Samsung 990 PRO

PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0, M.2 2280, single-sided.

Sequential 7,450 MB/s read and 6,900 MB/s write. Random 1,400K read and 1,550K write IOPS on the 2TB.

Samsung Elpis controller with Samsung V-NAND TLC and an LPDDR4 DRAM cache.

Endurance 1,200 TBW on 2TB. Five-year warranty.

Capacities 1TB, 2TB and 4TB, each available bare or with a low-profile heatsink.

The drive and a leaflet. No screw, no standoff, no cloning cable.

Samsung Magician handles firmware, health, secure erase and cloning, and it is the best vendor utility in the category. It is also a Windows-only download, so Linux users should plan on nvme-cli.

The heatsink version adds a thin aluminium plate that fits under most motherboard M.2 covers and clears a PS5 expansion slot.

Single-sided 2280, which matters more than it sounds. It fits laptops, handhelds and the PS5 slot without hitting anything.

The bare version carries a nickel-coated controller and a thin copper heat-spreader label on the back. Samsung does the thermal work in the label rather than in a lump of metal.

Build quality is what you expect from a vendor that makes its own controller, its own NAND and its own DRAM. Very little in this category is vertically integrated any more.

7,450 MB/s read is real and repeatable, but only inside the write cache.

The 2TB drive holds roughly 226GB in pSLC cache. Fill that and write speed drops to 1.4 to 1.7 GB/s for the rest of the transfer.

That cache is the weak point. The WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB holds about 600GB, nearly three times as much. For anyone moving 300GB game libraries or video projects in one go, the WD drive finishes first despite the lower headline number.

The 990 PRO launched with a firmware bug that burned through health percentage, and a reputation for throttling followed it.

Both are fixed. Tom's Hardware's 2026 retest found the bare drive did not throttle at all under sustained load without a heatsink.

The firmware to be on is 8B2QJXD7, released December 2025. Check it in Samsung Magician before you assume you have a problem. Drives sitting in retail channel stock can still ship with older firmware.

Idle power is low enough for laptops, and the drive supports the deep sleep states that many competing drives claim and do not reach.

In games the difference against any other decent Gen 4 drive is a fraction of a second. DirectStorage titles are the exception and even there the gap is small.

Where you notice it is random 4K performance during shader compilation, Windows updates and large project loads. That is where the DRAM cache and the Elpis controller earn the money.

Five years or 1,200 TBW on the 2TB, whichever comes first. That is 657GB of writes every day for five years, which no normal user approaches.

Samsung's RMA process is straightforward and does not require the retail packaging.

The early health-percentage firmware issue was handled with a public fix rather than a denial, which we count in Samsung's favour. Keep Magician installed and let it check quarterly.

Winner for sustained large writes: the WD_BLACK SN850X, on cache size alone.

Winner for random performance and power efficiency: this drive.

Against the Samsung 9100 PRO, that is the Gen 5 part and it only pays off on a Gen 5 slot. On a Gen 4 board it is money wasted.

Against the Crucial T500 at roughly half the current price, the Samsung is faster but not twice as fast. At today's prices the Crucial is the better buy for most builds.

2TB listed around $385 as of September 2026, up from $149.99 in June 2025. That is a 2.6x rise driven by the NAND shortage, not by anything Samsung changed.

Stock is fine. Prices are not.

We would not buy this at $385 unless you specifically need the random performance. Anyone building today should either buy a cheaper Gen 4 drive or wait, because NAND pricing is the story of this whole category right now.

Does it work in a PS5? Yes. Sony requires a heatsink, so buy the heatsink version or add a third-party one.

Will it work in a Gen 3 slot? Yes, capped at about 3,500 MB/s.

Is it single-sided? Yes, so it fits laptops, Steam Deck and ROG Ally with no clearance problem.

Why does my write speed collapse mid-transfer? You filled the 226GB pSLC cache. Below that speed is 1.4 to 1.7 GB/s.

Does it throttle without a heatsink? Not on current firmware, per 2026 testing.

Is it faster than the SN850X in games? Effectively identical. The difference is in sustained writes, where the WD wins.

Bare or heatsink? Bare if your motherboard has an M.2 cover. Heatsink for a PS5 or a bare slot.

What firmware should I be on? 8B2QJXD7 or later. Update through Samsung Magician.

Is it worth $385 for 2TB? Not for most people at that price. It was a clear buy at $150.