The first PCIe 4.0-enabled SSDs (or Gen 4 drives) launched in 2019. Today, we’re seeing the beginning of the PCIe 5.0 era, with the first set of consumer-grade Gen 5 drives already on the store shelves. But that doesn’t mean PCIe 4.0 SSDs are now paperweights. Lots of PCs don’t support PCIe 5.0 SSDs, and even some brand-new devices only go up to PCIe 4.0. If you’re limited to that older interface and you need the fastest drive possible, then Samsung’s 990 Pro is your best bet.
Launching late last year, it’s one of the last (perhaps the last) high-profile PCIe 4.0 SSDs that will come out, and it represents the best Samsung can do on this soon-to-be-retired interface. It was originally launched in 1TB and 2TB sizes, but Samsung recently introduced a new 4TB variant for those with more storage needs. The 990 Pro is marketed as the ultimate SSD for creators, gamers, and enthusiasts, and it certainly proved itself to be the ultimate performance Gen 4 SSD in our testing. It’s definitely overkill for most people, but its affordable price tag makes it easy to recommend to anyone that has even a modest budget for storage.
Nov. 24, 2023: This review was updated to reflect the launch of the 4TB variant of the Samsung 990 Pro SSD. We added details about the updated variant in the pricing and availability section as well as the pros and cons section. Some parts of the review were also redone to align with our updated style and content guideline, but no changes were made to the content of the review or its verdict.
Samsung 990 Pro SSD 1TB
Best of PCIe Gen 4
$80 $130 Save $50
Samsung’s 990 Pro is truly pushing the limits of what PCIe 4.0 storage can offer. It offers the fastest transfer speeds we’ve seen so far for a Gen 4 drive while not costing much more than slower SSDs.
- Storage capacity
- 1TB
- Hardware Interface
- PCIe 4.0
- Brand
- Samsung
- Transfer rate
- 7,450/6,900 MB/s read/write
- TBW
- 600
- MTBF
- 1.5 million hours
- DRAM
- 1GB DDR4
- Price
- $100
- Controller
- Samsung
Pros
- Top-end performance for a PCIe 4.0 SSD
- Not much more expensive than other PCIe 4.0 drives
- Available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB sizes
Cons
- Old firmware can permanently damage the 990 Pro
Pricing and availability
1TB variant starts at $130, but it’s frequently discounted
The 990 Pro is available at pretty much every retailer that carries SSDs, with the 1TB model going for $120 and the 2TB model going for $180 at the time of writing. They’re both frequenlty disounted, though, so you should be able to grab them at relatively cheaper prices. The 4TB variant debuted not too long ago for $345 in the U.S., but even that’s available for discounted prices. There is a version of this SSD with a custom heatsink, but it’s only available at Samsung’s website. While the extra cooling capacity can improve performance on one of these high-end SSDs, many motherboards already come with SSD heatsinks complete with thermal pads, so it’s not clear that Samsung’s heatsink (which costs extra) is particularly desirable.
The 4TB variant debuted not too long ago for $345 in the U.S., but even that’s available for discounted prices.
How the 990 Pro was tested
We tested it in CrystalDiskMark 8 and ATTO Disk Benchmark with the latest hardware
In order to get the most out of the 990 Pro, I tested it in a PC with a Ryzen 9 7900X, an Asus ROG Strix B650E-I Gaming, and 32GB of G.Skill Flare X5 Series (6000 MHz, CL36) RAM. The Strix B650E-I has an included heatsink for SSDs, which I used instead of the optional one with the 990 Pro. Many other higher-end motherboards come with their own heatsinks, but it’s unlikely that our performance results would be impacted by its inclusion or not.
The competition for the 990 Pro is actually Samsung’s best PCIe 3.0 SSD from 2019: the 970 EVO Plus 1TB. I’m not concerned with how the 990 Pro compares to other Gen 4 drives since there’s plenty of data for that already. Instead, it would be more interesting to examine how far the PCIe 4.0 interface advanced storage performance since 2019. The 970 EVO Plus was tested in the same PC under the same conditions.
As for software, our operating system of choice was Windows 11 with the latest updates, drivers, and firmware applied and installed. I tested CrystalDiskMark 8 using both the default and NVMe profiles, as well as ATTO Disk Benchmark in its default configuration. Although these are synthetic benchmarks and not examples of real-world performance, the results here are repeatable.
