Samsung 990 Pro 4TB SSD - Should You Buy?

foreign [Music] welcome back and that's right it's time for another before you buy and today we're going to talk about this the Samsung 990 Pro SSD and although we've done a Big Bill review already we did benchmarks on this so I've gone into a lot of detail about nand placement and the controller that's inside in this video it's gonna be a lot more to the point we're going to go through five reasons why you might want to consider this SSD as your next gaming editing or just general fast storage drive but we're also going to give you five reasons why you might want to sit on the fence just a little bit longer or look at the competition but before we get straight to the meat and potatoes of this video quick disclaimer straight off the bat now you may have noticed in the title I haven't quite decided yet but this is the 4 TB model of this drive released in Autumn 2023 however there is a 1tb and a 2tb model for this series that's been available since the tail end of 2022 and although the majority of points in this video can be applied to pretty much all of the 990 Pro Series I will say there are a couple of points I'll try and highlight them that are very specific to the 4tb model recently released kind of the high point of that whole product family they're released right at the Talon but for good and bad reasons we're going to be highlighting some of the very specific items to this drive but for now let's crack on into the meat of this video with number one [Music] that is right when it comes to Gen 4 performance of M2 and VMAs this is kind of I'm you know I'm always reluctant to say because these videos can get dated this is the Peak Performance Drive in the market right now in gen 4. what does that mean well when it comes to the fourth generation of M2 nvme that gin isn't just some sort of oh it's a new car after four Court the general actually applies to pcie architecture and as pcie architecture that's kind of what everything is built on in PCS stemming from the p uh the CPU and the motherboard there that effectively allows a certain degree of transmission of data at certain speeds and packet types all the way through the system and Gen 4 applies per Lane up to 2 000 megabytes per second transmission of data and this is a Gen 4 x 4 Drive 2000 times 4 equals 8 000 now that eight thousand isn't the performance of the drive in the same way a road doesn't immediately say how many cars are there it allows up to that performance and Gen 4 times 4 has an allowance of up to 8 000 megabytes per second and no Drive fully saturates or fills that pipeline there however this driver has got the furthest any drive has at least at the time of recording to saturate in that full connection with a reported uh 7450 megabytes per second sequential read that's big blocky easy data and a line uh a large data in read performance and in right performance 6900 there is yet to be a drive that has a reported uh sustained uh transfer write speed of 7 000 or higher this is 6900 for rights putting it the highest out there and in terms of read 7400 that accidents also so to iops iops or individual or to input outputs per second or IO numbers and at 4K random that is the smallest four kilobit there randomly accessed from the driver anytime a reported 1.4 over 1.55 million at the lower capacities and at the highest capacity of 40 be there you're looking at Crossing into 1.5 1.6 million uh random 4K iops across this drive again putting it higher than any other Drive in the Gen 4 Series yes it's one of the last drives arguably because although Gen 4 isn't down and out it is certainly at the tail end of its kind of Market life but I will say right now if you're looking for the fastest highest performing Drive in Gen 4 well you're looking at it [Music] you know that comment I just made about the tile end of Gen4 well Gen 4 of m2mv Amaze kind of hit the ground running in about 2019 and in 2019 so the time 19 we saw the early generations of it and then later on we saw uh kind of the advance the 7K drives they were pretty much known as that could cross into the 7 000 sequential uh seven thousand megabytes per second sequential read area now right now we are entering the beginning of the next year known as Gen 5 and there are a lot of users that may be wondering why on Earth would I buy a Gen 4 drive at the end of its lifespan when you know a Gen 4 drive at the end of its like uh serviceable life in terms of marketability when Gen 5 and all the other client devices are now starting to be developed and be more affordable with Gen 5 ssds well and I hate to make another game in comparison as I do on this channel whenever you look at games consoles one two three four five it's always at the tail end of the lifespan of those devices or the serviceable marketable production cycle of those devices where you see the best games you see the best because they've learned so much about the architecture look at the last of us part one and two I'm saying that they make the very most of the hardware architecture because they've learned the most out of ring every single kilobit now Gen 5 right now is still early days Gen 5 although that first started rolling out to consumers in early 2022 the earliest releases in Gen 5 weren't great not withstanding the hardware architecture of the PCS that were around weren't really able to get any kind of sustained performance they were looking at about 9 to 10 gigabytes per second or 9000 to 10 000 megabytes per second