We tested the top of the range SSD for you Samsungil 990 PRO with heatsink in the 4TB memory cut. The company doesn’t need much introduction: Samsung has been a leader in the SSD memory sector for years and with this new product it reaffirms its skill in the construction of mass memories.
How does Samsung 990 PRO perform?
Before talking about the product, a small preface is necessary on what an SSD is.
An SSD or Solid State Drive is a hard drive that does exactly what we expect: it holds our data. Unlike common and fortunately obsolete mechanical hard drives, an SSD has no moving parts. So it doesn’t actually have disks that contain our data, but small memories that are significantly faster in terms of data transferred in a second. The lack of mechanical parts reduces data search and writing times as well as the possibility of breakage.
Now that we understand what an SSD is, we can talk about this specific model.
Samsung 990 PRO with heatsink is an M.2 format SSD disk with NVMe PCIe 4.0 technology. Maybe there are too many acronyms but this is basically the correct definition.
Let’s try to understand something more.
This product is nothing other than the current top of the range, as we can deduce from the name “990” and features a heat sink, i.e. a small heat sink mounted on the entire body of the memory that allows you to keep the disk cool and always operational.
As already reiterated, it is an M.2 format disk with NVMEe PCIe 4.0 technology so it no longer uses the old SATA format. This allows you to house the disk in all devices that have an M.2 slot in 2280 format without using cables. It will only be necessary to insert it in the right place and fix it with a screw.
Transfer speed comparison between different SSD technologies
Performance and temperatures
Thanks to version 4.0 of the PCIe interface this device is able to guarantee solid performance and decidedly important read/write speeds. From the data we have been able to record, we find the values provided as specifications by Samsung perfectly: we are talking about 7470 MB/s as reading speed and 6770 MB/s as writing speed.
The tests we carried out are based on a system with a Ryzen 7 7800x3d on board, 32 GB of DDR5 6000 MHz RAM all positioned on an MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi. We therefore start from an already performing configuration but it is possible to have similar results with systems of any type, the important thing is that they have the PCIe 4.0 standard.
Thanks to the heat sink, the disk temperatures always remain under control and we will never find ourselves in critical situations. The maximum temperature we recorded was 65°C, usually we find ourselves around 52°C.
Benchmarked on CrystalDiskMark
Is this the right disc for me? Why buy it?
This SSD offers decidedly important reading and writing performance, which is not exactly necessary for all users, as most are still fine with SATA SSDs. Furthermore, the memory size we tested is well beyond the needs of most PC users. However, there are smaller memory sizes of 1 and 2 TB.
I would like to recommend this product to those who need a storage unit without compromises and have a PCIe 4.0 compatible system. An example of a possible buyer could be: an owner of a gaming PC or workstation who want a high-performance disk that keeps their data safe and do not have a motherboard already equipped with a heat sink for the m2 slots. Another possible usage scenario is a console playersuch as Playstation 5 which requires more storage for its games and a disk that has a heat sink to avoid premature deterioration.
This is what the Samsung 990 PRO with heatsink looks like
Price and availability
The unit we tested, in the 4TB version, can be found on the official Samsung website for €410. Slightly high price given the great competition in this sector, but fortunately on Amazon we can find it at a more accessible price. I recommend keeping an eye on our offers Telegram channel and the links below as we are in offer periods and we may find this album, even in other smaller cuts, on offer.