We first saw PCI-Express 4.0 NVMe solid state drives back in 2019 when AMD launched their X570 motherboards. Samsung seemed to be a little late to the Gen4 party as we’ve seen plenty of Gen4 drives launched over the past year and a half. Today we are checking out Samsung’s new 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 NVMe Solid State Drive. This drive features sequential read and write speeds of 6900 MB/s and 5000 MB/s respectively. Another interesting thing is that before this drive Samsung did not have a “Pro” drive for almost 2 years. Typical “Pro” series drives from Samsung always featured 2-bit MLC flash, but the new 980 Pro makes use of 3-bit TLC flash. While MLC has better endurance and typically better performance, TLC is far less expensive. Let’s get this drive installed and see what it is all about!
Special thanks to Samsung for providing us with the 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 NVMe Solid State Drive to review.
Specifications
Available Capacity: 1TB/500GB/250GB
Read/Write Speeds: 6,900/5,000 MB/s
Interface: PCIe Gen 4.0 x 4, NVMe 1.3c
Security: AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption, TCG/Opal V2.0, Encrypted Drive (IEEE1667)
Warranty: *Limited warranty up to 5 years or up to the TBW for each capacity
Packaging
The 980 Pro comes in a small box. On the front there is a picture of the drive and it lets us know the capacity, which in our case is 500 GB. Samsung also offers the drive in 250 GB and 1TB versions.
Flipping the box over to the back there really is not much there. Just some information on the warranty really.
Opening the box up and getting everything out we have our installation guide and the M.2 drive itself.
