Samsung's flagship SSD 990Pro is still PCIe 4.0, is PCIe 5.0 too hot?
Recently, Samsung officially released a new generation of flagship SSD 990 Pro. However, it is surprising that the previous certification said that it is PCIe 5.0 SSD, but the result is still PCIe 4.0, with a continuous read speed of 7450MB/s and a continuous write speed of 6900MB/s .
Compared with the flagship products of other SSD brands, which mainly push PCIe 5.0 SSD, the speed reaches 10-14GB/s. The upgrade of Samsung 990 Pro can only be said to be disappointing, rejecting PCIe 5.0 and sticking to PCIe 4.0.
In fact, Samsung already has a variety of PCIe 5.0 SSDs, especially enterprise-level products, so there is no problem with the PCIe 5.0 technology on the 990 Pro, and this time the 990 Pro did not upgrade to PCIe 5.0 may be due to other factors, such as PCIe 5.0 SSDs serious problem of fever.
Since the performance is doubled compared to PCIe 4.0 hard drives, the heat generation of PCIe 5.0 is also a problem. Phison, the main control chip manufacturer, has talked about this issue before, and believes that PCIe 5.0 and the future PCIe 6.0 require active cooling.
Phison said, "We've done a lot of work to make sure that SSD power consumption is within a reasonable range, but there is no doubt that SSDs are going to get hotter, just like CPUs and GPUs started to get hotter in the 1990s. With PCIe 5.0 In the era of /6.0, we have to consider active cooling."
In Phison's view, PCIe 5.0 SSDs must be equipped with large heat sinks, but ultimately have to rely on active fans to quickly dissipate heat.
On the 990 Pro, Samsung also launched two versions, one without a heat sink, and the other is the 990 Pro whith heatsink. In order to ensure that the heat can be controlled without a fan, it is estimated that the 990 Pro did not choose PCIe 5.0 master control this time. .
The 990 Pro features a nickel coating on the controller and heat sink labels on the drives for reliable thermal management. Samsung's Dynamic Thermal Guard technology further ensures that the drive's temperature stays within the optimal range.
Despite only using the PCI-Express 4.0 x4 (NVMe 2.0) interface, they still offer excellent performance—up to 7450 MB/s for reads, 6900 MB/s for writes, and random operations up to 1,400,000 IOPS reads and 1,550,000 IOPS writes. The absolute most efficient model under PCI-Express 4.0.
The new Samsung 990 Pro is an upgraded and far superior alternative for 2022, delivering improved speeds and increased power efficiency, optimized for graphically demanding games and other intensive tasks including 3D rendering, 4K video editing and data analysis.
The new Samsung 990 Pro is a 55% improvement in random performance over the 2020 released Samsung 980 PRO (depending on your hardware/storage setup). Samsung claims that the new 990 PRO is particularly well-suited for heavy gaming as well as creative and productivity tasks. For example, with PS5 game console and USB 4 enclosure, ultra-fast speed shortens loading time and improves task responsiveness, ideal for gamers and creative professionals
ANKMAX UC4M2 USB4 Enclosure + Samsung 990 Pro NVMe M.2 SSD
