Description
| Brand | ?Inland |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | ?Inland |
| Product Dimensions | ?13.21 x 1.91 x 10.16 cm; 18 Grams |
| Item part number | ?512GB NVME PREM |
| Memory Storage Capacity | ?512 GB |
| Flash Memory Installed Size | ?512 GB |
| Digital Storage Capacity | ?512 GB |
| Hardware Interface | ?Solid State Drive |
| Compatible Devices | ?Laptop |
| Batteries Included | ?No |
| Batteries Required | ?No |
| Manufacturer | ?Inland |
| Item Weight | ?18 g |
Grix –
6.5GBs read, 5.2GBs write. Currently at 38C occupying the bottom m.2 slot inside my ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero board and almost exclusively used for games, though I also use it as scratch for Adobe applications.Truth be told, as of now these speeds wont really affect games. But with newer consoles all using similar speed storage, who knows what developers might do in the future to utilize the bandwidth.At the moment, its a luxury item. But speeds like this will become the norm in the future. Once we get more NVME PCIe Gen 4 SSDs out there, well start seeing these at much more affordable prices
doubl3 –
This is one of the fastest ssd drives. While supposedly technically not the fastest anymore, its close and samsung typically has good reliability on their drives.You must have pcie 4 support to get those good speeds, of course. And even still its mighty pricey, considering that with most activities you will not notice the difference. it is good for anyone moving decently large batches of files around or doing productivity work, though. HOWEVER, it was dumb for Samsung to use TLC instead of MLC in it.
GeoDJ –
Its fast, and I mean blazing fast. However there are very few use cases where the speed advantages translate into noticeable improvements. I bought it because I wanted to use that PCIe 4 capability I paid for, and its speed tests just destroy everything else in my build by a long shot. The only real negative I have on this is the longevity rating is quite a bit lower than other PCIe 4 M.2s on the market. I chose this because 1 it was available and 2 its intended as my primary drive, and I almost exclusively buy Samsung drives for that. Excellent reliability and consistency. The other thing to note is that it does run warm compared to my other drives, but thats to be expected. Id recommend putting this guy under a heatsink on your MoBo if possible. As far as installation, its as easy as any other gum stick drive.
Akela –
If you are using PCIe Gen 4.0 it is an awesome drive. Its excellent all around. Ive used dozens of different SSDs in a variety of configurations including RAIDRAIN. This drive is unbelievably responsive and blisteringly fast in sequential read and writes. Random readwrite also stellar and bestinclass. Wish they hadnt gotten rid of the EVO name as there should still be a distinction between EVO and PRO tiers, but this drive is worth the money if you have a use for it. Excellent OS drive for responsiveness and boot times. Extreme excess for games. Extreme excess for anything normal but if you edit, or demand the best, its a masterpiece of NAND.
Andrew –
I bought Mac Mini M1, and you cannot replace its internal SSD. And there was lots of talking going on M1 Macs shortening its SSDs life with swap memory. So I bought this with Thunderbolt Enclosure to see if I can use this as a main SSD for Mac Mini M1 instead.And it works. It works great I do not see any difference between internal SSD and this one. In fact, I notice copying files to and from are a lot faster. I dont really feel differences when launching apps or editing photos. I only see differences from copying files.That being said, maybe I couldve bought a cheaper, less fast SSD and still be fine with it. But I cannot give a bad review to this baby just because I couldve made better purchase. I honestly dont know how it performs as an internal SSD because Im only using it as external thunderbolt SSD. Its doing very well, so I doubt itll do terribly as an internal SSD.
Vbritt –
i purchased this device strictly for the speed of the device and for the most part the unit hits the advertised speed. unfortunately, the difference between my old pcie 4.0 m.2 5000 mbs drive and this new pcie 4.0 m.2 6900 mbs drive was not enough to physically feel much difference.i was worried about heat so i installed an external heatsink on the device prior to installation. the heatsink keeps the device at or below 60c so i am please with the temps. the device does have a heat spreader built into the label but since i used an external heatsink i do not know how effective the heat spreader is at controlling the temperature.overall if you want bragging rights this drive is for you.
Alvi –
Pros You can never go wrong with a Samsung drive. Paired with the magician software and optimisations. Dont go with anything else for your SSD imo. Yes, theyre a little more pricey compared to the competition. But Id say its worth it.Cons Capacity to price ratio could be better. Wanted a 2tb drive but that was too much
moosrose –
unfortunately you will get the advertised write speeds only for a very limited time, before they drop close to 1,000 mbsec.i built my pc about three months ago and initially the write speed was phenomenal. while investigating some recent performance issues however i did a few benchmarks that all showed a write speed between 1,000 mbsec and 1,200 mbsec. a quick google search confirmed that this is a common, and to my knowledge as of today 03232021 unresolved issue.
Daniel G. –
I wasnt going to install these in my build until I had some other parts come including a 3080 but I went ahead and did. I preordered both the 1tb and 500gb on September 30th and I read it wouldnt ship until or after the 12th of October. Today is the 5th of October and I have received the 1tb version. Super fast shipping Now I have to wait for the 500gb. I had previously the 970 Evo, and I can tell a difference in speed. I will update review with stats later and anything along the road I find of importance. Currently running with a Asrock x570 Taichi as it has 3 M.2 Gen PCIE 4s and you need that for these SSDs. Bought these for future games.
O. –
With the cloning software from Samsung, the task of cloning my hard drive was quick and streamlined. My times from power on to desktop then to launch a program drastically changed. From a 2tb Seagate FireCuda, it took up to 10 minutes to start Steam from powering it on. With the 1tb 980 Pro,it took a maximum of 45 seconds from powering it on. Games load nearly instantly. There is nothing bad I can say about this product. Direct upgrade from my 970 Evo Plus.
Mike –
installation was simple and i noticed the difference instantly. the new samsung 980 pro 500gb nvme may be the best drive for storage option for gaming and knowledge worker productivity applications. quite simply, it is a musthave piece of any gaming rig. improved boot times and gameplay game me the illusion that i was playing on a new pc. additionally, samsungs drive software is a great monitoring and analysis tool for your drives health. you can customize the drive to your liking. hat tip to the software guys that designed the intuitive interface.
Anonymous –
While big and fast, it does not really deliver the rates advertised on PCIe 4.0. Still faster than the others hence the 3 stars. Tested using hdparm t, reads are just above 4000MBs as opposed to 7000 in the specs.Does not have proper heat sink, so the two temperature sensors start delivering wildly different 20C differences when used heavily. If not cooled actively temperatures will easily reach 85C. Cooling is a problem on AM4 motherboards, where the M.2 slots are located under the graphic cards, often under shields.
Ace254687 –
The Samsung 980 pro 1TB NVMe SSD is on of the best on the market.Since the introduction of NVMe SSDs, this has changed the game of how fast data can read and write. With Samsungs new 980 pro PCIe 4.0, they managed to take it a step further.Installation of the 980 pro is as simple as plugging in the SSD to the motherboard, then booting up your computer. With the help of the dedicated Samsung software, Magician software this lets you optimize your new drive by a simple click of a button,at least it was in the past. Once I booted up my computer, I opened the Magician software to try and optimize my new SSD, only to find that the software doesnt recognize the new Samsung SSD. After hours of trying to troubleshoot and fix the problem, I finally decided to give up on the software. After all, the drive was there, and it was working just fine.Next, I decided to run a few tests to see the difference in performance. I did notice a nice speed boost when loading games, which really takes advantage of the NVMe. Games played very smooth and fast. Next I tried to do a little bit of video editing. I was really impressed with how fast and fluent editing was on the new SSD.Overall, I am truly impressed with the 980 Pro NVMe SSD. The M.2 form factor makes it easy to install and saves a lot of space inside your computer. The performance of the drive is super fast and very quiet. The only issue I faced was with Samsungs Magician software, which Im not too worried about it as the drive performs just fine without it. I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a new SSD.
Gared R. –
So, I researched this a lot on YouTube, and google searches. For the most part it was stated that you wont see any real improvements unless you are transferring large files or video editing. You wont notice windows boot any faster or games load quicker. But Im the type of person that I like to get all the information I can, and when all signs point to it being a totally unnecessary purchase, I go ahead and do it anyway then regret it later. Well I dont really regret it, but I dont notice a difference. I do see that my speeds double in benchmarking software, but it loads windows the same amount of time and loads my games the same. So if you are a person that likes to have unnoticeable overkill like me then I say yolo and buy it.
Jeff –
The Samsung 980 Pro 1TB PCIE 4.0 NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive installed quickly, formatted properly, and worked flawlessly with the Windows 10 operating system. The build included MSI 570X AMD 4 socket motherboard, Ryzen 7 5800X CPU, two Corsair Vengence 16 GB memory sticks, a 2060 graphics card, a Corsair water cooler, and a Corsair 750 watt power supply. The Samsung 980 Pro 1TB was in the PCIE 4.0 socket, and an older Samsung 0.5 GB SSD used for backup was in the secondary socket. The computer was much faster than previous builds the start up times for W10 and for Witcher 3 were about 30 faster than my previous build an i7 9700K Intel CPU build.
RogueSphynx –
The Samsung 980 Pro is amazingly fast and is the future of hard drive storage. My readwrite speeds were very close to advertised speeds of 69005000 MBs. It runs off the newer PCIe 4 technology. You will need a motherboard processor that has PCIe 4 to get advertised speeds. My motherboard is a GIGABYTE X570 AORUS Elite WiFi with AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor. If you do not have PCIe 4 it is backwards compatible to PCIe 3, but expect half the readwrite speeds. The 980 Pro is great for gaming because loading times for a game is nonexistent. This SSD has a M.2 2280 form factor which is the size of a piece of gum. The small size is perfect for MiniITX builds. It also doesnt produce much heat so a heatshield is not necessary. The solder points were clean and strong. It feels durable. Samsung provides a 5 year warranty. Overall I am very happy with Samsung 980 Pro and I highly recommend it.
The Modern Life –
Plugged in, setup in windows drives, and was good to go. I am solely using this drive for the most demanding modern games. Games like FFXV, Cyberpunk, and Metro Exodus show significant improvements from both Samsung sata SSDs and Samsung pcie3 M.2 drives. Not game changers, but when youre sitting in front of a pc all day in lockdown, its much appreciated. Windows boots in under 5 seconds on my 512gb 970 EVO Plus, cant even imagine what this would do.
Dale –
Had to return. Was really looking forward to this drive due to its awesome, high star reviews, but when I put it into my Intel NUC i7 machine, it kept on blue screening as well as hanging up with long pauses with a known good image. It was a serious disappointment. Tried another brand of drive and zero issues. Happy camper
HaylingBilly –
Fitted to a Lenovo P620 ThreadRipper workstation via PCIe4. Even with BitLocker encryption this drive is ridiculously quick.Tend to buy reasonably priced top end kit every 4 years, rather than mess about with itll do.Very pleased with SCAN. Had tried for a similar WD Black 2TB NVME but took 3 weeks Brexitblamed and the box was empty so another 3 weeks to refund.
Brandon Y –
Windows 10 Pro boots almost instantly. The BIOS logo screen takes longer to come up than Windows for me.Additionally, my games load extremely fast. For example, NBA2K21 comes up almost instantly. When loading an actual basketball game to play, its under 5 secs most of the time closer to 3. Just a great experience.Moving files between 2 of these drives provides transfer rates in the GBs. Pretty insane.
Kitten –
If you want fast download speeds then look no further this is your child. I downloaded 1TB of videogames at once within a few hours. Looking at the download speeds from steam it was the fastest Ive ever seen. I would definitely recommend it to any gamer who knows the pain of waiting for long download times. I would suggest though if you wanted more memory you can go to the Samsung website and you can actually get a 2TB instead. You just have to preorder it.
Philliesfan1 –
Wow The Samsung 980 Pro is a game changerboth literally and figuratively. Swapping this baby in my pc was a breeze and I immediately noticed improved boot up speeds. The speeds of this drive are easily the best feature Games basically instantly load up without any load screen really having the chance to settle fully on my monitor. I thought my old drive was fast but Samsung makes my old one look horrible. Im a huge gamer so literally everything I store on this is gaming applications which download and launch super fast. I do just wish the drive had more space but the speed more than makes up for that. The Samsung drive software is very useful and helps you keep tabs on exactly how the drive is working and is very easy to use.
Jlm80 –
With read speeds up to 6,900 MBs, this SSD provides great performance. I manage a variety of programs and systems from my computer set up, so having an efficient SSD is important. Running lots of graphics and data analysis is not a problem as the SSD has highperformance bandwidth capabilities. The nickel coating and heat spreader label provide great thermal control of the NAND chip. The thermal control algorithm also aids the SSDs heat management and maintains top notch performance. With the suite of tools available, keeping the drive updated and managed is quick and easy.
Pwablo –
What can I say. Drive worked great for a few weeks then started showing poor write speeds. Contacted Manufacturer and got generic email. Put drive in as a slave and did secure erase. Write speeds improved but fell away again after data was put onto the device. Cannot fault CCL though, I spoke with them and they were more than happy to take the drive back if the problem persisted. Purchased a WD SN850 Nvme which is much better all round than the 980 Pro.
thatdrh –
This unit is fast. If you have PCI 4.0 and like testing speeds and benchmarks, this nvme is for you. That being said, as far as loading times go, this speed is barely noticeable over PCI 3.0. Boot times of windows loading, 4.0 feels almost like 3.0. I have this on a Asus z590 board and Intels 11th gen which supports 4.0 just letting people know Im not using this on a PCI 4 bus. If I had time to take it back, I would. Then buy more NVME thats 3.0 and save the money.
uicc676 –
I was surprised by the amount of improvement in response times on my PC when I installed this drive, as my PC was already running an older, smaller version of an M.2 NVMe SSD. I got very noticeable improvement in boot up speed, app loading, and read and write speed on large data files on my Dell XPS 8920. If youre looking for more speed, this is Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD is definitely the way to go, if your PC or laptop supports an M.2 NVMe drive.You should be aware that if your PC or laptop doesnt have an unused PCIe M.2 slot you will need a NVMe M.2 drive enclosure and cable in order to copy your OS to the new drive. The data migration software is available for free on Samsungs website, and it includes step by step instructions for the data transfer and computer setup. They also have a pretty cool software tool also free Samsung Magician that includes drive information, performance benchmarking, diagnostic scan, over provisioning, and performance optimization.
Brandon –
Paired with a Ryzen 5600x and this thing is extremely fast I am getting full advertised speeds on an x570 motherboard and Windows loads faster than my monitor can wakeup. It is truly impressive. I have World of Warcraft on this drive and loading is almost instant for all zones. Truly incredible coming from a SATA SSD. The price is also very fair considering this is the fastest PCIe 4.0 drive on the market. Keep in mind this drive cannot run at advertised speeds with any Intel processor until the Rocket Lake generation releases with PCIe 4.0 support.
eperez3680 –
I recently finished building a new gaming PC using a motherboard capable of supporting PCIe Gen 4 and installed both a 500 GB and also a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro. I was extremely impressed with the ReadWrite speeds, as they were spot on as advertised. Both drives did not disappoint, I was able to receive over 6500 MBs read speeds and over 5000 Write speeds via the Samsung Magician App. Through this amazing app, I was also able to optimize my drives through performance optimization. Samsung hit a home run with the new 980 Pro Gen 4 PCIe NVMe SSDs. If you are a gamer, I would highly recommend these
COLLATERAL –
first month i hit 7000mb5000mb then week 57 it dropped to 6600mb4200mb then week 815 it dropped to 4400mb3900mb then the week 1620 it went all the way down to 3500mb2900mb and then before i sent it back it droppen to 2900mb2900mb . pictures are on the drive that i sent back for repairs. ill post pictures of the speeds if they fix it with out formatting it. and also ill change my rating if i got a broken one.
aldoussnow –
Technology is just amazing and NVME is one happy byproduct of that. I already had a Samsung 970 Evo for my main drive and just when I think it cant get better Samsung releases the 980 Pro. My boot times were already amazingly quick using the 970 so whereas I didnt notice a huge difference there drive to drive transfer are so fast I almost despise having to use a mechanical as my media storage. I look forward to the day when the drives get larger and price permb continues to drop so I can replace all my mechanical drives.Its also my understanding that the new drive for PS5 is using the 980 pro so I will definitely be buying another one for extra storage on my console. If you care about speed and great quality this Samsung drive is hands down what you should be using in a new or existing pc build or backup storage in your new favorite video game console.
GIGSPEED09 –
Insane speed and Im not even running it on 4th gen yet till I get my 11900k. cant wait. I have used gen 3 SSDs and m.2 for a while now which are fairly quick, but this this is on another level . you cant go wrong with this M.2 , buy it you wont regret it For reference, I load into GTA online in 39 seconds, before this I was using my Samsung 970 EVO PLUS M.2 which is descent but it would take me about a minute and a half to load into GTA. Like I said this is not even unlocked yet until I get my 11 GEN I9 CPU and its cutting down more than half the time to load into games.
veritech13 –
The install was amazingly easy and the increase in speeds were about double in sequential reads. I do have a motherboard with GEN 4 PCIE, if you DO NOT have GEN 4 PCIE then you will not experience the faster speeds. I definitely notice the speeds with photoshop as it is opening heavily edited projects that i am working on. As you can see i have attached a screenshot of a GEN 3 NVME compared to the GEN 4 NVME and it is quite the upgrade.
mosheyadelman –
I had the PCI 3 version of this RAM. This is lightning fast. This comes in a compact size and can be up to 1TB in size.This SSD is incredible fast. I replaced a SSD that was already in my laptop and it is much faster than before. I highly recommend anyone to purchase this SSD if they have the budget… oh and the installation is easy
SkipG –
I have an X570 MB and wanted to upgrade to an PCIE4 SSD. I expected faster boot times with the 980 Pro but I didnt see much difference from my original 970 EVO Plus. Using Samsung Magician bench marks, the 980 Pro did 7100 MBs in sequential reads, twice as fast as the 970. In random reads got only 3500 MBs, about the same as the 970. I guess that is why the boot times were about the same since booting Windows 10 is mostly random reads.
blah –
I have not upgraded a NVMe M.2 drive in a while, and this 980 Pro M.2 1tb one is replacing an older 500gb SK Hynix one. Although my destination machine is about 2 years old, after transferring over my operating system with the free Samsung Drive Magician software, I definitely can feel the speed increase. Boot time into windows 10 got shaved probably 1015 seconds for me now, and even things like uncompressing large .rar files sped up quite a bit.Now the single biggest performance upgrade with this new 980 Pro M.2 drive, is in Adobe Premiere. On my previous drive, it wasnt too bad, but this new one is the single largest speed upgrade for me in terms of video editing in years Things are just much more fluid if my video media is stored directly on this driveThe only negative about this drive is that for most people, this is still too high of a price. I would imagine only hard core photovideo pros, and super hard core PC gamers, or those that really want to have the fastest drive on the market, would be willing to pay this much. I know those drives dont perform as well, but for most people this would be fast enough.This is a great little NVMe, if you need the speed, and can handle the price.
mskelbel –
Timing couldnt be better to get this ultrafast LARGE 2TB PCIE 4.0 NVMe SSD. My current laptops drive was running out of space. Its nice to not have to worry about having to delete anything. The best part though are the blazing fast speeds I havent run any benchmark tests, but I can tell a huge difference from what I had in my HP Spectre and this one I dont have any other PCIe 4.0 components so full listed speeds arent going to happen, but still faster than what I had. So grateful I got it though it is a bit on the pricey side.
