRIM and garbage collection
- AES 256-bit full disk encryption
- TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE 1667 compliant
- Works with Samsung's Magician software
- 5 year warranty
Lows:
- Lower endurance than 970 PRO
- Write speed drops when SLC cache is full
- Pricey
