Samsung’s fast, PCI 4.0-ready 980 Pro SSD can prove the future of building your PC

Samsung has unveiled its next high-performance NVM 2280-sized M2 drive, the 980 Pro. So far, it comes in three shipping this month: 250 GB for GB 89.99, 500 GB for 9149.99, and 1 TB for T 229.99. The 2TB model will arrive later this year, but Samsung has not shared its price.

The standout feature of this drive is its compatibility with the M2 slots on the PCI interface.0 interface. If you have a compatible motherboard, say the 980 Pro can go to tears with a gradual read / write speed of up to 7,000 MB / s and 5,000 MB / s, respectively. It claims that this is twice as fast performance as PCI SS.0 SSD and cheaper but slower STSSD. About 1 times faster than

Image: Samsung

Of course, to get the best speed from this Samsung M2 drive, you will need a compatible motherboard with PCI 4.0 M2 slot. Tech adoption has begun, including AMD’s third-generation Raizen CPU, mainstream computing products such as its Radian RX5700 and 5700XT GPUs, and more recently, Nvidia’s RTX3080 graphics card. Sony and Micro are also using the technology for their custom SSD technologies in .ft PS5 and Xbox Series S / X consoles.

Given its relative infancy, chances are high that most people are smart enough to make a PC, yet PCI 4.0. Not a ready-made motherboard. However, unlocking the potential of this SSD is sufficient evidence that perhaps an upgrade should be in order.

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

PCI with. Connected with the M2 slot (interface that most today’s motherboards have M2 slots), Samsung says the 980 Pro can reach read speeds of 500,50000 MB / s and read, 45050 MB, respectively. / s Write speed for 1TB model. Each step of capacity claims the same reading speed but with a slightly slower writing speed: 3,400 MB / s for the 500 GB model and 2,700 MB / s for the 250 GB version. According to a post on How geek, The difference in write speed may be due to slightly fewer NND channels present in the smaller drive, resulting in slower write operations. Performance lattice is considered in large drives to allow better performance.

Encouragingly, even installed on a non-bleeding motherboard, the new 980 Pro is faster writing files than the 970 Pro, capable of gradual read / write speeds of 3,500 MB / s and 2,700 MB / s. Was. This is the claim for the 970 Plus with 1TB; 512GB model reads at 2,300MB / s). Even better is that Samsung’s 980 Pro is cheaper and comes in more storage sizes.