Sel810213 –
Faster than any other pcie gen 4 nvme ssd available at close to the same price at the time I bought it, 0121. Please remember that most games are still made for slow hdd drives so you may only save 15s off load times. However, games are now being designed for these speeds which means they wont need redundant files. Worlds will load faster, so you can finally run around the world as the flash without load screens, when the game matches the hardware. Please note, this does not come with a heat sink. However, reviews say these type of drives generally dont need one.
RichardS84 –
Going from SATA SSD to PCIe NVMe performance is amazing. You just dont know how fast it is until you try it for yourself. Installed Windows 10 from USB3 in less than 10 minutes. Took off over 5 minutes from SATA SSD. Just amazing performance. Cant put a price on the time saving. It just slices through Adobe Lightroom and PhotoShop work loads, video editing on it is just takes it to another level. Thank you samsung for bringing this product to market.
RandomFunction –
During my recent builds I decided to go with another wellknown manufacturer for computer components and gave their M.2 NVMe a shot. BAD call. 4 months after the build, my system started getting hard to trace random BSODs. Thought Id fixed the issue, but no a week later my boot drive went. I RMAd it and bought one of these to get me through until the RMA was complete. I saw an IMMEDIATE improvement in how my system responded to tasks I was performing. So much so, that I went ahead and replaced my 2nd NVMe with one as well.Lesson learned Ill be sticking with Samsung for drives from now on, even if they cost a bit more its worth it.
KappsBK –
Needed more storage for upcoming editingcompositing projects in 4k. This drive was the perfect answer. I mainly keep the raw media on an external non ssd drive then transcode the pieces I need to this drive to work off of. Very happy with this. If you already have an ssd for booting up and games I dont think you will be crazy impressed with the improvement. But for editingcompositing this will help speed up your work.
BeingHonest –
For now, this is probably more of a nice to have, future proof luxury. Its incredibly fast, but not many will take advantage of the full transfer speed yet. You likely wont see any difference for gaming. Maybe in the future when games start to take advantage of PCIe 4.0, or it becomes compatible with current consoles. I use it for casual video editing and rendering, and for that its great. Rendering and previews are fast and without hitches. Real use transferring speed is fast. Took about 510 mins to transfer about 100,000 files 30GB50GB. To be able to use PCIe 4.0, you either need a Ryzen or Intel 11th gen.
Malkarai1 –
As a test, I checked to see if this drive would fit in the PS5 as several do not. It fits Whether or not it will pass Sonys requirements is still unknown as the port is locked out from use. In the meantime, I am using it on a desktop computer. The m.2 2280 form factor reigns supreme in ease of installing to the motherboard. Formatting took no time at all to get started on putting its performance to the test.On a 4K resolution video, rendering time dropped 15 over my Samsung 970 despite pulling the same amount of wattage. I also installed Cyberpunk 2077 to this drive. Compared to the 970, the speed of the 980 Pro shaved seconds on load times. While active rendering is more dependent upon GPU, I did notice a slight increase in gameplay performance.While 500GB is a good size for active media editing, I would definitely go with the 1TB for mediumterm storage and gaming. At nearly 80GB for Cyberpunk 2077 alone and games still getting larger in size, 500GB will disappear quickly.Highly recommend the 980 Pro for having a solid consistent processing speed and simultaneous burst speeds. Whether playing video games, rendering video, writing software if you need a hard drive to keep up with the latest processors and graphics card, this is the hard drive to pair with. The productivity boost is incredible.
Anonymous –
I would indeed recommend this product and will be buying more eventually. Its not going to be life changing if you already have a 970 or equivalent, and its going to need the PCIE Gen 4.0 motherboards to really shine. It does even outperform, though only slightly, Gen 3.0 drives in 3.0 mode. Noticed some users posting drastically lower speeds and complaining they werent getting advertised speed, and I can all but promise they are putting them in Gen 3.0 boards, because those are almost the exact speeds I got when testing it on my 3.0 board.
Frederic P. –
There is a lot of PCIE 4.0 SSDs now, with similar specs, prices and warranty. At the end, what made me buy this SSD instead of another comparable SSD was the Samsung Magician software. For SSDs, software like this are important if you want to keep firmware up to date and to see the overall health of the drive, and having used SSD from WD, Corsair , Adata and Samsung, I feel like the Samsung app is the best for ease of use and using fewer resources. I also have another 960 EVO in the system so that means on only one app for all the SSDs.
n8pwnsu –
I upgraded from a 970 Pro as my main drive and thought performance gain would be unnoticeable. I was wrong. My MOBO supports PCIE 4 for NVME storage and noticed a significant increase in speed compared to one of the best PCIE 3 storage devices. Both read and write speeds were increased and noticeable during the load time of games installed on the drive. In a professional workflow time to write to the drive was significantly increased.Compared to other PCIE 4 devices on the market, I prefer the Samsung as it does not come with an external heat sink. My MOBO has an integrated heat sink as part of the board design so the 980 Pro slotted in easily and was compatible with the stock heat sink on multiple MOBOs tested.I cant wait till PS5 updates to add support for addon storage and I will be testing this drive in the PS5 next.
DeeJay23 –
Easy to install for blistering speeds. I have two of these drives, one for the PC one waiting for Playstation to unlock the NVME slot interally for expanddd storage. My PC has this 980 2TB drive as well as a 970 Plus 1TB drive, along side two EVO sata ssd drives from Samsung, a 2TB a 4TB QVO.Samsungs drive software is simple to use and readwrite speeds are amazingly fast. Just remember to check your motherboard if you install mkre than one NVME drive in your multiple slots or if you use a PCI Adapter for a second as you will normally lose a few sata lanes and need to make sure you are using the correcg ones so that you get the full potential of all of your drives.If you want or need super fast storage, this drive and the 970 models are both great choices. If you are waiting for Playstation to open up your option to add a NVME drive, this 980 should meet all gen 4 specs.
Anonymous –
I ran a basic disk benchmark on my Linux system, which has 3 NVMe M.2 1 TB drives two 980 Pro and an Intel PCIe 3.0 drive. The motherboard is a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master and the CPU is an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X, both of which support PCIe 4.0 as well as PCIe 3.0. Both 980 Pro drives were faster sometimes almost 3 times than the Intel drive in most of the tests, but one of the random write tests was a bit slower than the Intel drive. This was with the BIOS settings at the default speeds its a new installation and I havent done any overclocking yet. Overall, Im very happy with the drive so far.
Anonymous –
I needed to upgrade my storage and saw this on special. My motherboard does support PCIe 4.0 on one M2 port, but my existing drive WD Black SN750 1TB which is a 3.0 card is there and too much bother to swap it, so I put the 980 Pro into a PCIe 3.0 slot. I ran CrystalDisk to compare the drives, and the 980 Pro was still 1020 faster than the SN750 on both read and write. Fairly unscientific method, but I am happy, the computer is purring along. Well worth the upgrade
kelly441 –
I received my SSD in the mail and have had a very positive experience so far since having my son help me install it. This is for use on the family computer, and to be honest, we havent upgraded in a LONG time. My youngest was insisting we upgrade, and my oldest insisted we build from scratch.Our previous computer still had a HDD which had EVERYTHING our instance of Windows, files, apps all installed on it. We eventually got a SSD to swap out some things to run off of that. This time around, my oldest got me to pick this up so that we could install Windows and frequently used apps on it. After spending the first week on the new computer, I completely understand why he had us do it this way applications load quickly and seamlessly, no more long loading times where you think you didnt double click on something only to click again and open up two instances of it, no more freezing, no more headachesMy youngest is also loving it as he uses it for virtual classes and online gaming he downloads the main game hes playing at the time not all of them since we dont want him to hog it all himself and he says theres a noticeable difference in the boot up, loading, and exit of the game software.My oldest said that building the new PC for us was really easy took him about 2 hours overall since hes a perfectionist and installing the SSD was effortless A sturdy piece that was easy to connect to the motherboard and build around. Working with computers often, hes said hes heard of other SSDs snapping in pieces when being installed, but that it was never a concern with this one.Im so happy with our new computer and I look forward to the many memories each of us will create using it in the future
gnoel809 –
A lot of newer laptops come equipped with this type of storage, make sure your laptop has the proper slot. You just put the drive in the slot and put in the single set screw to hod it in place.You can use this drive as your primary or as a backup drive, however you want to configure your system. Samsungs Magician and Data Migration software helps set up the drive and copy your data from one drive to another.Some retailers are coming out with external shells for these drives, so you can use them as external portable hard drives.All in all, lots of fast storage in a small package.
hitman1985 –
I upgraded a couple of my drives to the 980 pro 4th gen, the speed increase for a normal pc user is probably not noticeable. But for the priceperformance of the upgrade for more enthusiastic users, there shouldnt be a question. Its by far hands down the best drive ive benchmarked so far and usage wise the temperatures of the gen 4 are obviously a tad higher vs prior generations.Ill for sure pick up some more of these due to the value and sheer speed vs sata or gen 3 pcie
Daniel –
This Samsung M.2 is the upgrade you need. The speed on this thing is wicked fast. I use this as my secondary drive for bulk short term storage and this thing is amazing for that. I store my games and current video projects on it as not to fill up my C drive. My 4k video plays smooth as can be with the added speed benefit. Games load quick and the storage size is adequate for that. Especially the 200GB each Call of Duty games. This drive is perfect for video editing, gaming stream storage, games, and photo storage. If you are looking for a blazing fast drive to upgrade your system or are building a new system this is the drive for you.
Thomas M –
Ive been a fan of the Samsung SSDs for a while, so when I decided on a new build, I wanted to go all out.A bit on the pricey side, but its absolutely smashing my previous Samsung 970s speeds. it does get on the rather hot side during intensive benchmarks, but never enough to effect stability. During normal usage, the temps havent been an issue.Make sure to have a board that has PCI 4 to get the best speeds possible
Jon L –
TLDR I love how fast it is. Thats pretty much it.So a little story for yall to laugh at me for.After installing this beaut., I noticed that there were two terabytes added to my system when I checked Disk Management on windows. I was so confused and tried to figure it out because there was no way I got two 1TB disks from one SSD. Turns out that I had an old 1TB Western Digital SSD that I never formatted. From the time I first built my computer, 2017 I had a whole extra TB of storage that I never used. Thank you Samsung for showing me how dumb I am.
NJGOAT –
I recently made the jump from 9th gen Intel to 11th gen Intel and decided to pair a PCIe 4.0 NVME drive with the new processor. Ive been running a Samsung 970 EVO PCIe 3.0 drive in my previous setup, so honestly wasnt sure how much I would really notice the difference. This drive benchmarks about 3050 faster than the 970 EVO in Samsung Magician. Zero issues installing and setting the drive up. Not a huge difference in daytoday use, but I have seen reduced loading times in games. There are other drives out there where some of the peak performance may be better than this drive, but the sustained speeds this drive is capable of combined with Samsungs quality make it a winner over other options. Do note that it can tend to run hot, so I definitely recommend a heatsink if your motherboard does not come with one.
Monty –
Firstly, this is expensive but that is because youre buying a stateoftheart storage solution which also requires the latest PCIe 4.0 compliant motherboard to take proper advantage of. I own one of these with a 5900x and 3090 through an Asus B500F motherboard and I have been pleasantly blown away by the data transfer rates on this SSD. The storage space is awesome as well, and I honestly recommend if you dont go with this 2 TB SSD then go with a SATA SSD with 2 TB instead its such a nice comfort of life upgrade having all your data content on one large, fast drive space.
sunny2456 –
I knew m.2 ssds are fast but I never knew how much it can help with my production workload. Ive been currently using a regular 2.5 SSD for my video editing and large 4k files still had issues when scrubbing thru the timeline. Ever since I installed this in my pc and started reading and writing files to it, the entire process is seamless.The new Playstation 5 is made to run off of pcie 4.0 m.2 ssds so I will be sure to test it on there as well when I get my hands on one. With how fast performance is on my pc, I can assume itll be just as quick on the consoles. Price wise this costs about the same as when I bought my 2.5 SSD when they first came out and for 5 years Ive been using that with no problem so this is a great buy for the future as I feel anything faster will have diminishing returns. Samsung once again shows that theyre the fastest on the market for both professional and personal storage needs.
John –
This is my 2nd Samsung 980 PCIe 4.0 M.2 drive for my new MSI X570 Tomahawk motherboard. In fact, Ive used multiple Samsung SSDs in netbooks and other computers Ive built. While theyre a bit more pricey than the competition, Samsung drives are well built and dependable, I also like the Magician software and that all my drives are managed by the same source. Theres getting to be a lot of competition in the SSD market, including the PCIe 4.0 drives, but you can never go wrong selecting a Samsung drive
DFN80 –
The Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD is Samsungs first consumer PCIe 4.0 drive. As such, it features blazing fast readwrite speeds. While it wasnt the first to market with such an SSD, many of those other drives used an adapted version of a PCIe 3.0 controller, and with this, Samsung developed a new 4.0 controller to take fuller advantage of the new specs increased bandwidth. But to take advantage, at least until late Q1 2021, youll need an AMDbased platform using the B550 or X570 chipsets, as Intel wont support 4.0 until its Rocket Lake CPUs. For those of you with a current Intel system, or an older B350450 or X370570 motherboards, your speeds will be limited to the max of the 3.0 spec, and as such performance will be not so different than Samsungs still excellent 970 series. Likewise, because the 4.0 spec requires more power, and thats undesirable in mobile parts, I dont believe there are any laptops yet that support PCIe 4.0.But for those of you can use it, the performance is excellent. The rated read speed is up to 7000 MBs, and in my testing with CrystalDiskMark, I got over 6600 MBs in testing using an Asus x570 motherboard with a Ryzen 3700X processor. Write speeds are a bit slower but still outpace high end 3.0 drives by a wide margin. The free Samsung Magician utility has a builtin benchmark that gives a bit higher scores, but I like to test with a 3rd party utility.However, in a lot of real world, day to day activities, it doesnt feel faster, per se, than a high end 3.0 drive. My similarly configured work computer has a Samsung 970 Evo, and the typical feel is basically similarboot times, opening common applications, etc. Similarly, my home computers secondary SSD, which is a high end 3.0 drive, loads games at similar speeds as well and for game loading in general, even NVMe SSDs barely outpace SATA SSDs, although all of them destroy mechanical hard drives slothful load times. Where this drive really shines, however, is with really large files. To copy a giant folder, it can be astonishingly fast. And I suppose thats the conundrum of this drive like a high end sports car, there are only certain places where it can stretch its legs fully to really differentiate itself. After all, a McLaren wont get you to Krogers any faster than a Camry. This may change as future games takes advantage of the DirectStorage feature of DirectX12 Ultimate, these 4.0 drives may even further distance themselves from slower drives. That change is already hinted at in the blazing load times of the new consoles, which also feature PCIe 4.0 SSDs.As for the drive itself, its a standard M.2 2280 form factor. It does not come with a heat sink, but Samsung integrated a copper heat spreader to help dissipate heat. Ive never felt the drive to thermally throttle. Installation is easy, so long as youve not lost the tiny screw to mount on your motherboard. For a premium drive, would it have killed Samsung to include a spare If you have multiple 4.0 M.2 slots, like the X570 boards do, the general recommendation is to install it in the one closest to the CPU socket. Both the X570 chipset and the Ryzen CPU provide 4.0 PCIe lanes the tech consensus is that the latter should be just a tick faster.The bottom line for the 980 Pro is that its seriously fast, and even if competitors catch up with subsequent drives, this will be among the fastest, if not the fastest, drive on the market. It outclasses its predecessor in every way except Total Terabytes Written, which is half of what the 970 Pro rated. However, the 1TBs 600 TBW should still prove ample for almost any user. And until Intel launches its 11th gen desktop CPUs next year, only recent model AMD desktops can really utilize this among consumer tech. Right now it shines best in what would be considered workstation applications, so if youre expecting life changing speeds with gaming vs a 3.0 drive or even a SATA SSD, its not happening…yet. DirectStorage may well change that But if you want the best now with no compromises and have the hardware to use it, you cant go wrong with the Samsung 980 Pro.
T.B. –
I received and installed the drive today. I used a thirdparty software that cloned my 960 evo with bitlocker onto my 980 pro. Booted with no issues. I did a speedtest with crystaldiskmark and samsung magician. The results are in the screenshot. I dont know how long this will hold up in the long run, but I trust that a Samsung drive will last. I did get a little under the advertised speeds. I do not know why. I installed the drive on my ASUS X570 Crosshair VIII Formula with a Ryzen 3900X Update I ran a Speedtest on Jan 4, 2021 and found that my write speeds have dropped to 1100mbps
JorgeST –
This 2TB SSD has been a charm since installing a few weeks ago. The compact, SSD installed in a breeze and was up in running in no time….make sure you know how to install prior to attempting, and that your PClaptop is compatible. The transfer rates have been equal to or better than my other SSDs tooAll in all I can say that this drive has held up to its promises while providing a 5 yr peace of mind warranty. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to beef up their gaming rig or laptop. Very straight forward
Anonymous –
I tested pcie 4.0 and purchased it for actual use. The benchmark tool showed over 7000MBs. In fact, it showed faster than SATA SSD in games such as call of duty. Everything is a satisfactory SSD. There is also a downside, I am currently using it with a 3090 graphics card. Depending on the heat of the graphics card, the temperature of the SSD rose to 70 degrees.
