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 PRO 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 PRO has a copper heat spreader built into the label on the back of the drive as well as a nickel coating on the Pascal controller that helps dissipate heat faster.
While hotter than the 980 PRO, the 990 PRO's runs cooler than many other, high-performance SSDs. At idle, the drive's temperature hovered around 37 ºC. Under heavy loads, the 990 PRO reached temperatures as high as 69 ºC when reading and writing. These temperatures had no impact on the drive's performance. No matter how hard I pushed it, the 990 PRO did not throttle its read or write speeds in any noticeable way.
Final Thoughts:
While we've only had it in the 'Labs for a short time, it's clear that Samsung has another winner on its hands with the 990 PRO series SSDs. Available with or without a heatsink, this M.2 form factor drive is powered by Samsung's new "Pascal" controller and is available with up to 4TB of the company's 7th generation V-NAND flash. Combine this with Samsung's Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 technology and a PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 2.0 interface and you have one of the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market today. The 2TB version of the 990 PRO flew through our sequential transfer rate tests, reading at speeds as high as 7,469 MB/s and writing at more than 6,869 MB/s. It also did very well in our random write tests, producing nearly 194,000 IOPS at low queue depths, and took the top spot in PCMark 10's storage benchmark.
Of course, impressive performance isn't the only thing the 990 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. Also, in addition to the optional heatsink, it employs a nickel coating on the controller as well as a heat spreader label for efficient thermal management. Last, but not least, the 990 PRO is one of the first drives to be optimized for Microsoft’s DirectStorage API. While games with DirectStorage support are still in development, this new technology is expected to speed up load times immensely, especially with a high-performance NVMe SSD like the 990 PRO.
The 1TB and 2TB versions of the 990 PRO will go up for pre-order beginning November 1, 2022. Prices range from $170 up to $310 with the heatsink-less 2TB version reviewed here retailing for about $290. If you need more storage, Samsung plans to release the 4TB version of the 990 PRO in early 2023. 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 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities
- Equipped with Samsung's 7th generation 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
- Available with or without RGB-enabled heatsink
- Optimized for Microsoft’s DirectStorage API
- Works with Samsung's Magician software
- 5 year warranty
Lows:
- Write speed drops when SLC cache is full
- Pricey