remember this gives you 7450 megabytes per second and it's substantially lower in cost there's also right now as far as Gen 5 is concerned issues not only around sustained performance at Gen 5 but also cooling something we'll touch on later on and gem5 ssds are getting extraordinarily hot and having active cooling systems either with enormous heatsinks on board rather than going for something noisy or going for active fan assisted heat sinks which are going to generate a little bit of noise and obviously have the very tiniest increase in power consumption all of that adds up to right now as much as some of you might be thinking getting a Gen 4 SSD at the tail end of con kind of commercial um development in Gen 4 is coming to an end it's got to be said that Gen 5 is nowhere near established or as efficient or I would argue as value as Gen 4 right now for most users looking to jump onto a high speed drive [Music] this next point is one that really applies to a very small number of SSD manufacturers and the keyword there is manufacturer um is key assisting manufacturers in the market right now predominantly can consumer we're looking at here but when we look at this drive you know that Samsung logo on the top that's not the only thing here that Samsung everything from the controller to the nand to the dram that memory flash on there is in-house either utilized by Samsung's own development teams there or partnered or conglomerate companies from within Samsung it's a pure first party SSD now is that that important well in modern SSD is probably not the most Factor but it's certainly one that we could give kudos to because what that means is every component on this board has been geared and effectively designed an engineered to be working with those other components only now they're not the only brand in consumer circles and we'll talk more about these guys later but WD are another brand that only use in-house production but what that comes down to is when you look at the majority of other Gen 4 ssds in the market a lot of them are using third-party Brands such as Micron to get the nand where the actual storage is The Flash they go to Faison or innogrit um or um silicon motion it was on the tour right there on the edge of my brain that's right they use a lot of third-party Brands to produce the components which then they apply to a PCB now again that means a lot of those components have to be a little bit more open-ended and up to the firmware and the SSD brand themselves to you know Tinker and tweak and make to their own setup there but when you're looking at an SSD that has got everything in-house that means it's all engineered in-house in a very precise fashion to this this takes advantage um of the SSD the Pascal SSD controller inside here also arrives with 176 layer nand on board there and it's all simple sided but more on that in a moment but ultimately this SSD being all developed in-house does mean that it can often be a lot more affordable that's why you see it during sales as well because the brand has you know larger amount of control over its production availability and pricing than other brands with third parties that because they've had to buy certain number of components from third-party Brands to create these ranges they don't have that level of flexibility to hand [Music] and going to that point I just touched on there this is a single sided SSD now that's not rare a lot of ssds are single-sided but the thing that makes this intriguing is it's a single-sided four terabyte SSD there is no chips on the back and the entire component mix is there on the top now there are pros and cons to that obviously we'll touch on the cons later on but that means if you're running a much more compact system um then you are going to be concerned with one heat generating from this being controllable but two you may have may only have very slim cavities to use this drive or use very small compact heat sinks for this device so the result is having an SSD that has noun components all on one side reduces the space you're going to need to install this not only for the SSD but for heat dissipation all the way around it they've got a copper heat shield on the based off that you can't quite make it out there on the bottom but we do go into a bit more detail in the full review but ultimately for more compact uh thin light systems I'm seeing a lot more of those laptops that are riding right now that are ultra thin they're arriving with Gen 4 11 from 12th gen uh CPUs from the likes of Intel they're really going to benefit from a much more compact slim SSD with a heat dissipation and just generally the space afford it to it doesn't need to be that big [Music] and finally a point I alluded to earlier on but we have to get into a little bit more detail availability and pricing not only because this drive being single party results in a better range and um scaling that the brand and indeed number of resellers afterwards can afford to its pricing again while you see it on sale all the time but more important and effective to that it means that even when you look at its predecessor something we'll touch on later on the 980 Pro that came out at the tail end of 2020 the pricing of this drive is really really really similar to this the 4tb of course there is no 4 TB of the 980 Pros there isn't anything to compare against but when you look at the 1tb and the 2tb you definitely see that the scaling cost up to this despite all the extra development the improved control of the improved