Anonymous –
My kid and I were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the equipment and finally it arrived in a small box. We opened the package and were very impressed by the size of the accessory. My son said that it was too small to be able to fit 500GB of data in the system but he was very impressed by the package. The next step was to connect it to the system and so the adventure begins. So yes, we had to open the laptop and install it, but that was more fun than anything. Once we got it into the system, we were able to test run and it is quite impressive. Data transfer seems to be quite fast and smooth. Downloading content seems to be seamlessly. He is happy with the performance thus far. Now we have to wait to see if its performance does not decrease with time or when the SSD start to get fuller. He has started to transfer his pictures and songs to the system.
Amber G –
After using a 500GB SATA SSD and 1TB HDD for years, I knew it was time to upgrade my storage while I was upgrading other components. I was tired of slowish startup times and even longer loading times. Once I cleared a bunch of games leaving my 500GB only for the OS, and adding all my games to the new 980 Pro 1TB, I noticed a SIGNIFICANT difference in startup time nearly nonexistent and loading times being cut by over half the time. I still use my HDD to keep misc files which helps keep everything more organized. I would also like to mention my MB did have 1 PCIe 4.0 NVMe slot, which I was sure to utilize as well. I cant compare it to 3.0, as this was the first M.2 NVME SSD that I have used, but it sure is fast and for me personally, worth every penny.
Lutz –
I migrated from a 960 PRO, itself no slouch even by todays standards. But there are a number of scenarios where this TLC drive absolutely destroys the older MLC drive in my workflowCopying large amounts of files, small or large. The new controller on this SSD probably helps quite a bit here.Im very happy with the purchase, this was a totally painless migration of an existing Windows 10 boot SSD to this new one. Samsung offers migration software to download and it works really well.You just have to be aware that if you migrate a boot drive and rebootA make sure youre telling your BIOS to boot from the new drive if you keep the old one in andB if you keep the old drive in, Windows will take it Offline. You have to go into Disk Management, delete the partitions on the drive and then create new partitions, then you can select to take the drive back Online and youre in business.
Maclemoor –
Samsungs 980 PRO SSD has delivered my PC into the next generation of gaming and content creation. While Ive previously owned a previous NVME, theres a world of difference between a PCI 3.0 and this NVMe SSD running on PCIe 4.0. With peak speeds reaching 6,900 MBs, the 980 PRO wont ever be the bottleneck slowing down my computer.Installation was as simple as inserting the SSD into an M.2 slot and securing with a single screw. The 980 PRO doesnt include a heatsink, but majority of the new X570 MBs have built in heatsinks.In use, the 980 PRO has proven both exciting and essential. Loading times are blissfullyshort in games old and new. Windows boots up in a flash, browsing through thousands of photos is a breeze, and 4K video editing works fluidly, all thanks to never needing to wait on storage.Overall, I highly recommend this SSD for gaming and beyond. With modern consoles now integrating their own highspeed SSDs, games will be both designed around and best experienced with highperformance storage. Theres no better way to bring your PC into the next generation than an upgrade to the Samsung 980 PRO.
Will2k –
Im an IT guy and this SSD has no trouble keeping up with my needs. Reads speeds of 6,900 MBs give it great performance. It comes with a suite of tools, so I can manage an type of data I am using with it. The bandwidth capabilities can handle multiple graphics and data analysis too. I worried about heat issues, but this SSD has nickel coating and a heat spreader label that manages heat of the NAND chip extremely well. Look forward to using this on a daily basis.
KevV –
Excellent NVME SSD. It is interfacing with my X570 board at PCI Express 4.0 x4 and actually slightly exceeds its rated speeds in benchmarks without overheating or throttling. If youre coming from a traditional HDD, this will be a night and day difference in performance, whether youre using it as a boot drive, work drive, or for gaming. However, if youre upgrading from a SATA SSD or PCI Express 3.0 NVME, the difference will not be that noticeable, if at all.
Josh –
This Samsung 980 Pro is phenomenal. The readwrite speeds are off the charts and it has had no issues whatsoever. The key factor for using it is having support for PCIe 4.0, otherwise you will not be able to take full advantage of its capabilities. My computer runs better than ever with this installed, and running games and apps off of it leaves me wondering how can get any better. I am so impressed. I definitely highly recommend Samsung SSDs to anyone in the market for one. Their free cloning software is fantastic, and the quality and longevity of their products is the best in the market. Do yourself a favor and pick up one of these for your PC. You wont regret it.
UMich Hockey –
This drive would be a 5Star but currently the 980 Pro drives have a major issue with the cache. After the drive is about 40 full, the drive becomes incredibly slow. The whole point of buying this drive was to take advantage of the speeds of PCIE 4.0. Of course Samsung is not acknowledging this issue. Until Samsung fixes the cache issue with the drive I would steer clear of this. I returned this drive for a WD SN850.
sw9999 –
This is an incredibly fast SSD. I really love the M.2 form factor, as it keeps SATA ports available for additional storage. Having the SSD in such a small form factor is attractive too. We have been very happy with the speeds, copying large files almost instantly.Have always had good experience with Samsung Storage, and would highly recommend.
Rick –
I used to have a Samsung NVME SSD for my older laptop but when I upgraded, I sold it along the laptop. This SSD is faster than that older one. The read and write speeds are absolutely fantastic. This makes productivity better than ever because there wont long loading times. Gaming with this is even better than my old SSD. Load times are quicker.
ShopperFromMD –
The Samsung 980 Pro Gaming SSD is a speed monster. The Samsung 980 Pro is a perfect addition to any gaming laptop or computer where you want fast response times and maximum performance The SSD is a PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 drive, so to experience its full speed, you need a fourth generation PCI slot, preferably at least 4 channels 4×4, but 4×2 also works. Putting the drive in an older generation slot will inhibit its full speed, but you may still see improvements over your old drive. You can further customize the drive with Samsungs Wizard software free, and Samsung also offers a convenient and effective SSD cloning tool called Samsung Data Transfer free to copy the data from your old drive to your new drive in a few simple steps. The software is available for download on Samsungs website. The software tools further unlock the drives potential by optimizing, allowing encryption, and setting up an overprocessing buffer space to help extend the life of the SSD drive. If you have the right PCIe slot Its definitely worth the money to upgrade to his drive, especially if youre a gamer. Everything responds much faster with this drive, even nongaming applications. I have never had a bad experience with Samsungs memory devices. Go for it. You wont regret it.
willdunlap1 –
The Samsung 980 PRO gaming SSD is a beast. It is a PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 drive. To experience its full speed, you need a 4th generation PCIe slot, preferably with at least 4 channels 4×4, but 4×2 works as well. The drive will work in a 3rd gen PCIe slot 3×4 or 3×2, but its full 7000MBs read speed will be about half. The SSD is faster than the intel drive that came with my gaming Asus ROG gaming laptop by almost double It is definitely worth the upgrade. To customize the drive, you need to download Samsungs Magician software free, and Samsung also offers a convenient and effective SSD cloning tool called Samsung Data Migration also free. Both software is available for download on Samsungs website. The tools truly unlock the drives potential by allowing optimization, encryption, and setting up an overprocessing buffer space to help extend the SSD drives life. The drive is easy to install. Slip it into your existing SSD slot, and you are off and running. If you are adding the drive as a secondary drive, you may need to tweak your computers Bios settings. Samsung has been known for its memory and SSD drives for years, especially in phones, so it is no wonder that this computer SSD drive is at the top. Its definitely worth the money, especially if you are a gamer. The load times of games are much faster, as is the operating system as a whole. The Samsung 980 Pro is the perfect addition to any gaming laptop
gninatea –
Samsungs 980 Pro is a PCIe 4 M.2 NVMe SSD. This is a highend product this is the fastest flashbased SSD I can purchase. From specification, the sequential read and write speed are 6900 Mbps 5000 Mpbs. Though this quoted performance from Samsung is very exciting,, you will need a system which has PCIe 4 to reach this number.The installation is simple you will a motherboard or laptop with a capable NVMe supported M.2 slot. You can need to remove laptop back cover you will need to be careful about that.Samsung has also highlighted Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 technology which delivers 5 times the buffer size. That means under large workload will not decline the performance. This SSD is also builtin advanced thermal control solutions allow for the drive to perform well at cool temperatures. It is important for me, and I plan to use this SSD to build my AI training server system.Overall, this SSD is fastest SSD I can find from the market, and it has allnew Elpis controller, backwardscompatibility with PCIe 3.0, and NVMe 1.3 support. It is target for gaming user, but, it is also good for my AI training server.
BIGASN –
The Samsung 980 PRO NVME SSD is super fast, tiny, and just all out wonderful storage. Its amazing how far memory prices and technology have come, but to get a 1TB SSD hard drive that can transfer up to 7GB a second in such a small size at an affordable price is incredible. Granted, its not the cheapest memory, but nothing else compares in terms of size and speed. I currently have mine setup with a PCIe adapter that limits it to about 3GB per second, which is less than half the speed its capable of, but still very fast and yet only takes up a PCIe slot. I thought about putting it in a portable USBC external HD case which supposedly will let it transfer at up to 7GBsec, but Im using it for gaming for now to decrease load times. I might just get another one to put in an external case to use for photo and video editing though, because 7GB a second will save a ton of time on file transfers and processing. Keep in mind, if youre installing it to your motherboard itll need to be PCIe 4.0 to take full advantage of the 7GB speed, otherwise youll likely be capped to around 3.5GB speeds like me. Still super fast and essentially already set for the next generation of motherboards. If youre looking for super fast storage thats future tech ready, I highly recommend this drive. Either use it as a super fast external hard drive, or install it directly through M2, or with a cheap PCIe adapter and youre good to go.
Bren –
This 980 Pro has been astonishingly awesome upgrade for my computer On a X570 board, I used the Samsung Magician cloning software and an external M.2 SSD USB 3.0 enclosure to clone my old Crucial P1 1TB boot drive contents onto this baby. The Samsung cloning software made this simple. I then swapped the P1 for the 980 Pro on my MOBO, booted into the BIOS, selected the 980 Pro as my boot drive, and I was up and running The speeds on my PCIe 4.0 board are living up to the expectations of what this drive can do with sequential reads in the nieghborhood of 6000mbs and writes in the 45005000mbs range. Samsung, although generally more expensive per GB than competitors, never ceases to impress. I highly recommend this drive if you have a PCIe 4.0 MOBO that is capable of utilizing all the power this has to offer
Anonymous –
Super service. I live 100Km away from Toronto. Ordered at 9pm at night, on my doorstep next morning before 10 am Installed in Dell Alienware R7, but Dell made it extremely difficult by NOT providing screw to secure PCIe drive. I took apart an ancient HDD and just one of the thirty screws fit the standoff. Luckily, I have a 100 piece miniature drive set for the unusual screw head.
Anonymous –
when both newsweek and time magazines placed bruce springsteen on their covers the same week, many discounted all the hype. but as we know, he lived up to the hype and has exceeded the hype for nearly 50 years.this drive is another springsteen. it does indeed give sequential reads of 6500 and writes of 5050 along with random iops reads of 218,000 and random writes of 142,000.you can feel how much more spritely it makes your computer run with every task you do whether it be simple or highly complex.be forewarned, my write speed fell down to 1,000 after two days and rebounded to full speeds two weeks later where it has remained. i know not why write speeds fell temporarily. samsung tech support told me that a driver for the 980 pro will be issued nov. 2020.
TheSurgeon –
First my custom built gaming desktop I built 4 years ago specs. ASUS REPUBLIC OF GAMERS MOTERBOARD FORMULA X, EVGA 1080TI VIDEO CARD, 32 GB MEMORY, ASUS PREDATOR XB1 MONITOR, INTEL i7 770K CPU 4.20 GHZ. Okay I am replacing my Samsung 960 EVO 1TB SSD with the new Samsung 980 2TB PRO. Very easy downloaded Samsung migration software from Samsung website. Installed the new 980 pro in my second M.2 slot very easy no tools needed. Powered up desktop started migration software very easy point and click on screen guide. The whole hardware and software completion 30 minutes up and running. The 980 pro a little faster startup, big improvement over gaming smoothness and latency highly recommend lots of improvement over my 4 year old Samsung 960 to the 980 pro.
zero325 –
Samsung has been a trusted name in SSDs for some time now. It should be no surprise that the 980 Pro is an absolute beast of an SSD. When I finally got my hands on this, I knew Id be able to finally dump my two disk setup of a single 256GB OS m.2 ssd and my largerslower sata SSD for games.Installation is easy as expected and I dropped in a clean Windows install within minutes. This was my first Gen 4 M.2 drive and I couldnt wait to test out performance. Not surprisingly, the drive hit advertised speeds of over 6,000MBs read and about 5,000MBs writes in my tests.Performance is great, size is perfect perfect for every desktop build or laptop upgrade
Dlask –
Nice step to the right and price but with cost cutting. This drive is noticeable upgrade over my 970 EVO but the 970 Pro is still probably the choice for power user. The Flash is 3 bit TLC like on the 970 EVO but the 970 PRO Has 2 bit MLC which offer better speed and reliability. The drive using cash to achieve the listed speed but when I was moving large files the speed decreased once the cash was full. During my drive mirror my average speed was 650 MBs total data size 0.7 GB using the Samsung migrate tool. There is noticeable decrease in load time of windows 10 and in raw image editing. I have no other PCI 4.0 drives to compare but on paper it is the fasted drive on market. The benchmark verified the speeds. It is one of the highest priced drive on the market but the available Samsung software and the speed justifies the price. One negative for non power users, is that cashing has to be manually turned on in windows.
photofrankFM –
This is my second NVMe 4.0 M.2. The first was a first generation PCIe 4.0 M.2. It was the upstart newcomer whos name also starts with an S. This time I decided to go with the Samsung as all my previous experience with PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSDs, my Samsungs were always faster. I put this in a new build with a new high end X570 board and my read speeds are 6400 MBssec and 4400 MBssec read speed. So although it is still fast, it is taking a third row seat compared to a lot of its competition.My board has heat sinks and a fan cooling the M.2 slot that it is in and it stays in the high 30 degree C range.I guess I am most disappointed with its write performance. Although it is faster than my first gen 4.0 M.2s read speed, it does not have that much faster write speed and that is important to me when I am saving large Photoshop files.Just not happy about paying Samsung price and getting less than newcomer 4.0 M.2 performance. And just as a note, I have a high end Ryzen 5000 CPU, so that isnt the problem.
vrs99 –
This is my sixth review I have written for various Samsung NVMe M.2 and SSD drives. The reason for the number of reviews is I have found them to be extraordinarily reliable drives going back to my first Samsung SSD which continues to perform well in one of our machines.The 980 PRO 1TB has been installed into our top gaming machine replacing a NVMe M.2 500GB systemboot drive. The system drive was migrated to the new 980 PRO with Samsungs Data Migration software. Fun thing about migrating a system with two top end NVMe M.2 drives is the blistering speed at which the migration is performed. As always in using Samsungs Data Migration Tool the system upgrade ran smooth and all the data arrived safely on the new 980 PRO. Like that.Spotlight Blazing Speed PCIe 4.0 compatible with PCIe 3 Form factor which can be used even in laptops Samsung Magician Software Manage your drives health Excellent tool Data Migration Software Five Year Warranty That is a lot of ReadingWriting Nickel coating for managing controllers heat levelSamsung has continued in its leadership of speed, development, and warranty coverage and if you are looking for a nononsense drive for the gamer in you or managing and keeping your data safe at excellent price take close look at the 980 PRO.
BradleyFl –
Samsung 980 PRO 1TB Internal NVMe SSD for Laptops and DesktopsI have 1 word of caution on this drive, buy a heatsink that fits your motherboard if your motherboard doesnt have a fan system blowing on this drive. While doing my testing I ran up against a heat issue. When pushed even a little the drive hit 68C on a regular basis. This was when being used on a Gen3 X4 motherboard with a 10th Gen i7 processor I know, this setup doesnt support the full speed of the drive, but it is my daily driver machine. When I moved it to a borrowed Gigabyte motherboard and an AMD Ryzen 3 processor it moved into the 72 C range very fast and Im sure it would go well above that if allowed. It may throttle down the speed, but at what temp Im just not sure. The NAND chip likes heat, the drive controller does not. Im a little surprised Samsung didnt include even a small stick on heatsink for the controller. I guess that would just add packaging and extra instructions, so you put the heatsink on the right spot. My borrowed motherboard and processor where not an ideal testing situation because I did not install all the extras you might have on your system. It was a bare bones test bed. With all this being said here are my results and thoughts about purchasing this drive.All test were run with CrystalDiskMark 8.0.0 x64 set to NVMe SSD. If your not familiar with this program please look it up. All the information about what to do and how it runs is on their web site. Results will be in this order, 1st i7 machine read and then write. 2nd AMD machine read then write.1st set, on i7.Read SEQ1M Q8T1, 3421.20Read SEQ128K Q32T1, 3548.38Read RND4K Q32T16, 1754.87Read RND4K Q1T1, 60.60Write SEQ1M Q8T1, 3228.28Write SEQ128K Q32T1, 3347.22Write RND4K Q32T16, 2134.26Write RND4K Q1T1, 112.572nd set, on AMD.Read SEQ1M Q8T1, 6515.20Read SEQ128K Q32T1, 6650.60Read RND4K Q32T16, 1726.42Read RND4K Q1T1, 79.10Write SEQ1M Q8T1, 4815.60Write SEQ128K Q32T1, 4940.18Write RND4K Q32T16, 1550.17Write RND4K Q1T1, 189.36I know the second set of numbers doesnt match what Samsung is saying about the drive, but the setup was not optimized for the drive. It was done fast because I needed to get the motherboard and chip back to my friend. The only reason I did them was to show that the drive can run faster than what Intel is limiting it to right now. The real surprising part is that in a few cases the correct motherboard and chip were no faster than the i7. I was not surprised to see the sequential reads and writes were much faster. More PCIe lanes faster throughput. but I was surprised to see that the random reads and writes were not any better, and in 1 case even a little worse. Im just betting that given time I would have been able to get better results with the AMD. As I understand it, to see the number Samsung is stating you need to use the Samsung software to do your tests.When I ran this drive against a standard NVMe Gen 3 X4 drive on the i7 I found the 980 Pro was still faster. Ill give you 1 number to judge against. Gen 3 X4 drive read was 2257.63, the 980 Pro was 3421.20.So if your building a new machine this drive will be faster even if you dont build to this drive.I do recommend this drive because of overall speed and price. How long it will last at the higher temps is yet to be seen.
