Samsung 990 Pro 1 TB SSD test: the very (very) high-speed Nvme SSD

The 990 Pro range is the top of the basket of Nvme SSDs from Samsung, with the fastest advertised speeds of the moment: 7450 MB/s in reading and 6900 MB/s in writing. This SSD is in the classic M.2 2280 format and operates on the PCIe 4 interface, a standard that will offer the best performance before the PCie 5 is implemented on the market. The controller is obviously a Samsung model and the memory chips used are of the 176-layer NAND MLC type.

Here, there is no large heat sink, but a simple thin heatsink label. For optimal results, it will therefore be necessary to obtain one or to affix that of your motherboard if necessary. Two versions can be found on the market: one in 1 TB currently sold around €150; the other 2 TB, marketed at around €200. The Samsung 990 Pro is guaranteed for five years or 1200 TB write.

Samsung has selected a dynamic SLC cache system, which unfortunately drops quite quickly. From about 10% transfer, or a hundred gigabytes, the speed slows down to around 1.4 GB/s before going up, then down, and so on. It’s still very fast and this yoyo has the advantage of offering high speeds over the long term, but may be less favorable to the average user – other SSDs offer, for example, a cache of 30% of the volume before to fall back. However, the AIDA test remains a benchmark that applies extreme transfer conditions to the SSD and does not necessarily reflect normal conditions of use.

Despite the lack of a heat sink, this SSD does very well in this regard. The temperature limit set at 85°C was not reached before 7 min in extreme use under continuous benchmark. Flows will therefore not drop for a while. A good point, especially since in “normal” use, the temperature remains around 50°C.

The speeds announced by Samsung are fully respected under benchmark, since we noted an average of 7480 MB/s in reading and 6880 MB/s in writing. These values ​​are similar to those of other very high-end SSDs in our comparison, such as the Kingston KC3000. That said, the Samsung 990 Pro does better in actual file copying. We thus measured an average of 3370 MB/s in reading and 3287 MB/s in writing, an excellent result which puts the competition in the wind.

Samsung also announced 1.2 MIOPS in reading and 1.5 MIOPS in writing. If this actually materializes in reading, our finding is further away in writing with “only” 1 MIOPS recorded under CrystalDiskMark.