The results: Excellent performance that hits the limit of PCIe 4.0
Roughly twice as fast as the 970 EVO Plus when handling large files
CrystalDiskMark 8 was benchmarked using default parameters with differing queue depths, threads, and data sizes. The technical details aren’t too important, what you need to know is that sequential files (denoted by SEQ) are big files that are simple to transfer, like a .zip with lots of stuff in it. Meanwhile, random files (denoted by RND) are smaller, sometimes even tiny files that individually aren’t hard to process but can be challenging to an SSD if there’s just a ton of them.
| 990 Pro | 970 EVO Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| SEQ1M, Q8T1 | 7465/6897 | 3575/3059 |
| SEQ1M, Q1T1 | 3878/6046 | 3029/2725 |
| SEQ128K, Q32T1 | 7467/6891 | 3505/2724 |
| RND4K, Q32T16 | 4919/2960 | 1864/1971 |
| RND4K, Q32T1 | 785/533 | 774/610 |
| RND4K, Q1T1 | 72/248 | 53/240 |
Scores are organized by read/write and are measured in MB/s.
In sequential workloads, the 990 Pro significantly outpaced the 970 EVO Plus in both reads and writes, but when the queue depth is low, you’ll see a slight gap in reads. However, it’s unlikely you’ll run into many modern applications where SSD performance actually matters but the queue depth is only one or two. When transferring large files, the 990 Pro is almost twice as fast as the 970 EVO Plus.
It’s a different story in random performance, with the 990 Pro only seeing a significant advantage when multiple threads come into play. With a limited thread count, even high queue depth random reads and writes are roughly even. It looks like Samsung already perfected or nearly perfected performance for these kinds of workloads a while ago.
The other benchmark we’re looking at is ATTO Disk Benchmark, which is useful for demonstrating how quickly SSDs can transfer data when under size limitations. By default, both SSDs transferred data in increasingly larger chunks, starting with 512 bytes and ending at 64MB, but both drives hit their limit once they got to the 1MB mark.
| 990 Pro | 970 EVO Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| 512B | 75/53 | 76/63 |
| 1KB | 148/117 | 152/127 |
| 2KB | 296/242 | 301/250 |
| 4KB | 589/481 | 596/507 |
| 8KB | 1120/937 | 1110/991 |
| 16KB | 1620/1750 | 2450/2050 |
| 32KB | 3110/3200 | 2800/2870 |
| 64KB | 3480/5750 | 2950/2860 |
| 128KB | 3540/6390 | 3020/2870 |
| 256KB | 5580/6420 | 3080/2870 |
| 512KB | 6970/6390 | 3120/2860 |
| 1MB | 6950/6410 | 3300/2850 |
Scores are organized by read/write and are measured in MB/s.
ATTO shows similar results to CrystalDiskMark. The performance is relatively even with smaller files, but the gap changes at the 16KB mark, where the 970 EVO Plus surprisingly pulls ahead, but then falls behind at 32KB. From there the gap widens until the 990 Pro is performing at around twice the speed of the 970 EVO Plus. Overall, the 990 Pro is the faster SSD, but its lack of better performance when working on smaller chunks of data is notable.
Who should buy the 990 Pro?
You should buy if:
- You often transfer large files
- You want one of the best-performing PCIe 4.0 SSDs available
You shouldn’t buy if:
- You’re not transferring large files very often
- You’re on a budget and need to prioritize a different component like the GPU or CPU
Samsung’s 990 Pro is a great choice for people who know they’re going to be encountering large files daily and need to access them or move them. Whether you’re editing videos or photos and sending them off, putting together your own Plex media server, or just often finding yourself moving big files around, the 990 Pro is a good choice. It’s not even priced like a professional piece of hardware, so it wouldn’t be out of place in a PC for more casual activities.
Samsung’s 990 Pro is a great choice for people who know they’re going to be encountering large files daily and need to access them or move them.
That being said, there are cheaper SSDs, and what the 990 Pro is good at can be done by much less expensive and older drives. For instance, the 1TB model of the 970 EVO Plus, one of our favorite M.2 SSDs, excels in the kinds of tasks and operations that users encounter the most in regular usage. The 990 Pro’s better sequential performance isn’t really going to help in games, web browsing, and most productivity applications. Other PCIe 4.0 drives have most of the 990 Pro’s sequential and random performance for $100 or less.
The only point against the 990 Pro, besides the lack of higher capacity models, is the firmware. Initial firmware versions had a crippling bug that caused drive health to deteriorate much quicker than normal, something that also happened on the 980 Pro. The latest version of Samsung’s firmware (available via Samsung Magician) fixes this bug, but it does leave a sour taste in my mouth. If you’re buying the 990 Pro you have to update the firmware ASAP.
Bottom line, if you’re on a budget and you’re shopping for a brand-new SSD, the 990 Pro is a good choice. It’s also frequently discounted these days, which makes it even better. $120 isn’t that much for a single component; $120 for a high-end 1TB NVMe SSD would have been a steal a couple of years ago. If you can afford it, why not get it?
Samsung 990 Pro SSD 1TB
Best of PCIe Gen 4
$80 $130 Save $50
Samsung’s 990 Pro is truly pushing the limits of what PCIe 4.0 storage can offer. It offers the fastest transfer speeds we’ve seen so far for a Gen 4 drive while not costing much more than slower SSDs.