With the 980 PRO, Samsung has raised the bar yet again, delivering one of the fastest consumer NVMe SSDs on the market today. Completely designed in-house to unleash the full potential of PCIe 4.0, this M.2 form factor SSD is powered by Samsung's next-generation "Elpis" controller and is available with up to 1TB of the company's latest 3-bit MLC V-NAND flash. Combine this with Samsung's Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 technology and a PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.3c interface and you have a drive capable of hitting some insanely fast speeds. The 500GB version of the 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. Even when dialed back to more "real world" levels, the drive was able to read and write at more than 4,000 MB/s.
When it came to random writes, the 980 PRO topped out at a little more than 430,000 IOPS in our tests. As impressive as this is, it is a far cry from the 1,000K IOPS that the drive is supposed to be capable of. From what I can gather, this isn't an issue with the 980 PRO but is due to the processor in our test system not having enough threads to max out the drive. Needless to say, if you push your storage hard and want to hit that magic 1,000K number, I'd recommend pairing the 980 PRO with a processor that has 16 or more threads, like the Ryzen 7.
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 600 terabytes written (TBW) for the 1TB model.
While the 980 PRO is currently the top dog, other PCIe Gen4 SSDs based on Phison's new PS5018-E18 controller are on the horizon. Sabrent has yet to ship the Rocket 4 Plus and is already claiming that it is faster than the 980 PRO. Early tests show that this may be the case when doing sequential reads and writes, but the E18 seems to have a ways to go when it comes to random read and write performance.
The 980 PRO comes in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities and will be available worldwide starting this month. Prices range from $90 up to $230 with the 500GB model reviewed here retailing for about $150. If you need more storage, Samsung plans to release the 2TB version of the 980 PRO by the end of the year. At this point, there is no word on when exactly it will be available or how much it will be.
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 and random read and write speeds
- 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 considerably when SLC cache is full
- Pricey