TechAficionado1 –
I originally planned to use the drive in the PlayStation 5 however the PS5 isnt ready for internal drives yet. So Im going to try to use an external enclosure and Ill report back on that endeavor. However, owning all the Samsung Pro drives since the 950 Pro Im sure this 980 Pro is going to screamJust as expected the 980 Pro performs even in an external enclosure. I currently use it as extended storage for my PS4 and PS5 and of course, it is dead silent and VERY fast There is no competition for a Samsung 980 Pro.
mt2020 –
I love this drive I used to have to wait forever for the computer to load when I started it but, now it comes on instantly. I have put all my games on my main drive and they also load really quick now. No more long loading screens and waiting. Its like I have a brand new computer now. I highly recommend this Samsung 980 pro Youll never go back to a regular ssd again.
AngelM –
Gaming, video editing and graphic design, I am enjoying the speed up to 69005000 mbs reads and writes keeping up with what I need to do. It is compact and was easy to replace, if unsure, just read the manual. I like that it stays cool while performing at fast speeds. I usually build my pcs with the best of the best and almost every year I replace for better and faster and this is one of those products that play well. Definitely it is an upgrade to have for faster and smoother computer. I also like the Samsung Magician Software, another tool to monitor the health while optimizing and best of all to keep it up to date. It came in a small box nicely packaged and ready to be installed.
Dustin –
Super fast, useful, not the worst price when you can catch it on sale. Still absolutely a luxury and not at all necessary. If youre looking for value right now, go for a larger capacity PCIE 3.0 drive. Kinda wish I had, but it is what it is and it is good. Dont buy any nvme drive for PS5 until Sony enables the feature and releases a whitelist though just a heads up to anyone looking at these for that purpose
BillFromKC –
I received this product in exchange for my fair and unbiased review.TLDR the Samsung 980Pro is a beast. As long as your computer supports PCIe 4.0, youll experience data transfer rates that were previously only possible with NVME RAID setups, but with a single drive. Depending on what your system is capable of, youll be able to play back multiple UNCOMPRESSED 8K video streams simultaneously. Its seriously the kind of fast where youll be able to do things that previously required expensive NVME RAID arrays to do. If you do lots of 4k video editing on an appropriate workstation, you should just go ahead and get this. If you dont have PCIe 4.0, however, this wont do anything for you.Now for the nittygrittyOne of the promises of PCI Express 4.0 is that it would be faster for data transfer than PCI Express 3.0 up to twice as fast. I wasnt able to experience that with my Ryzen 3800X build and my previous NVME SSD, as it was a PCIe 3.0 model.The PCIe 4.0 test rig AMD Ryzen 3800X, ASRock Taichi X570, 32GB G.Skill Trident Royal DDR43600, AMD Radeon 5700XT 8GB.The PCIe 3.0 test rig Intel Core i74790, Asus Z97A, 32GB G.Skill RIpJaws X DDR31866 OCd to 2133, AMD Radeon RX 590 8GB.With a PCIe 4.0 system, you wont notice a huge difference in performance when it comes to typical workloads. I noticed almost no difference in boot times for Windows 10, loading all but the largest games MK 11 Ultimate was actually a little slower with this drive than it was using my PCIe 3.0 drive, but Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 was a bit faster, and typical productivity workloads run exactly the same. Bulk conversion of graphic files JPG to PNG was slightly faster though. compressing ZIP and 7ZIP files was slightly faster. Where my PCIe 3.0 SSD would run out of run out of bandwidth copying multiple large video to itself, I wasnt fast enough to do that with the 980Pro. So this is where synthetic benchmarks come into play, to determine how fast this drive really is.And what are we talking about in terms of transfer speeds I managed reads of over 7200 MB per second and writes of over 5100 MB per second as measured by CrystalDiskMark, BlackMagic Disk Speed Test, and Task Manager in Windows 10 20H2 preview. Ive never seen BMDST check off that I could read and write every format before, but seeing that it estimated I could write 2160p YUV422 at a little over 305 fps absolutely wowed me.In a state of disbelief, I tested again in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and got similar speeds Over 7000 MBps read and 5000 MBps write. So yes, this is the real deal for people that want to edit uncompressed 4k video.After reading reviews of both this drive and competing PCIe 4.0 NVME drives with people that dont have PCIe 4.0capable systems, I decided to do some other testing just to see what it would do in an older PCIe 3.0capable computer. There was a negligible difference in speed between this and a previousgeneration NVME maybe 2530 MBps with both reads and writes, tops. While 3400 MBps is still impressive for reads and writes with a PCIe 3.0 system, it doesnt justify spending more for the 980Pro versus the previousgeneration drive.So recommendation time.Who dont I recommend this drive for anyone with a currentlyavailable Intelbased desktop as of 4 Dec 2020. anyone with an Intel laptop with 10th gen or earlier processor. anyone with an AMD Ryzen desktop who isnt using a B550 or X570 chipset, or a Threadripper or EPIC workstation without a TRX4 motherboard anyone with an AMD Ryzen laptop as of 4 Dec 2020 Mac users as of 4 Dec 2020 sorry guys, no Mac supports PCIe 4.0 and most Macs couldnt use this to its fullest anyway, even with an adapter. anyone that doesnt do anything overly diskintensive and is okay with saving some money instead of getting the absolute fastest thing out there in terms of disk access.Who do I recommend this for gamers who play titles on a regular basis that are over 125GB in size Red Dead 2, COD. media production people who do a lot of 4k video editing on a PC. people that will batch convert thousands of pictures at a time on a regular basis. people that want bragging rights, even if their computer doesnt support it.It is a good M.2 SSD though, so I can recommend it as one to buy. Also, as more systems gain PCIe 4.0 in the future Intel Rocket Lake, AMD Ryzen Mobile, Ill be able to recommend this for more people. and more systems. And as the price comes down in the future, Ill be able to recommend getting this over a PCIe generation drive as cost wont be as much of a consideration at that point.
Technopackrat –
With prices of memory continuing to fall SSDs are becoming more of a value and should be considered as your primary OS drive. Ive even taken much older Windows laptops and computers and installed 2.5 SSDs in them and the difference was night and day so every build I do now has M.2 SSDs or at least a 2.5 SATA SSD if the motherboard doesnt support M.2I did a recent Ryzen 9 PC build with an ASUS ROG X570E Gaming motherboard. At the time of the build I had an older 512GB PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSD and since the motherboard has 2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 drive slots I knew I had to upgrade to something better eventually. I almost always use Samsung SSDs in my systems because of their reliability so the 1TB 980 Pro was a no brainer when I decided to upgrade.The installation was simple although my first attempt wasnt successful and most likely because the external M.2 drive enclosure I had was most likely not Gen 4 compatible. So then onto Plan B which is installing the new drive into the spare M.2 slot on the motherboard. While the old drive was installed I downloaded the Samsung Data Migration software from their SSD website. I powered the unit off and switched off the power supply. I installed the 980 Pro into one of the M.2 slots, flipped back on the power supply and then booted up the computer. I then launched the disk cloning software and it immediately recognized the new 980 Pro even though it had not yet been partitioned or formatted. Following the software prompts I selected the new 980 Pro as my target drive and my older drive as the source. A few more intuitive clicks and the cloning software copied the partition and verified that the image was exact. The process was smooth as silk with no hiccups. In my case less than 100GB of my original drive was used so the whole process took less than 20 minutes.If you are doing a new build or just want to do a clean install on an older system then just install your favorite flavor of Operating System on the drive straight away.Once the drive was cloned I powered off the computer, removed the old drive and rebooted. Even though I had a SSD in the computer before the Samsung 980 Pro shaved at least 6 seconds off my original drive boot time of course your mileage may very.I highly recommend Samsung SSDs to all my friends and if you are looking for a great PCIe Gen 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD for your computer you cant go wrong.
phoenixfta –
SSD drives changed everything for me and my office. Fast, small, and stable. Weve never had one fail and our productivity increases immediately with every install.When I have a choice, I choose Samsung because they make their own chips, adding a level of accountability. The Samsung 980 PRO NVMe format was easily installed in my laptop that already had an undersized SSD drive. I left that one in to simply run the OS and added this one with double the storage to run my apps and store precious data. I considered swapping them, but its a complex endeavor for which I didnt have time.The Samsung is fast. I copied a few huge files and did comparisons. While were talking perhaps one to four seconds, its noticeable.You can download a free app called Samsung Magician that assists in health checks, benchmarking and optimization as well as firmware updates and encryption options. It is actually useful if you tinker.
TheChanClan –
This is the newest and fastest NVMe NonVolatile Memory Express M.2 drive from Samsung. As a happy owner of Samsungs 970 NVMe series, I was doubtful that Samsung could deliver anything better than what I already had, but boy was I wrong The Samsung 980 Pro doubles the sequential read and write speeds of the Samsung 970 generation even at current Intel PCIe 3.0 settings. As the next CPUs from Intel support PCIe 4.0 this drive is already futureproofed to deliver even faster speedsUpgrading to the Samsung 980 Pro will save you an incredible amount of time. Compared with working from a hard drive, using this NVMe drive you will experience nearinstant boot times, game and software loading times, as well as fast file opening. Clone your existing drive in one step with Samsungs free software, and keep your drive healthy and up to date with Samsung Magician software which is builtin. This drive runs cool and absolutely silent without any moving parts. It is millimeters thin and compatible with both desktops and even laptops that support its M.2 2280 form factor.The only regret I have would be getting the even larger 1TB size as youll want to put as many of your frequently used games and programs on this drive to make them run as fast as possible 500 GB is enough to use as a system drive, I would probably say that the 250 GB size is a little too small these days to be practical. With a 5year warranty and a reputation to stand behind quality products, I have full confidence also in the reliability of the Samsung 980 Pro over time.
FarWestReviewer –
Slight answer to the review above.Two builds 980 Pro 3700X GPU, 980 Pro 4650G.The second was more for curiosity and cheaper than a 4750G, but the chip PCIe 3.0 is slightly slower at system loadin. Havent done much, so far.The first is pure lightning. Never saw such speed at system load, and it continues into every aspect of data transfer. Think this one is future proofed for a while.As usual, great product spread and service from Scan. N.B. 4650G from elsewhere.
Mcphaddie –
Its pricey, but runs cool.For day to day use, there isnt a huge difference over a 970 evo , but the system feels smoother.Some of my work moves a lot faster thanks to this drive. Less breaks, but I am my own boss, so it means working a little less, or picking up more work.Exceeds stated speeds in both writes and reads.Picked up a second in case the PS5 uses one. There will be a mad rush on these Gen 4 drives once that update hits. If not, bam, right into the PC.
Buyer –
After a few months of daily usage, the drive does well. No hiccups so far, and speeds are just about as advertised. This is the best consumer drive money can buy right now but it is a bit hefty on the cost the 2 TB drives always are. Itll be a while until the price comes down on 2TB drives on release but for now, its worth having if youre working with boat loads of data and transfer speeds are a concern.Moving entire bundles of movies and games between this and a 970 Evo Plus of the same size definitely feels like the future if only really done for fun. Takes seconds to move a game like Cyberpunk back and forth, even with the write bottleneck of the 970.Very happy with it so far but obviously can change in the future if theres a drive failure.
Random –
This is an extremely fast drive. The only issue I can see is it runs a bit high temperature wise. I suggest always installed the correct software, in this case samsung magician. Out of all my drives its the only one that runs at 54 degress celcius. regardless of its location on the motherboard. Dont let the temp scare you, its a gread drive. No issue other that the temp scare. The customer service was great and since the Trussville store has had April as the Manager it seems like the employees have received a higher level of technical knowledge. Great Job April.
pgh208 –
The Samsung 980 PRO NVMe SSD is the pinnacle of performance for memory. I remember the first time I used a computer with a SSD for the operating system and was blown away with the speed. The Samsung 980 PRO further improves the speed at which your computer can perform. My computer has a x570 motherboard and was able to take advantage of the speed gains from PCIe Gen4 and improves my game performance and file transfer speeds over my current SSD.The Samsung Magician software was great to clone the drive and use to maintain and monitor the Samsung 980 PRO. I appreciate the care put into thermal management through the software and thermal label because nothing slows down a PC than heat.I wish I could have tested on my PS5 but the SSD expansion port is disabled but will try it once it allows it.
Mav90 –
I want to preface this review with a quick bit of personal information. Ive been building computers for over a decade and love computing hardware. In recent years, Ive been astounded with advances in storage in both capacity and IO throughput. The Samsung 980 PRO VNAND SSD 500GB found its home in my newest home labgaming build. Ive trusted Samsungs SSDs for years now and I have great trust in this drive. With a 5 year warranty out of the box, its an incredible value for the performance you get. On a fresh install of Windows 10, Im getting a sub5 second boot from POST to login. The capacity of this drive impresses me for the price as I can install much more than just the OS and a few essential applications on it without filling it up. Installation of the drive was simple, but itll vary for each motherboard. PLEASE READ the manual for how to install it correctly especially if theres a heatsink. If performance and value are essential to your next build or upgrade, seriously consider this drive.
A.R.H.E.D.C. –
There isnt much to say here, its a generational improvement on the standard SSD tech we are all used to, it provides a very very fast transfer rate that slowly drops as its temperature rises, it has a cache so smaller transfers Read Everything aside from 100s of GB hit close to 7.9GBs speeds while massive transfers are slower, and will greatly reduce the time it takes to load resources from storage in most if not all applications. I would suggest a heatsink or heatspreader for this drive if you expect to be moving large files on a regular basis but for most use cases lookin at you gamers youll never hit the point at which it throttles due to temp. Overall just what youd expect from any SSD but…you know, faster.
Sunshineinsider –
The Samsung 980 PRO 500GB Internal Gaming SSD is worth your hardearned money if you want faster load times. This Solid State drive is fast and no SATA cables are required. The price of the 980 Pro, is a solid choice for gaming and even external storage. I planned to install the drive in one of my laptops but neither had the slots for this type of internal drive. The 980 Pro performs well in an external enclosure as well. I currently use it as extended storage for my laptops. However, I plan to buy a converter for my laptop to replace my old drive with it.
TheOffice1234 –
REVIEW SAMSUNG 980 PRO 1TB INTERNAL NVME SSD FOR LAPTOPS AND DESKTOPSBest Buy Tech Insider NetworkMAX PERFORMANCE FOR PCI 4.0 and PCI 3.0If your computer can support M.2 NVME drives, and you dont already have one, then you really need to get one. Im going to geek out a little for the rest of this review. The short version is this is a great performing drive. It has a premium price which it enjoys as being widely regarded as the best brand out there. You cant go wrong with this drive, especially if your system supports PCI 4.0.The Samsung 980 PRO is faster than other drives, in most cases, even in a PCI 3.0 motherboard. If you dont plan to upgrade to a PCI 4.0 system in the near future, it might not be the best value depending how you utilize your system. It is far less expensive than the 970 PRO, which it replaces, but is about 30 more expensive than the 970 PLUS which it is closer to in performance on a PCI 3.0 bus.TESTING PCI 3.0 RESULTS PCI 4.0 Bus should be close to 2x Faster w Samsung 980 PROMy Test Configuration is a Lenovo P500 Thinkstation, Xeon 2690 v3 CPU 12 Core 24 Threads 2.63.6 GHz Clock, 64GB RAM, Win 10 Pro, Nvidia 1070TI, PCI 3. Basically, it is an older CAD workstation turned into an inexpensive casual gaming rig. You dont need a super machine to take advantage of NVME speed. My Thinkstation P500 came out around 2014 6 years ago and still has very respectable performance.I used Samsung Magician Benchmark Tools, Crystal Benchmark Tools and ASSSD Benchmark. They all gave different results, but comparable overall in terms of relative performance. see pics.NVME drives excel most at sequential reads and sequential writes, but in real world situations, IO demands are rarely clean and tidy like that Sequential. The difference between Sequential and Random Read Write operations are staggering see pics. What a NVME drive will get you is amazingly fast boot times and program load times. Just dont expect that same level of improvement in Database and other Heavy Random Write operations. I will use my Samsung 980 for Video Processing where both sequential read and sequential write speed are important. Some of the details in the test see pics are really interesting in terms of what one drive does better than the other.My testing consists of the following Samsung 970 PLUS PCI 3 Samsung 980 PRO PCI 4 Another popular NVME drive from another maker PCI 3 A few other drive types for fun and appreciation how much faster NVME isI have a large amount of RAM 64GB, thus initially the write numbers look great on all drives due to Windows Caching algorithms. Ordinarily this is OK, because this is how Ill run the system every day with Cache on. However, without Cache, there is an order of magnitude decrease in write performance. It really drives home the difference between native read and write speeds of the NVME drives. Cache also helps push the drives to their max limits as far as how quickly they can accept data, parallel threads, queues, etc. So, keep your Windows Cache on for everyday use, unless you have power issues and dont want to risk corruption due to power loss.TESTING RESULTS WITH WINDOWS CACHE TURNED ONSAMSUNG MAGICIAN 6.2.1 Sequential TestsSAMSUNG 980 PRO NVME 3211 MBs Read 3159 MBs WriteSAMSUNG 970 Plus NVME 3222 MBs Read 1831 MBs WriteOTHER BRAND NVME 3137 MBs Read 3003 MBs WriteCRYSTAL Benchmark 8.0 Sequential TestsSAMSUNG 980 PRO NVME 3444 MBs Read 3426 MBs WriteSAMSUNG 970 Plus NVME 3544 MBs Read 3161 MBs WriteOTHER BRAND NVME 3427 MBs Read 3098 MBs WriteSAMSUNG 960 SSD via USB 3.0 0452 MBs Read 0456MBs WriteOTHER BRAND 7200 RPM DRIVE SATA3 0177 MBS Read 0175MBs WriteOTHER BRAND 5900 RPM DRIVE SATA3 0175 MBS Read 0179MBs WriteASSSD BENCHMARK 2.0.73 Overall Score see pics SAMSUNG 980 PRO NVME 2446 Read 1986 Write 5669 TotalSAMSUNG 970 Plus NVME 2210 Read 1963 Write 5281 TotalOTHER BRAND NVME 1896 Read 1684 Write 4486 Total ASSSD Benchmark tries to negate the native NVME Cache in testingTESTING RESULTS WITHOUT WINDOWS CACHESAMSUNG MAGICIAN 6.2.1 Sequential TestsSAMSUNG 980 PRO NVME 3223 MBs Read 0567 MBs WriteSAMSUNG 970 Plus NVME 3207 MBs Read 0324 MBs WriteCRYSTAL 8.0 Sequential TestsSAMSUNG 980 PRO NVME 3363 MBs Read 0567 MBs WriteSAMSUNG 970 Plus NVME 3521 MBs Read 0781 MBs WriteOTHER BRAND NVME 3433 MBs Read 2952 MBs Write Larger Drive CacheASSSD BENCHMARK 2.0.73 Overall Score see pics SAMSUNG 980 PRO NVME 2364 Read 0121 Write 3578 TotalSAMSUNG 970 Plus NVME 1689 Read 0121 Write 2561 TotalOTHER BRAND NVME 1881 Read 0440 Write 3216 Total ASSSD Benchmark tries to negate the native NVME Cache in testingSUMMARY CONCLUSION RECCOMENDATIONIn most cases the Samsung 980 PRO outperforms the other NVME drives in these tests.I would suggest that if you dont have a PCI 4.0 based motherboard, and are not about to get one in the next few months. It might be a better value to wait until you can take full advantage of this drive. As drive prices almost always drop over time, the longer you wait the cheaper a new drive will probably be.However, if you have, or are about to get a PCI 4.0 system, I would highly recommend the Samsung 980 PRO drive. I would expect to get numbers about 2X what I show on a PCI 3.0 system. This is a big deal. For a little more money you can double your performance over a comparable PCI 3.0 drive and future proof your investment while enjoying a higher native write speed.Ive deployed between 3050 Samsung SSD drives NVME and SATA in the past 10 years. I have never had one fail on me in the field. I dont think you can go wrong with the Samsung 980 PRO.
