Samsung's SSD 990 Pro is currently Samsung's most powerful model. It still works with the PCIe 4 standard even though the manufacturer still does not offer a PCIe 5 model.
We will therefore have to be content with the announced speeds of 7450 MB/s reading and 6900 MB/s writing, while waiting for the arrival of a possible replacement in even faster PCIe 5. Just like its twin brother, the 990 Pro without heatsink, the 990 Pro with heatsink features an in-house controller equipped with MLC NAND chips with 176 layers.
Despite its heatsink, the 990 Pro fits into the PlayStation 5.
© Les Numériques
For this model with heat sink, a complete shroud with red streaks covers the PCB and memory chips to prevent heating. An RGB indicator light is present in the center, customizable with the Samsung Magician software.
The 990 Pro with heatsink is available in three capacities of 1 TB, 2 TB and 4 TB sold at the respective prices of €185, €230 and €439. It is guaranteed for five years or 600 TB written for the 1 TB, 1200 TB for the 2 TB and 2400 TB for the 4 TB.
SLC cache management
Like the model without a heatsink, the dynamic cache of the 990 Pro is saturated once 12% of the SSD capacity is reached, i.e. 120 GB for our 1 TB model. However, the writing speed quickly increases to return to its initial level. The average write speed in this exercise is then 3.6 GB/s.
Thermal management
While the 990 Pro without an aluminum heatsink is satisfied with a simple thermal label supposed to distribute the calories released by the memory chips and the controller, the model with a heatsink does much better.
During our various tests, we noted a maximum temperature at the internal probe of 73°C, or 12°C less than the model without a heatsink. Enough to avoid drops in flow (throttling) and ensure good endurance for the 990 Pro, even in the most extreme environments.
Performances
The speeds announced by Samsung are more than met for the 990 Pro with heatsink. We thus recorded an average of 7474 MB/s reading and 6912 MB/s writing across all of our tests. It is quite simply the most efficient and, above all, the most consistent PCIe 4 SSD in our comparison, even if it is true that we have not yet tested a PCIe 5 SSD. It thus offers better speeds than the Kingston Fury Renegade, the Lexar NM790 or the WD Black SN850x.
As for inputs/outputs per second (IOPS), Samsung announces values of 1.2 million IOPS for reading and 1.55 million for writing. For our part, we actually noted nearly 1.2 million IOPS in reading, but a little less than a million in writing. Nothing prohibitive in fact since it remains at the top of the basket.
Finally, in a real copy test, we managed to move a 27 GB file in just under 9 s, both for writing and reading, i.e. a reading or writing speed exceeding 3 GB/s when copying. of said file with Windows 11 Explorer.
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