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 990 EVO is also equipped with Dynamic Thermal Guard. However, Samsung has tried to delay the inevitable drop in performance by dissipating heat more efficiently. The 990 EVO has a copper heat spreader built into the label on the back of the drive that helps dissipate heat faster.
While cooler than other PCIe 5.0 SSDs, the 990 EVO still runs pretty hot. At idle, the drive's temperature hovered around 41 ºC. Under heavy loads, the 990 EVO reached temperatures as high as 80 ºC when reading and 73 ºC when writing. Thankfully, these temperatures had no impact on the drive's performance. No matter how hard I pushed it, the 990 EVO did not throttle its read or write speeds in any noticeable way.
Final Thoughts:
Samsung has taken a unique approach with the 990 EVO. Instead of going after the already crowded performance PCIe Gen 5 SSD market, the company has introduced a consumer friendly drive that bridges the gap between legacy computers with PCIe 4.0 and those with the latest technology like PCIe 5.0. Designed and built entirely in-house, this DRAM-less SSD is powered by Samsung's "Piccolo" controller and is equipped with up to 2TB of the company's 6th-generation 133-layer TLC V-NAND flash. Combine this with Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology and a hybrid PCIe 4.0 x4 / 5.0 x2 interface and you have a drive that is, in some cases, 43% faster than its predecessor, the 970 EVO Plus. In our sequential read and write tests, the 2TB version of the 990 EVO was able to read at speeds as high as 5,087 MB/s and write at speeds in excess of 3,700 MB/s. It also did surprisingly well in our random write tests, producing more than 293,000 IOPS at low queue depths
Despite being budget friendly, the 990 EVO includes many of the same features found on Samsung's higher-end SSDs. The drive features AES 256-bit full disk encryption and is compliant with both the TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE 1667 specifications. The 990 EVO also supports Modern Standby which lets your computer instantly resume from sleep and stay connected to the internet even when it's in low power mode. To top it all off, the drive works with Samsung's Magician software and is covered by a 5 year warranty.
The 990 EVO is available now in 1TB and 2TB capacities and can be purchased through retailers like Amazon for $90 and $142, respectively.
Highs:
- Supports both PCIe 4.0 x4 and PCIe 5.0 x2 interfaces
- Available in 1TB and 2TB capacities
- Equipped with Samsung's 6th generation V-NAND technology
- Good sequential read speeds
- Excellent random read and write speeds
- Small M.2 2280 form factor
- AES 256-bit full disk encryption
- TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE 1667 compliant
- Works with Samsung's Magician software
- Host Memory Buffer (HMB)
- Supports Modern Standby
- Reasonably priced
- 5 year warranty
Lows:
- Could not reach rated sequential write speed
- Can get hot under heavy workloads