UnkinB –
I received the 2TB 980 PRO PCLe 4.0 NVMe from Samsung and its a beast. I did an upgrade from a 500GB SSD which was still doing me justice but being able to store games on the NVMe and start them, has really cut the load time. The one downside is that my mother board only has a PCLe 3.0 slot, so I am not getting the readwrite times that I could get with a PCLe 4.0, but the numbers are still huge. I am averaging 3,300 MBs read and write times, if I had a PCLe 4.0 it would be getting around 7,000 MBs on read and write times. Samsung has monitoring program called Magician. Magician monitors drive health, optimize performance, can encrypt the drive, and update your firmware. One of my favorite aspects of the magician software is the heat monitoring that it does. You can run it at full throttle and be able to actively manage the heat buildup. The 980 PRO PCLe 4.0 NVMe will be a great drive for many years to come.
Zaid –
This Samsung 980 PRO 2TB PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe Gen4 Internal Gaming SSD M.2 is a replacement for my old WD BLACK 500GB SN750 NVMe SSD. First foremost, The PCIe 4.0 is designed to provide faster data transfer and decrease load time which is very obvious when first installed. My Alienware Aurora R7 was blazing fast with my old WD SSD during boot time, loading games, running software, etc. But, this Samsung is noticeably faster, and my PC boot time has reduced from 12 to 8 seconds, as well as my games load time is at lighting speed and other programs load almost instantly compared to what I had before.ProsEasy installation with Samsung Magician SoftwareTrue speed as advertisedBig storage. In my case, I jumped from 500GB to 2TBProsThis SSD drive is costly unless it gets picked up when on sale.Great product
ETP1 –
This is the only M.2 NVME stick I could clone and get it work with no issues.I used the Samsung data migration software, rebooted with the original boot drive disconnected and away we go.Absolutely no issues of any kind. Two other brands would do fine with a total cold rebuild from scratch but would not do a successful clone with 3 different software authorized suites.Tou have options if you do a clean new build but if you are cloning off of another non M.2 drive it will be nest to use the Samsung stick.BTWsoftware was only listed for the 970 but the 970 software worked fine.
Desroses –
The motherboard in my system is an ASUS ROG STRIX X570e and it has 2 sockets to accommodate M.2 PCIe 4 SSDs. Right now, it is hard to discern the real benefit of having the 2 M.2 1TB Samsung 980 Pro because there are so much new and fast stuff I acquired such as RYZEN 9 5950X CPU, G.SKILL RipjawsV Series 64GB2 x32GB DDR4 3600Mhz CL18 Dual Channel RAM and newly acquired, as off yesterday, an EVGA RTX 3080 Ultra. So you can imagine how hard to specifically isolate the M.2 drives… One thing sure, all together with the 1Gb internet speed from my provider, it is darn FAST.
amb41 –
I had no clue a SSD could be so fast. Recently upgraded to a new build. Paired this with a Ryzen 5 5600X cpu and MSI MPG B550 Gaming plus motherboard. I was able to transfer 85 GBs of files between this and my Samsung EVO SSD in minutes. If I remember correctly it stayed at a constant rate of aroun 360 mbps according to windows 10. Most usb 3.0 flash drives, or any other SSD, HDD Ive used tends to get up to 100 mbps max but fluctuates hard eventually getting stuck at some low transfer speed around 30
John –
980 PRO 1TB is wonderful.This NVME drive can give you the maximum speed of NVME 4.0.I purchased this one for my new system.It is a blazing SSD in the market.However, you should know that only Ryzen 3000 or 5000 B550 or X570 support this drives full speed.I highly recommend this SSD to those who find a NVME 4.0 drive for their new system.
J0A0A7 –
If you have the hardware capable of supporting PCIe Gen 4, or plan to upgrade to it in the near future, the 980 Pro is one of the best topperforming SSDs available in the market. All that performance doesnt come cheap, but you also get peace of mind from the topnotch quality Samsung is known for.Comparing it to the 970 Evo Plus 2TB I currently have on my laptop benchmark numbers are very similar since my laptop PCEi interface is Gen 3×4. So far Samsung has not released an NVMe driver for the 980 Pro. As of right now, my 970 Evo Plus is running on Samsung NVMe driver and the 980 Pro on Microsoft drivers. There is potential for a bump in performance, whenever Samsung does release a driver for the 980 Pro.FYIIf Samsung Magician is having issues recognizing the drive, most likely your system is running on Raid mode and not AHCI mode. Make sure to reach out to the manufacturer of your system for assistance on switching Windows from Raid to AHCI. Do not attempt this process without first consulting the manufacturer since it can end damaging important Windows OS files.OverallThe 980 Pro is one of the best performing SSDs out there, but if you dont have the PCIe Gen 4 interface to take advantage of it, performancewise will be very similar to something like a 970 Evo Plus. If you absolutely want the best for your system the 980 Pro is a good start. Now, if youre not planning to upgrade your hardware anytime soon to support PCIe Gen 4, you might want to save some money by going with a previous generation like the 970 Evo Plus that is still considered one of the fastest PCIe Gen 3 SSDs out there.Reviewers in this invitationonly program are provided products for the purpose of writing honest, unbiased reviews.
vegastechie –
Super fast, topoftheline NVMe. Need I say more Rated as top by industry experts. I use it mostly for data processing. It is fast on boot ups and works well on my AMD MBO with PCIE 4.0 capability. One note of caution, this Samsung NVMe appears to run hot per the Magician software, but dont let that discourage you. Not sure why it says Too high when it is actually within acceptable levels. And most NVMes, even from other brands, run hot when running taskintensive work or while gaming, Bottomline, it runs fine for me with no issues, crashes or stalls and I would recommend purchasing it if it fits your budget and needs. Samsung has a great warranty on these products.
billr920 –
I already had a 970 Pro and jumped at getting the 980 Pro. This is backward compatible to a 3 interface and still has decent speed.Samsung has always been my go to for SSD and Memory when it comes to upgrading. One of the few manufactures that provides cloning software that is easy to use.Obviously if your considering this product I suggest you make sure your machine build is compatible, but most who want this already know what goes into an upgrade.One thing I did run into was on the first boot, there was a No Boot File found, You just have to be patient and realize your machine is still looking for the old drive. All I had to do is shut down and reboot and all was ok. Speed is great, every working to specifications based on the machine your installing this into. The only other thing I could not accomplish without a lot of time investment is using that Samsung driver, PC still holds onto the Microsoft Driver. However, Samsung Magician will still maintain it any way.
dircped –
PROSThis was my first nvme drive id installed. It was simple and straight forward, booting and installing windows to this drive went smoothly. I love the fact that everything is onboard so I dont have to mess with sata cables or deal with cable management for my drive. Boot times are insanely fast, startup programs are immediate, and load times in games are excellent.CONSI can no longer read tips on load screens because I load too quickly.
Brian –
placed 92nd percentile against 153,000 other ssds in Performance test benchmark. IF YOU CAN FIND THIS IN 1 TB SIZEBUY IT…. UPDATE AS OF 32621…DRIVE PREMATURLY WEARING OUT…ON PREFORMANCE TEST WHEN NEW IT TESTED 98 121020 …NOW TESTING AT 58 TECH SUPPORT HAD ME DO IT ALL EVEN FORMATTING DRIVE THEY STILL HAVE NOT ISSUED ME AN RMA….WHICH THEY SHOULD NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO KEEP IN TOUCH BUT NO ANDWERS….NO RMA XHECK OUT OTHER DRIVES..FAST IS GREAT…IF WORKING
BondJamesBond –
Great thing about Samsung, they make all their parts for their SSDs, unlike other companies who will sometimes try to cheap out on certain parts on their SSDs. This also means a more stable SSD since the memory, controller, etc. are all Samsung.Now to the more important stuff, Gen 4 equals supa dupa fast Buy it….. Buy it now… But only if you have a Gen 4 capable mobo.
ADAM T. –
Even though, I put my os and couple games and lucky I havent hit the cache limitation, for real life situation no slow downs I am using a Ryzen 3600xt on a Asus tuf X570 Motherboard with a 16g memory 3200 Samsung app says reading speed 7000 and write 5000 Crystal mark says reading speed 6782.78 and write 4945 comparing to a 860 evo ssd my loading time seem quicker on the 980 pro. Playing World of Warcraft load times seems smooth like butter Cyberpunk load times smooth 980 pro regards it speeds does not improve FPS or make you a better gamer. lol
sw991 –
My son and I am working on our first PC Gaming build, and had been looking for any opportunities to maximize speed and performance. This SSD is the perfect one for his needs. As the build is not yet complete, I had to test it out on another machine that had an M.2 slot. Needless to say, it out performs what the could handle, giving me 3,000 MBs for both reads and writes. I expect it to perform even better on the Asus ROG Strix B550E , which actually supports PCIe 4.0The 5 year warranty is also a very nice perk, as it is indicative of the quality of the Drive that Samsung believes it will last 5 years in every day use without issue and knowing that a quality company like Samsung is standing behind their product.
M. –
1TB Version This generation, Samsung used 3bit TLC flash instead of the 2bit MLC used on the 970 Pro. This still results in superior IOPS, ReadWrites. I did three runs back to back for a quick torture test and the results are pretty close to what was advertised other than the IOPS. Those were underwhelming compared to Samsungs claims of 1000k versus the 700k achieved. Premium price aside, I would suggest this to anyone moving lots of data around frequently andor want the latest and greatest Samsung has to offer in the Gen. 4 NVME space. Alternatively, the 970 Evo Plus is excellent for those looking for a less expensive but well performing Gen. 3 NVME. Cant go wrong with either. FYI Operating System load times and responsiveness will vary depending on your PCs specifications and should be put into consideration when buying a highend product like this one.
James –
My MB is a Asus ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO WIFI X570 AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT with dual PCIE 4.0 x4 slots populated with these bad boys. I use them as my gaming drives to get optimum load times. When I recently built this rig in late September, I used WD Blues to do the same thing. The loading times were easily a third to half what they had been Destiny loads, both before Beyond Light and after were awesome. Well worth the cost
Josh –
This drive is almost too fast to believe. It has a huge amount of storage and if you have the correct hardware for pcie 4.0 you will not regret taking advantage of all this has to offer. As always Samsung Magician is fantastic for drive cloning, and having used many Samsung ssds in the past I am certain it will be incredibly reliable like its predecessors. Definitely a worthwhile upgrade.
mystermo31 –
Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD is the true next generation storage solution.I have been using some decent PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs, but when it is paired with my Ryzen 9 3900X and X570, this is a next leap forward in terms of speed simply amazing performance.In my storage benchmark, it shows 6,708MBs sequential read, and 4,874MBs sequential write. So this is perfect option those who read and write big files fromto it.Only problem is that I could not find any games and software that can take full advantages of its raw speed. Well its not Samsung 980 Pro SSD problem anyway.I highly recommend Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD for those who want to experience next generation PCIe 4.0 speed.
Scott –
For me, the read speed is more like 6300 than 7000 as advertised but its still 11 times faster than the original drive that it replaces. I had to upgrade my BIOS to accommodate it and managed to toast the board which was a major issue requiring replacement. To anyone looking to do something similar, find a youtube video that shows you what to expect before you do it. Another way to avoid problems is to leave the room after you press the OK button and wait until its all over. Do not panic and do interfere with the process The system will reset itself a few times before its all finished.
cstormer1 –
This SSD is fast Installing Windows 10 and all relevant software was quick with no errors. I did notice a few seconds load improvement on Final Fantasy XIV. I did see a big improvement with file transfer speeds as well. The biggest improvement was for Java edition Minecraft where I saw load times cut in half. You will need a newer motherboard with a 4.0 M.2 slot to take full advantage of this drive. As you can see from the screenshots the performance is greatly improved in a 4.0 slot. My motherboard did come with a heat sink for my M.2 and underload temps remained under 35 Celsius. This drive is a beast and I highly recommend this drive for for both your main drive and game drive. My only wish is that they made them in a 2TB capacity.
BPTech –
So I have a new gaming rig I built last year, but was using an old Samsung NVME SSD the 980 pro which only is PCI 3. While it still works amazingly well, I wanted something that would utilize the new PCI 4 capability of my computer. I have a Ryzen 5600X as well and needed something to pair nicely with this. This Samsung NVME drive hits the sweet spot in meeting that mark.I will admit, I did have issues getting my motherboard to properly read the PCI 4 on all 4 lanes, I had to troubleshoot and found that it was because I swapped it out from PCI3 to 4 in that NVME slot on my mobo, so it confused it, I had to just remove all NVME drives out my computer, boot it, then reseat and voila.After everything was settled, I used the Samsung data migration tool to migrate my old NVME to the new one. To clone about 500gb of data, it only took 11 minutes which is incredibly fast.After it was up and running, the benchmarks blew my mind. Getting about 7000 read 5200 write on a constant basis. But honestly, in terms of boot time, not a big difference between PCI3 and 4, and same with loading times of applications. But in terms of game load times, a slight improvement, and also when working with large sets of data to transfer, this thing blows PCI3 cards out of the water.If you do a lot of gaming, video editing, music production, or just want a future proof massive NVME drive, then this is the drive for you.
Jordan S –
To be clear, Ive never owned an M.2 SSD until now. This M.2 I heard was suppose to be fast and the specs have it as a top tier SSD.Its really fast, Im able to edit videos really quickly and do playback at full speed, no hiccups. While playing games, I dont see long loading screens and no frame drops when I stream. Applications run smoothly.I would advise pro gamers and video editors to not settle for less than a 980 pro. I got mine for 199.99 which is a steal. This SSD is worth the cost and will help with all video and 3D projects. I highly recommend this SSD.
Ciprip1 –
This is the best and fastest drive I have ever had by far. Replaced my generic Samsung NVME with the new 512gb 980 Pro in minutes Using Samsungs excellent cloning software, I cloned my existing NVME to the new 880 Pro and replaced it, booting up using the new 880 Pro with Windows booting up in mere seconds.Literally took maybe 10 minutes total Technology sure has come a long way from the old days. Im actually seeing double the write performance for the 980 Pro over the generic Samsung NVME Ive been using.The new PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.3 interface is quoted to deliver some very impressive numbers. Samsung indicates that the 980 Pro can reach up to an unprecedented 7GBs in sequential read and 5GBs in sequential write. Random reads and writes have the potential to hit the million IOPS mark in throughput at Q32T16.Though this quoted performance from Samsung is very exciting, users will need a compatible system to reach these numbers. Moreover, both the Xbox Series X and PS5 will feature PCIe 4.0 compatibility for those who want the most out of their nextgen console. Hardcore gamers will certainly be looking for more options in the near future specifically the PS5, which indicates support for 3rdparty NVMe PC drives. That said, consoles use custom hardware and components, so its really hard to anticipate how nonpropriety drives will perform in these nextgen consoles.I absolutely love the performance of my new drive and most likely will purchase an additional one once PS5 becomes compatible with it. Definitely recommend it if youre looking for the very best
N8iveWarMachine –
I was excited when Samsung finally released their new gen 4 nvme. I noticed some big improvements over gen 3 nvme when transferring files. I mainly bought it for the reliability and always being the best in hard drive area. Mostly all the 1TB gen 4 nvme cost around the same. I have this drive installed on my MSI x570 motherboard with the included heatsink that comes with the motherboard
meStevo –
The bleeding edge of speed and technology is here with the PCIE 4.0 compatible Samsung PRO line of internal SSDs. Quickly installed in the standard m.2 2280 form factor, Windows picks it right up and helps you put it to good use right away.Regardless of use productivity, gaming or your primary Windows drive the improvements in speed over a standard platterbased drive ranks among the biggest upgrade you can ever get for a PC. Ill never forget my first upgrade to SSD, watching my PC boot before my monitor was even finished initializing its amazing.With PCIE 4.0 compatibility the Samsung 980 PRO helps you get the most out of the latest chipsets and perhaps soon could serve as an expansion option for the PS5 once support has been enabled for the expansion slot Well soon find out
Eric –
Outstanding At first I was unable to initialize the SSD using my current laptop with an external connector, and eventually thought it might be defective because Ive initialized, formatted and cloned at least 6 Pro 970s with this method. Then I thought it was possibly due to the fact that this laptop only has PCIe 3.0 capabilities. So I installed it into my new MSI Unify motherboard, and sure enough, it was immediately recognized and I installed my OS. Once all the drivers were updated for the new home built desktop, this SSD works as described. Great match for the Ryzen 9 3950x
Anonymous –
Theres plenty of choice when buying NVMe drives these days but I decided on the Samsung 980 Pro as Ive bought Samsung SSDs before and found them reliable and usually among the best in class for performance. In Windows the drive capacity is listed as 1862.41 GB which because of how Windows calculates storage space compared to the drive manufacturer.Im very pleased with the 980 Pro, its fast and was easy to setup as my OS drive with the Data Migration tool. Also glad to have the extra storage space with game install sizes getting larger and more room for my Game Pass collection.
