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The 980 PRO comes in a small black box. Along with a picture of the drive, the packaging advertises a number of its key features including its 500GB capacity, PCIe 4.0 NVMe interface, maximum read speed and 5 year warranty. Inside, you'll find the SSD as well as a small installation guide and warranty statement.
Physical Features:
The 980 PRO uses the 2280 form factor for M.2 (NGFF) SSDs. It measures 80.15 x 22.15 x 2.38 mm and tips the scales at a mere 8.0g. The drive also has an "M key" edge connector which provides PCIe SSDs with up to 4x lanes of bandwidth.
The 980 PRO is the first drive to utilize Samsung's new "Elpis" controller. The company hasn't provided a lot of specifics regarding the controller's technical specs. What we do know though is that the Elpis is able to process 128 I/O (Input and Output) queues simultaneously, which is 4 times that of the Phoenix controller found on the 970 series SSDs. Each queue can consist of 64 thousand command sets, meaning a total of 128 queues can process over 8 million commands. We also know that the Elpis has been manufactured using an extremely fine 8nm process and has a nickel coating that helps dissipate heat.
For the 500GB version of the 980 PRO, Samsung has used their own 1xx-layer, 3-bit MLC V-NAND flash chips. Looking at the pictures above, you can see that there are two 256GB NAND flash packages on the top of the PCB. The drive also has a single 512MB LPDDR4 DRAM memory chip that is used for caching.
