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 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 has a copper heat spreader built into the label on the back of the drive as well as a nickel coating on the Pablo controller that helps dissipate heat faster.
Compared to Samsung's previous NVMe SSDs, the 980 runs fairly cool. At idle, the drive's temperature hovered around 30 ºC. Under heavy loads, the 980 PRO reached temperatures as high as 58 ºC when reading and 61 ºC when writing. These temperatures had no impact on the drive's performance. No matter how hard I pushed it, the 980 did not throttle its read or write speeds in any noticeable way.
Final Thoughts:
The Samsung 980 is a great choice for the consumer or casual gamer looking for a fast, yet affordable, PCIe SSD for their notebook or desktop computer. Designed and built entirely in-house, this DRAM-less SSD is powered by Samsung's "Pablo" controller and is equipped with 1TB of the company's latest 3-bit MLC V-NAND flash. Combine this with Samsung's Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 technology, NVMe's Host Memory Buffer (HMB) feature and a PCIe Gen3 x4 interface and you have a drive capable of delivering six times the speed of your average SATA SSD. In our sequential read and write tests, the 1TB version of the 980 was able to read at speeds as high as 3,569 MB/s and write at speeds in excess of 2,800 MB/s. It also did relatively well in our random write tests, producing more than 170,000 IOPS at low queue depths.
Despite being budget friendly, the 980 includes many of the same features found on Samsung's higher-end SSDs. 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. The 980 also works with Samsung's Magician software and is covered by a 5 year warranty with an endurance rating of up to 600 terabytes written (TBW) for the 1TB model.
The 980 is available now in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities. Prices on Amazon.com currently range from $50 up to $130 for the 1TB version reviewed here.
Highs:
- PCIe 3.0 x4 interface with NVMe protocol
- Equipped with Samsung's latest 3-bit MLC V-NAND technology
- Available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities
- Good sequential and random read and write speeds
- Small M.2 2280 form factor
- Features Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 technology
- Supports TRIM and garbage collection
- Host Memory Buffer (HMB)
- AES 256-bit full disk encryption
- TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE 1667 compliant
- Works with Samsung's Magician software
- 5 year warranty
Lows:
- Write speed drops when SLC cache is full