Batlacit –
Storage technology has been going through a bit of a meteoric boom over the past ten years, and during that time Samsung has consistently led the pack when it comes to both quality and raw performance. The 980 Pro continues this trend with their usual flare, offering an absurdly fast drive with a fiveyear warranty, excellent thermal characteristics, and their usual somewhat unassuming package.In the time since I received the drive Ive run tests in three different use cases which I think covers most of the likely use cases for this kind of m.2 NVMe drive a high end gaming desktop, a slightly older laptop, and a separate enclosure. The initial installation for all three is unremarkable for anyone with experience in performing new builds or upgrades. Despite its capacity they managed to cram everything onto a single sided PCB so it shouldnt have any issues with clearance or thermal issues in whatever you might want to put it in. The usual copperplated heat spreadersticker offers good adhesion to thermal pads and should NEVER be removed, by the way and based on the temps in my three test cases is very compatible with aftermarket heatsinks should you want to go that route. So long as your system has enough space to fit the 2280 form factor and virtually all of them do at this point I dont think theres any reason to be worried about not being able to install it.Performance in all three systems was excellent, and near the speeds quoted on the box in a system that supports PCIE 4.0. And that is an important consideration, because while it works fine in the older system which only supported PCIE 3.0 it did bottleneck at a read speed of 3500mbs, which is as much as the older interface can manage. In the newer system it generally does perform very near the 7gbs it claims on the box and in some cases actually exceeded it, but in most cases it seemed to hover just below the quoted readwrite speeds. Sustained write operations do tend to slow down considerably once the cache has been filled, which is to be expected with this kind of drive, but even saturated it was able to stay well above 1500mbs. Most impressive however was the drives thermal performance. It seems like just about everything in this current generation of hardware has a tendency to run hotter than the one that preceded it, but this one consistently ran cooler than the other m.2 drives I use under load, even with smaller heat sinks. Granted this isnt as concerning with an SSD as it would be with something like a CPU, as SSDs are usually pretty tolerant of higher operating temps so long as theyre consistent across the various memory cells, but its nice to know that I dont have to worry about it cooking itself in a laptop. What was weirder was to note that the operating temps were very consistent across all three systems despite each one having very different cooling characteristics, with the laptop which lacked a large heatsink or much ventilation only coming out a couple degrees higher than the desktop or external enclosure. Apparently Samsungs new drive controller does have some of its own tools for thermal regulation and this was a system that couldnt handle the drive at its full speed so its possible that I was just seeing some thermal throttling going on, but perhaps someone more knowledgeable about the particulars of SSD cooling will find this to be useful information. Gaming performance is excellent for both of the internal installs, though if Im being completely honest it seemed like a fairly marginal upgrade over the previous generation of Samsungs SSD. There are some very big potential gains to be had with the latest generation of GPUs, as they offer a much more efficient loading scheme when paired with this kind of drive, but as I like everyone else am still unable to get my hands on one of those GPUs I cant really comment on it.Once its in the drive can be managed via the Samsung Magician software, which is quite capable and hasnt really changed much in the past few years. Only thing Id note here is that if you want to use all the features it offers it seems that you really do need to have a motherboard with full support for PCIE 4.0, as otherwise its not going to be able to fully recognize the drive for what it is. Of course since youd be limited to running at half speed anyway due to the bottleneck, I cant imagine that too many people will find themselves in this situation.Ultimately while Id say that anyone would likely be thrilled with the performance this unit offers, Id only really recommend it to those who are building new systems or making additions to a system from the last year or so. As good as it performed in all the various systems, it really only became exceptional when installed in the latest hardware that could make full use of it. There are plenty of good drives you can get thatll make an older machine a bit more responsive or make a good Steam archive. But this is the computer equivalent of a race car, and it needs to be treated as such if youre going to get the most value out of it.
ambiskrazy1 –
This M.2 PCIe NVME drive is one of the fastest drives on the market. NvMe SSD is a must have if your a Gamer, Programmer, anything really. Large data transfer, fast boot up. The drive comes with a utility to migrate or clone the original drive which is a nice touch. Samsung also supplies a tool to test the speed of drive and display the SMART information in addition to check andor update the firmware of the drive. Aside from the fast read and write speeds, the Samsung 980 Pro also features an enhanced Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 technology. Compared to the previous Intelligent TurboWrite, Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 provides up to 5 times larger buffer. Behind the sticker on the back of the ssd you can see a copper heat spreader hidden beneath the sticker another nice touch. Thats quite a bit more than my current favourite NVMe SSD recommendation. Though this performance from Samsung is very exciting, im in love with this SSD.Test system on Motherboard ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XI HERO and StriX CPU Intel i9 RAM 2x 16GB DDR43200PCIe Gen4 performanceAES 256bit encryptionBlack PCBSoftware package5year warrantyI recommended 100.
IndyTechGuy –
The SSSD comes with a book that refers you to the motherboardlaptop manual for installation instructions. The Samsung 980 pro is a premium m.2 SSD. With the utilization of PCIe 4.0 NVMe, it achieves nearly twice the speed of my last generation SSDs. the IOPS inputoutput operations per second are not near the advertised 1000k, with most tests showing around 350k.The Samsung 980 pro is a good choice for most users that wont disappoint.
Daniel –
First and foremost, if you are purchasing this make sure that you have a PCIe 4.0 compatible motherboard. The item is PCIe 3.0 compatible, but if you will be running at PCIe 3.0, Samsung has other offerings that will be more cost effective.As far as real world speed, boot up time is 13 seconds, and I am consistently the fastest person to load and spawn in any online game. I dont have any work experience with this but it will excel in any storage heavy workloads.All in all, it is pretty much unnecessarily fast, so I cant really give it 5 stars for value, but it truly is amazing.
TechFan –
Would not recommend. Attempted to install this in an XPS 13 laptop hoping to take advantage of the new lanes. Was only able to get slight bumps…May not be a Samsung issue with as many BIOS issues as Ive had with Dell but regardless their driver and official software support is nascent on these. Using a stock Windows driver has been my only option. Would like to see something out there to check further to rule that aspect out.
MikeH9638 –
so fast. Single best purchase Ive made for pc in a long time. booted in seconds. went and bought another one immediately. needs a heatsink if your motherboard doesnt have one. If you have a mb with heatsink under the gpu keep an eye on temps. e.g gigabyte x370 g3, badly designed m2 position and heat shield. moved mine to new tuf 450 and super fast and cool.
TeChLuVr1 –
I had a tough time deciding on what device to install this SSD on. I already had some basic Samsung SSDs installed on both my desktop and laptop and already are pretty fast, but decided that I would try it on my desktop PC just to see how much faster it would be.The booting and loading differences are like night and day. It can handle more commands with the newer controllers larger IO queues and also helping with power consumption. The new tech for temperature control is top notch and only adds to its overall value. Make sure that you have a good cooling system installed.Transferring files have improved and my gaming feels buttery smooth. I suggest installing Samsungs Magician software for even more handson and control of your SSD. I am undoubtedly beyond pleased. 2 thumbs up
Anonymous –
This drive is replacing a 500GB 860 EVO. Using Samsungs Magician software to benchmark, I went from 546MBs read and 484MBs write on that 860 to 6556MBs read and 5210MBs write performance. Thats approximately an 1100 speed increase Of course, switching from SATA to PCIE 4 is a large part of that, but this drive really is one of the fastest consumer drives on the market. Its not cheap but for this level of performance, you get a lot for what you do pay. Frankly, this drive was an indulgence and I couldnt be happier with it in my new build. If you can afford it, get one of these
Trev –
If NVMEs PCIE Gen 3 are fast as is The speed on the Gen 4s are just faster. You probably wont realistically notice the difference like you do from HDD to SSD but it is just that small top off on performance. I got this for gaming and using with Ray Tracing games, from the research i have done that is where you will notice a performance difference. I am sure this helps with Video Editors as well. Think High Intensity performance boosts IF you are getting just for an OS then you are probably overdoing it.
Justin –
Very happy with this product. Recently switched to Ryzen 3950X until the 5950X is more obtainable at the time of this review. Using PCIE 4.0, I managed to score 6724MBS Read, 4945MBS Write. Their product page says up to 70005000 so I call that close enough to be more than happy with it. Enough that Im back here to buy a 2nd one, now that I know it lives up to the claims. Excellent work. Dissapointed I cant find these from Samsung themselves, the 1TB model. Bestbuy seems to be one of few places with them in stock but I mean hey, stock is stock
T.N. –
I have 4 of these in a Highpoint SSD7505 raid controller. The photo is a speed test done with only Windows 10 and motherboard drivers installed. Just wish they came in a 2TB size. Updated. Added 2 more to my motherboard. The second image is a speed test of 2 980 pros striped.
jll544 –
Samsungs 980 PRO SSD has delivered my PC into the next generation of gaming and content creation. While Ive previously owned an SSD, theres a world of difference between a SATA drive and this NVMe SSD running on PCIe 4.0. With peak speeds reaching 6,900 MBs, the 980 PRO wont ever be the bottleneck slowing down my computer.Installation was as simple as inserting the SSD into an M.2 slot and securing with a single screw. The 980 PRO doesnt include a heatsink, but even without one, the SSDs firmware and thermal design do a great job at keeping the heat under control. The 980 PROs performance, temperature, security, and health are all easily monitored and configured through Samsungs excellent and freetodownload Magician software.In use, the 980 PRO has proven both exciting and essential. Loading times are blissfullyshort in games old and new. Im always among the first to load into multiplayer lobbies, so my teammates never wait on me. Of course, this SSDs benefits extend well beyond gaming. Windows boots up in a flash, browsing through thousands of photos is a breeze, and 4K video editing works fluidly, all thanks to never needing to wait on storage.Samsung warrants the 980 PRO for five years or 300 TB written for the 500 GB SSD. My previous experience with Samsung SSDs suggests that I probably wont ever invoke the warranty, but theres great peace of mind in knowing that Samsung stands behind this drive for a long time.Overall, I highly recommend this SSD for gaming and beyond. With modern consoles now integrating their own highspeed SSDs, games will be both designed around and best experienced with highperformance storage. Theres no better way to bring your PC into the next generation than an upgrade to the Samsung 980 PRO.
DHCrocks –
I replaced my M.2 SSD in my LG Gram with the new 980 Pro, super simple to install and no problems installing a fresh install of windows 10. The original laptop came with a SSD but this is on a whole nother level. I did a drive test before and after and the 980 is the real deal….incredible speeds out of this thing. Im getting 3218 MBs read and 3311 MBs write….holycow. my laptop does seem a little snappier and boots quicker but its not mindblowing like going from a HDD to a SSD. If youre going to get a SSD I would highly recommend this one, the performance is like no other.
laserwizard –
I bought this to upgrade one laptop only to find that the laptop, while it said it was NVME had a much shorter card space available I thus ended up testing this two ways.Desktop with PCIE 3.0 had write and read speeds around 3400 mbs that was a significant upgrade from the 1400 I was seeing in the replacement drive.I then decided to see what this drive would do after I wiped it and used it as an external drive so I purchased a name brand and quality NVME external enclosure that used usbc. The speeds werent as fast, but they were still around 1200 which surprised me and considerably faster than the spinning drive externals I had been using. I did tax this as an external drive by running a program that captured over a dozen video feeds and had them writing at the same time without a glitch of any sort. The unit did not get very hot and the case did a good job of dissipating heat.Id definitely recommend this drive it is of course a Samsung which makes it a high quality product it delivers as advertised and I cant wait to install it on my next computer that will have a PCIE 4.0 slot. This is a beast even as I use it now it will be amazing later on
TechNinja –
This might be the fastest NAND SSD you can find. Its a legit prosumer level SSD. I have been waiting for a while for Samsung to release their Gen4 SSD. They were promising some crazy speeds, and based on my testing they have delivered. My use for the SSD was for gaming and some 4k video editing. I did not bother to do readwrite speed tests as those are literally everywhere. Instead, ill give you some thoughts on some more realworld use. If you are like me and planned to buy this SSD for gaming, then you will be happy with this drive. On average, I was seeing a 50 speed increase on my load times versus my old SATA SSD. Thats pretty incredible and changes your gaming experience. However, before you run out to buy one and show off your PC is as fast as a SpaceX rocket, make sure your motherboard supports PCIe GEN4. As far as installation, it couldnt be any easier. Its actually easier than an HDD or SATA SSD. There is no need for running new cables since it just snaps directly into your MOBOs PCIe port.If you are looking to give your PC a really effective boost on its performance, Im not sure theres a better place to start than a blazing fast SSD. This is the best one I have tested, and probably the fastest you can buy right now. If thats what youre looking for, this SSD checks off all the boxes.
Batlacit –
Theres no other way to say this PCIe v4 is ludicrous by design. And Samsung has taken full advantage of that with this drive. This is great if youre after the best performance you can possibly get but you should be aware that it asks a fair bit in return.First thing you should be aware of is that the quoted read speeds of 6.4 gbs are definitely achievable, but only if you have the latest hardware which is capable of taking full advantage of it. This means you need a 10th generation Intel or 5th generation AMD CPU paired with a compatible motherboard that comes with a PCIe 4 controller. Out of curiosity I also stuck it in an older computer that only has PCIe 3 and while it did eventually work, it required that I flash the BIOS before Windows could properly recognize the drive.And as youd expect it was also limited to PCIe 3 read and write speeds, which is a little under 4 gbs. In other words, I wouldnt really recommend this particular drive for anyone but someone looking to build a new system at this time. Eventually PCIe 4 will be ubiquitous, but for now theres not much point in picking up a drive like this for an older laptop or desktop when you cant use it to its full potential.When you do pair it with a modern board though WOW. I havent seen a performance jump quite this big since they first introduced high speed NVMe drives a few years back. With this as a boot drive my computers startup time is about as close to instantaneous as you can expect with a desktop OS, and it offered fantastic load times for the very large VR games that I stuck on it for testing Elite Dangerous Skyrim VR. It doesnt eliminate load times completely the games are a bit too large for that and there are other bottlenecks within the SSD that prevent it from being able to maintain its top read speed constantly, but they were more than quick enough to keep me from getting pulled out of the action by the loading screens. Whats more because its a PCIe v4 drive it should also support direct access from the GPU once those features start rolling out in the near future with the latest cards from Nvidia and AMD, so were likely to see another very enviable performance bump within this units lifetime. And since its Samsung, thats likely to be a very long lifetime compared to some of the alternatives.Bottom line if youre after some of the best performance you can get with the new generation of tech, you owe it to yourself to take a look at this drive.
Erik K. –
As of this review Im using this in an ASUS RoG laptop that only supports PCIE Gen 3 x4 so I cant fully get the Gen 4 speeds, but this is partially a futureproof purchase for me. If you dont have a Gen 4 capable laptop motherboard youll only get speeds similar to the 970 series which are still great but not necessarily worth the price of a 980. Its fully backwardscompatible with Gen 3 though. As with any Samsung NVME drive make sure to get updated Samsung NVME drivers from their site Intel RST will fail to get any kind of performance out of them, and the default MS drivers often do not include the Samsung drivers as of this writing version 3.3 Had a superannoying time trying to use the Samsung migration tool among other tools to migrate from my 970 Evo until I realized I needed to update the firmware 3B2QGXA7 boot sector and weird disk errors. After updating, a sectorbysector clone with bitlocker enabled worked ok as well it worked ok before to read the drive as well, just with a messedup boot sector. Other users reported serious performance drop after some time with previous firmware Ive not seen that myself at all, but Im using more or less a standard office gaming laptop with overprovisioning no hardware raid.
DragonIvre –
If you are a gamer or content creator, this drive is definitely yours. You will definitely get the maximum speed. This Samsung 980 Pro changed the game.The fact that this Samsung SSD 980 Pro is a TLC drive allows you to write much faster.The longest drive, I was looking for a drive that can handle what Im doing and I finally found it.Installing the drive took less than 1 minute because I was building a new system and the motherboard was still out of the case.I would highly recommend
UserfromMass –
Im currently running this on a Gigabyte Vision D Z490 board, which means its only running at PCIe 3.0 speeds while on 10th Gen. Ill eventually upgrade to Rocket Lake which will support PCIe 4.0, but in the interim… I cloned my Samsung 960 EVO 250gb drive and moved it to be a game drive, with this 500GB 980 as my primaryboot. The free Samsung Data Migration software cloned the drives without issue.One quick pass with Magician showed the following980 EVO 500GB vs. 960 EVO 250GBUsed Space 95GB 100GBWritten 578 GB 14.3 TBTemp 38C 34CRead Seq MBs 3584 3274Write Seq MBs 3362 1563IOPSRandom 344726 257324IOPSWrite 279052 274902On paper, its definitely faster and runs a little warmer. I dont necessarily see a difference, as my 4yr old 960 EVO wasis fast. I had some gift cards to burn and treated myself to an upgrade while separating my game drive from my primaryboot drive. Would have liked 1TB, but didnt need it in my specific case. If I had a 970 PRO or 970 PLUS, I probably wouldnt have upgraded. As of this post, still no Samsung 980 PRO drivers.
dlowen –
I have always been a fan of Samsung SSDs. This one is no exception. PCIE 4.0 offers a new level of speed for gaming. I plan to eventually use this inside of my PS5 since it was announced as one of the supported drives. Unfortunately, the support for external drives does not exist at this time. Currently using this drive in my gaming PC and it offers unreal speeds. There is not a lot to say about it except that the 2TB size offers plenty of space and speed to play any game you could imagine. Samsung offers great software that you can download to help setup and manage the drive as well. It does not come with any huge heat syncs which allows it to fit into practically any M.2 slot. I would highly recommend this drive to anyone looking for more storage and speed for their gaming setup. This drive would also be a great option for anyone who does a lot of photo or video editing.
