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.
With the 990 EVO Plus, Samsung has tried to prevent this drop in performance by dissipating heat more efficiently. The drive 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 Plus still runs pretty hot. At idle, the drive's temperature hovered around 40 ºC. Under heavy loads, the 990 EVO Plus reached temperatures as high as 73 ºC when reading and 71 ºC when writing. Thankfully, these temperatures had no impact on the drive's performance. No matter how hard I pushed it, the 990 EVO Plus did not throttle its read or write speeds in any noticeable way.
Final Thoughts:
The Samsung 990 EVO Plus is a great choice for the gamer or creative professional looking to boost the performance and storage capacity of their notebook or desktop computer. Designed and built entirely in-house, this DRAM-less SSD is powered by Samsung's "Piccolo" controller and is equipped with up to 4TB of the company's 8th-generation 236-layer TLC V-NAND flash. Combine this with Samsung's Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 technology, NVMe's Host Memory Buffer (HMB) feature and a hybrid PCIe 4.0 x4 / 5.0 x2 interface and you have a drive that is, in some cases, 45% faster than its predecessor, the 990 EVO. In our sequential read and write tests, the 2TB version of the 990 EVO Plus was able to read at speeds as high as 7,284 MB/s and write at speeds in excess of 5,800 MB/s. It also did very well in our random write tests, producing more than 317,000 IOPS at low queue depths.
Great performance isn't the only thing the 990 EVO Plus 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. The 990 EVO Plus is also equipped with an innovative nickel-coated heat shield that minimizes overheating while delivering greater power efficiency. 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, 2TB and 4TB capacities. Prices on Amazon.com currently range from $110 up to $345, with the 2TB version reviewed here retailing for about $185.
Highs:
- Supports both PCIe 4.0 x4 and PCIe 5.0 x2 interfaces
- Available in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities
- Equipped with Samsung's 8th generation V-NAND technology
- Good sequential read and write 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)
- Reasonably priced
- 5 year warranty
Lows:
- Could not reach rated sequential write speed
- Can get hot under heavy workloads
