Samsung 980 PRO SSD Announced

Samsung has unveiled the company’s first consumer PCIe 4.0 NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) – the Samsung SSD 980 PRO.

Optimised for handling data-intensive applications, the 980 PRO is ideal for consumers and professionals who work with 4K and 8K contents, and play graphics-heavy games. All the key components, including the custom Elpis controller, V-NAND and DRAM, are completely designed in-house to deliver the full potential of PCIe 4.0. This allows the 980 PRO to provide sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s and 5,000 MB/s respectively, as well as random read and write speeds of up to 1,000K IOPS, making it up to two times faster than PCIe 3.0 SSDs and up to 12.7 times faster than SATA SSDs.

In addition to enhanced performance, the 980 PRO comes with outstanding thermal control solutions for improved reliability. While most of today's high-performance NVMe SSDs rely on external copper heatsinks to diffuse heat, Samsung's 980 PRO employs a nickel coating on the controller as well as a heat spreader label on the backside of the SSD for efficient thermal management. These innovative heat-dissipating functions also allow the drive to maintain its compact and slim M.2 form factor. Samsung’s Dynamic Thermal Guard technology further ensures that the drive’s temperature stays at the optimal level, minimizing performance fluctuations over the long haul.

The Samsung SSD 980 PRO comes in 1TB, 500GB and 250GB models and will be available from early October while the 2TB capacity model will be available by the end of this year. The 980 PRO’s suggested retail price starts from £82.99 for the 250GB model.

For more information, including warranty details, please visit the Samsung website.

Key Specifications:

• Interface - PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.3c
• Form Factor - M.2 (2280)
• Storage Memory - Samsung 1xx-layer V-NAND 3-bit MLC
• Controller - Samsung Elpis Controller
• DRAM - 1GB LPDDR4 (1TB), 512MB LPDDR4 (500GB, 250GB)
• Capacity - 1TB, 500GB, 250GB
• Sequential Read/Write Speed - Up to 7,000 MB/s, Up to 5,000 MB/s
• Random Read/Write Speed (QD32) - Up to 1,000K IOPS, 1,000K IOPS
• Management Software - Samsung Magician Software
• Data Encryption - AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption, TCG/Opal V2.0, Encrypted Drive (IEEE1667)
• Total Bytes Written - 600TB (1TB), 300TB (500GB), 150TB (250GB)
• Warranty - Five-year Limited Warranty

For more options, take a look at our review of the Samsung 870 QVO 4TB SSD.