RogStrix –
If your workflow requires blazing readwrite speeds, you cant go wrong with this samsung PCIE4.0 m.2 ssd.Running with a ryzen 5950 and a asus x570 motherboard with heatsinks, had no issues on stress tests reports did not show any issues with thermal throttling.Highly recommended if you need the speeds. Outside of dedicated PCIE storage this ones the best one out there.
Nathan R –
This product is incredible. Fast as heck, holds a solid amount of storage, and has longevity of life.Thats about all you could hope for in an NVMe, so you should buy it, right Well no.Heres the thing, odds are, youre looking for extra storage so you can keep up with all of the 100GB updates on Warzone or so you have enough storage to download Halo Infinite when it comes out if it ever comes out. And if youre just a gamer looking for extra storage for games, dont buy this. Its seriously more than what youll need or ever notice.If youre a hobbyist video or photo editor… still probably dont buy this.So who should buy this Only those who need to take advantage of the readwrite speeds in order to improve on their career productivity.OR those who have too much money in their pocket and can afford to make unwise financial decisions.This thing is stupid expensive for what it is, I only bought it cause it was an open box item and I was curious about whether someone like me a gamer could take advantage of something like this NVMe. This review is a result of my eventual conclusion.Great product. Like, incredible product. But only buy if youA are actively making money and you need this NVMe to make more money.B have a lot of money to spend and dont like spending it wisely.C have trust issues with brands other than Samsung.
Gary –
samsungs 980 pro is a pcie 4 m.2 nvme ssd. this is a highend product this is the fastest flashbased ssd i can purchase. though this quoted performance from samsung is very exciting, you will need a system which has pcie 4 to reach this number. samsung has also highlighted intelligent turbowrite 2.0 technology which delivers 5 times the buffer size. that means under large workload will not decline the performance. this ssd is also builtin advanced thermal control solutions allow for the drive to perform well at cool temperatures. it is important for me, and i plan to use this ssd to build my ai training server system. overall, this ssd is fastest ssd i can find from the market, and it has allnew elpis controller, backwardscompatibility with pcie 3.0, and nvme 1.3 support.
redtarget –
I used this 980 Pro SSD to upgrade the hard drive in my son PC. I figured it will be a big performance improvement since the drive in his PC was a Samsung 860 EVO SATA III and this one is PCIe 4.0 NVMe m2 drive. I cloned the Samsung 860 SSD and no problem encountered Removed the old drive and installed the 980 Pro drive. I was impressed with the improved performance. Boot up time, opening applications, disk related activities were much faster. I ran a quick benchmark of the Samsung 860 and Samsung 980 Pro using CrystalDiskMark and the differences was 67 times faster. Since this computer doesnt support PCIe 4.0, I imagine this 980 Pro SSD will perform even better with PCIe 4.0 interface. This drive is gear toward power users or gaming pc.
Justin O. –
Dont worry about pulling the trigger on this one. A 1TB 980 pro is worth your hard earned cash, if you want faster load times in game. It does not disappoint. Its just more of a fact rather than an exaggeration. Well until PCIE 4.0 Optane comes out. Current Optane 4K random reads still beats this product, but at 5 times the price or more. So for the price of the 980 pro its a solid choice for gaming.
Turbolence –
One of the most prominent players in the consumer solid state disk SSD space has been Samsung. Since 2006, Samsung has regularly offered among the highestperforming SSDs on the market, delivering performance and reliability that other manufacturers have struggled to match. As the computing industry moves to the latest PCIe 4.0 interface, so too have SSD manufacturers begun offering new drives to take advantage of the increased speeds. Samsungs 980 Pro SSD is the companys first offering optimized for the new interface, promising toptier performance for the latest desktops, laptops, and game systems designed to harness every fragment of speed on offer. The packaging itself promises Unstoppable Speed, and though it sounds lofty, Samsung is right on the money here.Note that this drive is sold barebone that is, the only thing in the box is the drive itself. There are no adapters, cables, or software included to transfer your data from existing disks to the SSD, and thus this product is not intended for novice users. If you are not familiar with moving or reinstalling your operating system e.g. Windows, MacOS, speak with a Geek Squad associate for recommended services prior to purchasing. Unboxing InstallationWith little more than the disk itself and an installation guide with warranty information booklet in the box, the 980 Pro has more packaging than product. The NVMe M.2 disk is the standard 2280 22mm x 80mm size, about as large as a stick of gum, and has a sticker covering the NAND with all the usual branding. The lack of heatsink is a surprising omission as PCIe 4.0 disks are very fast and run warm most other brands include one even though their overall benefit is debatable.Installing the 980 Pro is as simple as installing any other M.2 SSD. Once recognized by the system, the disk will need to be initialized then formatted by the operating system prior to use this typically occurs during an OS installation. Samsung uses the 1 TB 1,000,000,000,000 bytes metric to market the drive thus, formatted capacity is 931.5 GB. There is in fact a full terabyte of NAND memory onboard but the remainder is used as overprovisioning space, which helps to extend the life of the drive by spreading data writes to the leastused memory cells before rewriting existing ones. A fiveyear, 600 terabytes written warranty should cover most use cases as only power users will see that much data written within five years, much less ten. PerformanceSimply put, the 980 Pro is unbelievably fast. Whether its being used in a PCIe4 or PCIe3 slot, the performance of the memory controller is the best in class. On a PCIe3 slot it handily beats competing disks, almost completely saturating the 3,940MBs bandwidth available on the NVMe PCIe x4 interface for sequential operations. Random read and write performance blows away premium branded drives by an order of magnitude, shining a bright light on Samsungs new 8nm Elpis memory controller that performs exceptionally well under load even in bandwidthrestricted scenarios.Once on a PCIe4 slot proper, the memory controller is unleashed to provide its maximum performance. The read and write speeds move from incredible to mindboggling even though the packaging advertises speeds up to 7,000 MBs read and 5,000 MBs write, benchmarks show the disk meeting and at times exceeding these ratings. I dont recall the last time I saw an SSD perform better than its advertised specs. Random performance jumps up even more to speeds that outpace sequential operations on premium PCIe3 disks.What this all translates to is a computing experience that waits for no one. The 980 Pro moves so fast that applications rarely take any appreciable amount of time to open, and those that do are no fault of the SSD but of my 12core processor trying to catch up. Games load in even less time than they did on a PCIe3 disk, and copying files happens so fast that Windows rarely even has time to calculate how long the operations take before theyre done copying. Its a complete blowout. Bottom LineIf you want the best of the best, this is the disk to get. If your computer has the hardware to back it up, Samsungs 980 PRO SSD outperforms in every regard. I would argue the only downside would be its price, which at a 229 MSRP for the 1TB model is a tough pill to swallow when 2TB premium disks are going for that much as of this writing. If you lack the hardware to support this disks performance then youd be just as well served by a more economical option Samsungs 970 SSD models are still plenty fast PCIe3 disks that will leave SATA SSDs in the dust.The 980 Pro SSD promised to be a cutting edge disk for those seeking the best performance on the market today, and Samsung has delivered in spades. If thats what youre looking for, the 980 Pro comes highly recommended
spressa –
Good SSD and hit advertised speeds, but sustained writes over 150gb did slow down considerably which shouldnt happen. I reformatted my OS and tried it again and the same issue happened again. I then put them in another one of my machines as just a secondary drive and it did the same thing again. I dont really hit the 150gb write level often but when I do, its kind of frustrating that this shouldnt happen. I knocked off a star cause reading the forums, it should be fixed in a future firmware hopefully.
Lawrence –
With one word of caution. AT THIS WRITING AMD processors support the new PCIE 4.0 standard that this drive operates on. Intel processors are not scheduled to be released that support this new protocol until 2021.I paired this drive up with a non PCIE 4.0 Intel chipset based on the products advertisement that it is backwards compatible. I can say truthfully it is not backwards compatible.When I employed this drive I received error, after error, after error from Windows 10, notwithstanding that Samsung has not yet even released a Windows driver for this drive. It used the Windows 10 default 2006 Microsoft driver to operate with.Once I took it out of that system and put in a PCIE 3.0 drive that the system supported, all errors disappeared.Intel processor users will just have to wait until later this years when Intel chipsets supporting this new protocol are are mainstream.
Abula –
Overall its imo the best all around PCIe 4.0 NVME drive on the market, Sabrent Rocket Plus has a very good offering, but it seems to have some issue with endurance, and WD 850 seems a slightly faster drive, but runs 10C higher. Benchmarks place this as a very fast drive, and with x570B550 you are set, price wise its not as expensive as the old PROs, its more in line with the EVOs initial release pricing… again baffles me why this is called a PRO instead of an EVO.
parapraxis –
If youre looking for an ultra fast and durable NVME drive, this is the one to get. Get the capacity that fits in your budget, but if you can I highly recommend springing for the 2TB model.I replaced a 500GB PCIe 3.0 drive with the 980 Pro. Utilizing Samsungs data migration, I transferred the old drive to the 980 without a hiccup. With the 980 installed in the PCIe 4.0 slot and the old drive mounted in the PCIe 3.0 slot, I was able to clone the old drive about 210gbs in around 22 minutes. This process was completely smooth and error free, the hardest part was remembering where I stashed the mobo hardware so I could install both drives at once.I successfully transferred BF1, BFV, GTA5 from a SATA SSD to the 980 in under 3 minutes each. Thats nearly 270GB of data files, in under 10 minutes. Maybe my old NVME boot drive was slow it was comparatively but thats insanely quick in my book.You will not be disappointed with this drive. The price is high, but you get what you pay for. Samsungs top tier NAND chips combined with their best in house controller and the 980 Pro is easily the best choice for a consumer NVME boot drive budget allowed of course. I personally would try and get at a minimum the 1TB model, as with 500GB capacity a few games can put you near capacity, especially if it is your shared boot drive.The benchmarks speak for themselves, with the 980Pro having nearly double the same readwrite speeds as the NVME drive it replaced.Hands down, buy this, you will not be disappointed.
Lawrence –
This SSD supports the new PCIE 4.0 standard. My laptop supports only the previous PCIE 3.0 standard.So, I was thinking the speed would still be the same as before given the situation. I was mistaken. This new SSD boots up faster than my previous 970 EVO Plus, so it is in fact an upgrade and future proof. However, the problem is not with the drive, the problem is with the Samsung driver.Samsung is at this writing only, making a driver available for their SSDs UP TO AND INCLUDING the 970 series only. There is no Samsung Elpis controller driver for this model. So, Windows 10 uses the builtin standard Microsoft NVME driver for Windows 10 that was written in 2006. Almost 15 years ago.So, I imagine that as soon as Samsung releases a new driver for this device, it will be even faster. Love it.
AdrianK29 –
The latest PCI 4.0 tech, when put into a supported motherboard its pushing performance into the realm of ludicrous speed. I paired it with the latest Ryzen CPU and motherboards, and so far it has exceeded expectations, I deal with large media files and rendering with bootup speeds and access speeds that are pretty much instant, its very impressive With the drive you also get access to Samsungs excellent software packages for monitoring and data migration, and AES 256bit security encryption.
C. –
I just spent two days trying to get the SSDs hardware encryption to work with Windows Bitlocker Nothing worked. And there is NO documentation on how to activate it Googling it brings up lots of people having issues… I could not even get it to use Bitlocker software encryption after doing the Samsung Data Migration as the OS drive. In the end I simply had no other options I went back to my 970 EVO and software encryption for the OS drive and used the 980 PRO as a data drive with Bitlocker Software encryption. I tried everything on two different systems with the same problem Big marketing hype for something that does not work and is not documented. I find that the EVO is as good in reallife as the 980. Hardware encryption would have made it much faster. I should have saved my money and stuck with the 970 EVOs…
iluvndl –
This drive is Quick Games install lighting fast. I had a bumpy road with install. My laptop did not want to detect the drive at first and then had some issues with getting the drive to initialize. After a few hours of in and out and and settings changes i was finally able to get the drive to initialize and work. Temp gets a little warm in the laptop so Air flow is key. I installed as a second drive to store all my games. Performance wise it is 5 stars but i had to take one away for the difficulty with setup and getting the drive to work. I had multiple hardware errors and Samsung support wanted me to ship the drive back to them for repair but ended up getting it to work out in the end.The drive came packaged very well. I was impressed by that.
Anonymous –
Using this in a Alienware Aurora R9, fits perfectly…important because there is little to no space inside that case and the video cards are directly over the MVMe socket so no room for any extra thick or heat sink covered circuit boards. Even with the close spacing, running around 89 degrees farenheit. Running onPCIe 3.0 vs PCIe 4.0 due to board limitations but thats plenty fast…I prefer Samsungs reliability and always buy their top model.Highly recommended.
dren –
This is a really great hard drive. If you know what you are doing it installs really easily. I didnt try to do any imaging of my old drive or anything like that so I just reloaded windows from scratch.The install was nice and fast and everything went really smoothly.I havent been able to get the speed numbers that they advertise for this hard drive, but looking into it Im sure its my computer. It is a little bit older and I think Im getting everything my computer can handle. Still this is about 4 times bigger than my old hard drive so its still an improvement.When I was looking into my speed issue I realized this is the perfect hard drive to get the full benefit on the new PS5s, so Im thinking of getting a cheaper and slower hard drive for my laptop and then putting this in a PS5 when they arent out of stock anymore and I can get one.
Cueball2000 –
Since I use a lot of software that will not run on a new Mac, I have to wait until the software gets upgraded. In the meantime, Im running a MacPro Mid2010 5,1 which is the most upgradable Macintosh ever. I have upgraded many times over the past 10 years. I swapped out its original single Quad core 3.1 processor for a dual six core 3.46 running two 9650s, an 8Gb Radeon RX580, I installed 128Gb of RAM, a USB 3.0 card, a new BluetoothWiFi card and a 500Gb Accelerator SSD which at the time was the fastest SSD available for this 5,1 MacPro. It cost me over 500 at the time and it was way faster than the standard 7200 spinning hard drive. I recently called the company who made the Accelerator and asked about upgrading to a faster SSD and they told me it used a proprietary SSD and I would have to buy a whole new PCIe card from them which would cost over 500.I started researching other options and found that using this 1Tb Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD and a PCIe card that cost only 26 I would have a much faster drive than before. I installed this NVMe stick into the card and installed it into an available PCIe slot and the drive showed up right away with no problem. I formatted the card and used Super Duper to clone the original SSD over to it, selected the new drive as my startup disk and WOW It started up faster than I had ever seen it boot.This card is a PCIe 4.0 card and unfortunately the bus on my MacPro only has a PCIe 2.0 slot so Im not getting the fastest speeds this NVMe card can offer, so Im stuck at this speed. I ran some benchmark tests and it came in just slightly slower than a 2019 MacBook Pro. Not too shabby for a 10 year old MacPro.Im not a fan of the iMac since they are not easily repaired nor are the MacBook Pros or the MacMini. I cant afford the new MacPro that starts at 6,000 and goes up to around 50,000. Along with many other professionals, I keep hoping that Apple will come out with a lower priced MacPro or an upgradable MacMini Pro but it doesnt look like that will happen in the foreseeable future. For the time being, this NVMe card makes me feel like Im running a newer faster computer and I will tell everyone I know how easy it is to make their old computers feel brand new.
stevefromtheburbs –
What I did was to remove my drives that I have installed, and then installed this drive as my only drive, and installed Windows 10 onto this. In this way, all the partitions and such are on this SSD, which was to allow me to really get a feel for the speed increase.Installation was not difficult, but might be a bit more intimidating to someone who is not familiar with this style of drive. Once installed I loaded Windows 10 onto a thumb, and started the installation.My performance increase was decent. I found myself realizing that this newer technology is worth the money and worth the time to install, to realize the best performance out of my computer as possible. Why have the best gaming machine and not have the best components available to give you the edge when gaming Youll see a definite improvement with your gaming, but also I found programs like AutoCAD loading and running much faster. Needless to say, all other programs like web browsers, email, etc. were running faster as well and when I was running intense Excel sheets with multiple worksheets and lots of calculations, they too were improved.Dont be afraid to venture into this territory, it is worth the marked improvement in overall performance, but also certainly you will see an improvement in gaming and other programs that are intense.
Ejtsecond6 –
The new Samsung 980 Pro 500GB NVMe gaming drive is the best storage option for gaming and productivity purposes. Installation was a breeze. I replaced my much slower SATA drive with the new Samsung drive, and I noticed the difference instantly. My Windows boot time drastically improved and the overall speed of navigating and gaming made my CPU feel brand new. I am really impressed with this drive, as my loads times are greatly reduced now.Next I would suggest downloading the Samsung Magician software which gives indepth analysis and allows you to monitor the drives health. This is a must have and Im glad that Samsung included this software with the purchase of the drive.Samsung did not disappoint with the new Samsung 980 Pro. You will not go back once you experience the speed of PCIe 4.0. This drive takes gaming to the next level literally. I recommend this product as a must buy.
Texelena –
This SSD card was an upgrade to an older one installed in my home computer. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the complete upgrade I got from this one in both speed and space, the boot up time has exponentially decreased I have a lot more space for anything we need and its just been a great product all around. If youre looking for faster loading speeds, ease of install and an all around upgrade in SSD performance this is the product for you. 1010
awmartian –
My wife installed the Samsung 980 Pro in her gaming computer. It dramatically reduced game loading times. You do need a PCIE 4 computer system to take advantage of these speeds. The card itself is the size of a piece of candy and disappears into the motherboard. It spreads and dissipates heat evenly. According to her motherboard temp sensors it stays under 30 C even under load. Very impressed
stanmed09 –
I must say that this Samsung 980 PRO 500GB Internal Gaming SSD is a definite Must Have drive for anyone who seriously considers gaming and any high productivity computing. This little stick has so much to offer and I am glad I purchase it. Installation is quick and smooth. And then the magic begins ingame menu switching is instantaneous, load times are super fast thanks to its powerful transfer rates. Also this drive delivers 2x the data transfer rate of PCIe 3.0, while maintaining compatibility with PCIe 3.0, so if your PC does not have latest PCIe 4.0 you are still in good hands I am looking forward to putting this drive to use in my PS5, it will be a definite upgrade. I am very pleased with its performance and cannot even imagine having something faster in the future. I mean this drive is really more than enough for any game user.
Michael –
Really impressed with the speed of this SSD. Samsung also offers a handy software to manage your SSD and check on its S.M.A.R.T. statistics and drive health. I would recommend to anyone looking for a solid reliable SSD for gaming and general computer use. Seems to bottleneck under heavy sustained computing loads, but thats to be expected with consumer grade SSDs.
davlucmac –
It should be obvious, but it wasnt to me. To meet the advertised speeds on the box, the 980 pro must be paired with a PCIE 4.0 capable motherboard and CPU. Without that, youll get approximately the same speeds as all NVME on PCIE 3.0. The list of PCIE4 CPUs and boards is relatively short now, so beware.All that said when I upgraded my mobo CPU already supported PCIE, this drive absolutely SCREAMS. Incredible performance.
christian.b –
I love the Samsung 980 pro pcie 4.0. I have a 1 TB SSD Samsung 980 pro and The load time is for games. I myself am a gamer and I set all of my games to the highest level not only are the graphics amazing but I have no lag at all. Depending on your desktop case and motherboard make sure you have great cooling system they do get a bit hot. I also love the price that I get for it fast uploading speeds. You know what they say you get what you pay for.
Reyson –
I have a new Ryzen PC setup with this as my main OS drive. Very quick and have had 0 issues. It has been running in my PC for about four months now and recent Samsung Magician benchmarks show this running at 7085 Seq Read, 342529 Random Read, 5170 Seq Write, and 303710 Random Write. This is with 1.9TB total written use already to drive. I also have a WD m2 that performs a bit faster random RW but slower sequential speeds overall.
Daniel R. –
This drive is great allaround but its unique feature compared to the last generation is that it can use PCIe 4.0. As far as I know, the only chipsets that can take advantage of Gen 4 PCIe are X570 and B550 for AMD and Z590 for Intel. If youre not able to take advantage of that then youll probably get the same performance out of the previous generation of drives. The cost savings is pretty negligible, though.
Reginaldvs –
So Ive been buying Samsung SSDs ever since I started building PCs about 5 years ago. They never failed to impress. The reliability and constant firmware and software updates, other than performance, is what drew me in to Samsung. Hands down theyre the industrys best.Long story short, I got a good deal off a generic PCIE Gen 4 drive thats NOT Samsung so I was like Ill give it a try. A year later after using that drive, I started to have problems with my OS Windows 10. At the time, I thought it was the drive failing but it turns out it was just Windows 10 being corrupted, and the SSD was fine.So why am I telling that story Samsung drives will give you a peace of mind that it will rarely fail, and that its reliability and constant updates to its FW and software is amazing. If you have mission critical files, dont skimp and buy a Samsung drive. You wont be disappointed.
Joseph R –
I cant believe I actually got my hands on this product. I have searched everywhere for this. I have seen it on websites for a higher price.I couldnt wait to install it in my computer. It was a very simple install and setup. This ssd is very fast and the very best by far. I have purchased the 950 pro 512gb and 980 pro 1tb from microcenter. Microcenter restocks very fast and have the best deals. I strongly recommend purchasing from microcenter to all computer enthusiasts.
ESPI13 –
Samsung SSDs have always been the most reliable and offer the best performance for your money, in my experience. The 980Pro is a solid upgrade from the 960EVO it replaced.I had trouble initializing the disk from an external enclosure and noticed that it got much hotter than my previous Nvme drives. I thought the 980Pro was defective, but it actually powered up just fine when I installed it directly in the M2 slot on my motherboard and it has been stable ever since.Pcie 4.0 is only supported by AMD motherboards right now, but even if you have Pcie 3.0 youll notice decent speed gains 3,5002,800mbs if youre upgrading from a 960EVO 2,2001,800mbs or older.If youve never had an Nvme drive before and youre still on SATA SSDs or on nonNvme M.2 drives then youll be blown away by how much faster these are. Even if youre using an Nvme already and are just looking to upgrade storage space dont hesitate to buy this drive. Another solid A from Samsung.
GlobalScree –
Fast, reliable, low latency, and no component replacement shenanigans. not the cheapest price per GB or the largest drive, but reliably the best balance for any high end build.As with all PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives, consider themal dissapation. Some throttling may occur in tight spaces with no heatsink or airflow.
GoHack –
First of all, be aware, the Samsung 980 PRO M.2 NVMe SSD will only deliver the data transfer rate of PCIe 3.0 x2, on the latest Intel based systems, since Intel doesnt support PCIe 4.0 yet.Only the latest AMD based systems, support PCIe 4.0 x4. As such, you will get the fastest READ WRITE only on AMDs vs. on Intel.That being said, Im getting around 3216 MBs READ and 3313 MBs WRITE, according to CrystalDisk Mark 8.0.1, on my Intel NUC8i7HVK Hayes Canyon system, and its support of 3.0 x2. As such, I really cant go any faster, due to hardware limitations, but thats still fast.M.2 SSDs are very easy to install physically, and to install Windows 10 on. Be sure your system supports M.2 NVMe SSDs.I have no complaints at all, especially when it comes to Samsung products. I own four different PCsLaptops, and I run Samsung M.2 SSDs in all of them.
TTTESSELLATA –
Great value monitor for gaming. Curved, great contrast ratio, great price tag at the time of purchase. However If you are using this monitor for productivity AND gaming, then its going to require some tweaking… read trial and error.Out of the box there is significant ghosting when it comes to black text scrolling on a white background. Lots of little things that make productivity general use very annoying. All in all it took about 2 hours of trial and error adjusting to get this puppy running great for dual use.I ended up running at 120hz 10bit color depth.
AllAboutTech –
Verdict. This SSD drive provides ample space and performs very well so far. Installation was quick and easy. This gave me some muchneeded space on my laptop.Installation. Before starting your installation, I recommend watching some videos online so that you can figure out how to take apart your computer. Also, be sure to minimize the chance of static electricity damage to the SSD by touching other objects before handling the SSD. I was dreading having to transfer my OS from the existing 512GB SSD to this new SSD, but I was fortunate that my 17 Omen laptop had a second unused SSD slot. So installation was straightforward open the back of the laptop, load the SSD into the open slot, screw it down, reassemble the laptop, and format the new SSD. And its done 2TB of space just as I was running out of space on my existing 512GB SSD and 1TB SATA.Performance. The Samsung 980 Pro demonstrated fast read and write speeds. In general, PCle 4.0 performs much better than previous SSD generations. I didnt encounter any issues with massive file transfers, gaming, and graphics performance. Long term reliability cannot be ascertained yet, but so far so good.Things I love. Easy installation and formatting Fast read and write speeds Latest technology Snappy computer performanceOverall, this is a great solution to replace a SATA or small SSD drive, or to add to your existing storage. The latest technology that comes with this SSD ensures that you will have the great performance that will last.
Joshua S. –
This is a great product which I would happily recommend. You get what you pay for, and this SSD puts out speeds that are quite literally triple those of the lowerend M.2 drives. While pricey, most users wont need more than 1 GB for programs, games, files, etc. If youre looking for a drive just to boot from, the 250GB should be plenty without breaking the bank and youll get most of the benefits of the M.2 PCI Express 4.0 slot while freeing up disc bandwidth for your larger SATA drives. Notes for potential buyers the 1TB drive I got is singlesided, and Mkeyed. This guarantees wide compatibility, but you will likely have to add a second smaller thermal pad on top of the preinstalled one on your motherboard before slotting it in. Your experience may vary. Check your motherboard manual before installation to make sure that you are installing this drive in a PCI 4.0 slot on my Asus B550MPlus board, for example, the heatsink and thermal pads were preinstalled on the M.2 PCI 3.0 chipset slot, instead of the faster PCI 4.0 CPU slot. I had to remove the thermal pad and heatsink after installation and move them over to the proper slot after already installing it on the 3.0 slot and realizing the speeds were off. Not an issue with the SSD, but something you should be aware of regardless to potentially save some time.
buckeyestargazer –
The Samsung 980 Pro SSD is awesome I am seeing significantly faster transfer speeds than the previous Samsung SSD I had, and way faster speeds than a stock PCI 3.0 drive. I am not a gamer, but I regularly use SSD drive intensive processes and this drive has clearly boosted my processing speeds. I couldnt be happier
Mirvana –
The 980 Pro from Samsung is quite impressive and Im happy that I chose it for my video editing PC. I mainly do work with home videos and occasionally with other peoples footage. I am far from a professional. In fact, in full transparency, I dont really have the skill set to adequately test an SSD like this to within an inch of its capability so I dont feel comfortable providing hard data that is likely not valuable or pinpoint accurate coming from a novice.I can tell you from a normal Joe perspective that this thing is lightning quick and makes video editing and data transfer a snap. Loading videos from my Hero 8 takes no time at all and I can quickly move them over to Davinci Resolve for editing. I could see a noticeable difference in speed when editing.After formatting I ended up with 931 GB to play with and the additional capacity up from 256GB in my case was very, very welcome.I now have a faster SSD with significantly more storage from a brand that is known for their ability to push the limits in this space. Highly recommend this, especially if youre a gamer or a semiprofessional to hardcore PC user.
Andy –
This drive will remind you of when you took the leap and switched that first SSD in for your old spinning hard drive It is so fast, I am still amazed at how much of a change it made over my existing SSD. I also appreciate the size increase also, going from a 128GB to 2TB makes such a huge difference as well. Overall, I am very happy with everything but the price, but that is the cost of getting the results I have seenI am running this on an ASUS ROG laptop and am very happy with the upgrade. Now I have to save up to upgrade my other laptop, the size makes it so much more useful I just hope the price comes down a bit before I get to that point.I would absolutely recommend this drive for anyone needing cutting edge speed and space to relax a bit… just wish Windows didnt demand so much space without tweaking it
Tonqueen3 –
This SSD has awesome Performance, hands down the fastest memory Ive ever used. Load times are greatly reduced with this Samsung 980 Pro 500GB NVMe drive. I noticed the package states read speeds of 7000MBs and after looking at my specs I can say its true. Installing this drive was a breeze and windows recognized the drive right away which made installation plug and play. Keep in mind you will need a fourth generation PCI slot, recommended at least 4 channels 4×4, but 4×2 will work. The Samsung management software is amazing at monitoring your dives health which in turn help you keep an eye on temperatures. I cant wait until Sony unlocks the SSD bay on the PS5. I know it will speed up load times there as well. Because this drive has a M.2 form factor, not much room is need for most upgrades. I do highly recommend this drive for gamers.
Shin0bi272 –
samsung had the recipe for success by keeping their flash as mlc while everyone else went to tlc or 3d nand. this gave them the edge in speed for years. and with the fact that the average home user wont use up the number of writes on an mlc flash drive inside of 10 years i actually have an old vertex 2 from 2009 still going just fine they decided they could afford to switch to the same tactic that everyone else is using of some slc cache and then very slow tlc or even more than 3 layer flash for final storage.will you get the advertised speeds yes for a while till you run out of that single layer cache.will i recommend it to a friend no do your research and find out which other pcie4.0 m.2 drives beat this one and buy literally any of those.
Johnb –
Fast Very fast.Copied over win10 from another drive without a hitch. Runs about 51 Degrees C but says its normal in specs. Running for about a week without problems. Loads windows in about 5 seconds. Make sure tyou put some kind of heats sink on it if your motherboard doent have one. Running it in a PCIE4 next to my GPU. Saves space and power. Have it running in a ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero with 5950x and RTX3070 GPU. First time Ive used a NVME Drive.Saves a lot of space. Would definitely buy again.
strike1nc4 –
Samsungs move to the SSD market was met with an massive market appeal. They have proven generation after generation especially now in their 980 Pro Series to be serious about keeping their reputation solidified. I took a few benchmarks of my current drive and then took those same benchmarks after upgrading to the Samsung 980 Pro. I started off by cloning using a 3rd party software. Worked perfect took those benchmarks. Then I reformatted the drive and used the Samsung Data Migration tool to clone the drive over. This tool is nice because you can start the clone from within Windows. Very easy to use if youve never cloned a drive. The only negative with this since you are using windows it will take much longer to clone.I have been using the drive every day now for both working from home and personal use on my home workstation and its been rock solid and has shown a visible increase in performance. So many times hardware upgrades for business use doesnt show much in the ways of time speeds, but not the case with this drive.What is even more amazing is that my motherboard cant even do the max speeds the drive can handle and with that I still had performance gains of up to 3x faster in some benchmarks.Install of the M2. Type of drives for my motherboard design was interesting because they have it right below the video card slots, poor design of my board, but it was super easy. I installed the drive within 5 mins.Finally packaging that it was shipped in was solid and gave me confidence that it would be well protected during transport.
BillFromKC –
I received this product in exchange for my fair and unbiased review.If you want fast storage thats reliable, the Samsung 980 Pro Series is it.Using a Ryzen 5800X on a B550 motherboard with PCIe 4.0 NVMe compatibility, I got reads a little better than 7100 MBps and writes at nearly 5300 MBps. It does get a little warm while being pushed to this limit, however, so make sure you use a heat sink of some kind with it. I also tried it out in my Ryzen 5500upowered laptop, which used Zen 2 architecture and PCIe 3.0 NVMe, I pegged reads and writes at 3600 MBps each.Samsungs software also makes firmware updates on this drive easy.Recommended Yes, as long as you either have or plan on upgrading to something with PCIe 4.0, as the cost isnt justified in a PCIe 3.0 system.
VegasInsider –
980 PRO is wonderful. This NVME drive can give you the maximum speed of NVME 4.0. I install this into my new system. It is a blazing SSD in the market. Running lots of graphics and data analysis is not a problem as the SSD has highperformance bandwidth capabilities and excellent cooling. I highly recommend this SSD to those who find a NVME 4.0 drive for their new or upgrading their old system.Pros Speed Unlikely to ever fail Warranty Sampson magicianCons May run hot make sure to cool it appropriately probably not the best choice for hot laptop chassis Needs pcie 4.0 again, excludes most laptops
Dman –
Very fast. Although you will only notice the difference in heavy work station applications. Which I do use. Although in one application my 970 pro edges it out. So that program I run on my 970. It only beats it by a couple of seconds but those seconds add up to minutes by the end of the day, and an hour or so by the end of the week. Doesnt make a difference in gaming. Overall I am pleased with the purchase. No issues or failures.
CrysisComplex –
Samsung 980 Pro NVME PCIe 4.0 is one quick SSD. The lighting quick drive move over files quickly at a insane speed. The drive is lighting fast moving over hundreds upon hundreds of gigs of data in a matter of seconds. Large Steam files moved over rapidly from my game library.I had easily installed a 2nd NVME slot on Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 which was a breeze. The drive is small but carefully placing it inside was was a snap. I place some games on the drive like Cyberpunk 2077, Final Fantasy XV, Doom Eternal, MK11, GTAV, and Resident Evil Village. Loading times was improved at an insane rate. Forza Horizon 4 photo was at an Instant at loading the scene. Applications open up at an lighting speed. Photos will show default real world testing.I love the drive and give ample amount of storage space for my gaming needs. Its fast and quick, I believe Samsung as usual make fantastic NVME drives so the reliability is good. Of course if you have a Gaming PC, Want to make your laptop faster, or just want more storage. This is clearly a top preforming drive.
JGal1 –
The SSD has great performance it reads and writes fast, the thermal control is a plus to keep the temperature steady while working hard. It maximizes my computers performance. It comes with the software to recognize the memory right away and I can check on it and how well it is performing. Overall it is easy to replace the old one to the Samsung and right away the speed was improved.
ISAAC N. –
I would recommend this product due to the easy out of the box configuration. I am new to pc building. No issues, other than user learning curve. I did not use the software from the manufacture and the product still runs great Fastest boot for an OS, I have ever owned. I use to buy prebuilds. NOT any More lol
msumulong –
The Samsung 980 PRO 2TB PCIE 4.0 x4 NVMe Gen4 Internal Gaming SSD M.2 is blazing. Though I still have to setupbuild a gaming rig with a PCIE 4.0 compatibility for my son. I did try it on his HP Pavilion i5 gaming laptop with only PCIE 3.0. For those wondering this will work on older motherboards, these SSDs are backwards compatible.First, I installed the RAM card on an enclosure and used is as an external drive. Transfer rates average at 95mbps whereas our backup ssd external drives have a transfer rate of a maximum of 48mbps. Then using Samsungs data migration tool, I was able to clone 240gb of data from our gaming laptop to this drive for roughly an hour or roughly 4gb per minute. Once done, I have noticed that the SSD was extremely hot. So I then had to purchase a 1 mm copper heatsink with thermal tape.I then installed it to our laptop and boot times was extremely fast. My estimate was not over thirty seconds perhaps less. I just counted and our previous SSD boots in within a minute or so. Using Samsung Magician, I observed the temperature of the SSD was at 46C 34C upon startup with the heatsink on which is still considered as normal. I would guess that without the heatsink installed, the temperature would be around 6070C.The speed of this SSD is still not yet maximized as I have not yet made a PCIe 4.0 based gaming rig. But it sure is definitely fast. One thing to note that at this point in time it is quite expensive as it still considered bleeding edge. Add the fact that there is a chip shortage as of time due to the pandemic hence really increasing the price. That said I would still recommend this SSD but I would also recommend it that you use it on a PCIe 4.0 compatible motherboard to fully maximize its potential.
Jimmy D –
The closest thing I had to an SSD before I built my pc was the one built into my MacBook and this 980 pro is just something different. I went from playing games off an internal HHD and put them into this and the performance just feels much snappier. Im so very happy and kinda splurged impatiently knowing I shouldve bought the 2TB but man am I satisfied. If youre in the market for a new NVMe drive, this is the one. I cant wait to test the limits of this baby.
BC –
This is the first and last Samsung drive Im going to be purchasing. I spent a few days wrapping my head around why the performance was so degraded. It seemed to run fine the first day after setting up Windows on a fresh build, but as the week progressed the performance degradation was painfully frustrating. Anyways, after hours of digging, it looks like the sustained performance speeds suffers tremendously once your workload exceeds the internal cache. What this means is when the cache gets saturated youll notice a nosedive in your SSD performance, it effectively needs to recover during these supposed idle rounds. But unfortunately, the cache recovery isnt immediate, because what users on the Samsung forums have suggested is waiting a few hours yes, hours for the intelligent dynamic cache to recover. So this begs the question, what is even the point of this then You do some work on your workstation and then you have to take a few hours off Anyways, I regret ever buying this, I suggest looking into the Western Digital SN850.