nand layer depth on this drive despite all of that and the enhanced performance oh written both read and write the pricing is only a fraction more so in terms of its availability again 4tb is rolling out very very slowly but the one and two TB is more frequently available both the pricing and the availability of the 990 Pro is definitely something to write home about but it's not all good we can't just you know sing priced on this we gotta stay balanced and alongside those five great things there are five things about this drive that really May rub you up the wrong way so let's get on with our first Downer [Music] if you've already watched the full review you know what I'm gonna say this drive runs really hot now we're used to Gen 4 ssds uh being hot I've you know among many people have really urged and told you to get yourself heat sinks if you even if you're running a PS5 get yourself that Ella Tang heating or scale it up go for the Sabrina either use the branch chunky heatsink or use the Brent's own PS5 heatsink I've talked about those that's my favorite PS5 heatsink but given that this is the tail end of the Gen 4 generation of ssds in terms of development and that this SSD benefits from a lot of that development this drive ran extraordinarily hot and during my review I tried to utilize it without the heating and you can buy this with a heatsink more on that in a moment but want to run it without the heatsink and run just a casual test it leapt so quickly into the 50 and 60 degrees it was incredible and I was worried it would ruin the tests I even went ahead and tried several several different heat sinks prior to filming the heatsink portion of that review and ended up having to go for the massive copper pipe blade and sabrint heatsink again this is like 20 30 knicker it's not the cheapest heatsink but it's the one that I use when ssds are getting super super hot now you can buy this with a heat tank and it costs barely a tenor more so you can get um Samsung's own pre-applied heatsink with this with a diffraction of cosmonis at the factory level when it's attached it's a good heatsink indeed but still nonetheless even with that heatsink this SSD ran hot so do bear in mind if you're going to be doing sustained utilization of this drive it's gonna get warm and if you've got your Crystal disc it's going to make that alert there quite often come on that's just the way it is you remember earlier when I mentioned about this drive matching that of its predecessor quite well in terms of pricing well that's good and bad because it's definitely not the cheapest SSD in the market now what do I mean by that when they've rolled it out they've tried to keep things within at least the remit of Gen 4 ssds but this drive is closer to its RRP than most drives I see and on this channel we've reviewed a lot of Gen4 ssds over the last couple of years and if you compare it you know the obvious comparison for the Samsung will always be the WD black sn850 and 850x and it would be the Seagate fire Cuda 532 great ssds and both of those are cheaper than this now they've been in the market longer they've been around longer therefore the availability for them and pricing gets to be a little bit more Dynamic over time I get it but given this drive is arriving at the tail end of the Gen 4 generation of ssds in terms of production and development I kind of surprised that one Samsung took that long to not only release the one and two to be the Talent of 2022 with performance on those that was comparable but a pinch High than most other ssds in the market they're 15 less in cost but the 4tb has come out this late seems incredible to me and given it's arrived that late and at such a price tag that it has for those of you looking for 40b of fast storage there have been options for 4tb Gen 4 ssds with plus 7000 megabytes per second performance for a very very very long time more than two years so it's blown my mind that Samsung has taken this long to roll this out but on top of that that this SSD is priced the way it is that's just the way it is and returning to the subject of Gen 5 ssds versus this Gen4 SSD I stand by what I said Gen 5 is not quite there yet in terms of uh development and what you can get from in particularly the client machines that are wrapped around it but still nevertheless if you're buying an SSD today you plan on using that SSD for quite a few years you might even be chopping and changing that SSD into new systems down the line and when you're buying a drive today there is going to be something of a I'm not so sure about buying a drive like the 990 pro at the tail end of Gen 4 development when Gen 5 is going the way it is and Gen 5 ssds are starting to come down in price we've reviewed several of them on the channel and so for example this is the most recent one we reviewed the a data Legend 970 this SSD has come down in price and although it costs more than this drive it's not out of this world more expensive once you factor in extra years and the fact that this is a 10 gig over 10 gig per second SSD then we looked at the likes of the next storage as well on the next storage SSD here not only have they got their own 10 gig over 10 gig SSD which by the way is seeing discounts in a lot of locations but already and we've got a video on this coming soon it might already be live they've already rolled out a development units of their next follow-up which is a much much faster version which is going to be cracking somewhere between that 12 gig in the 14 gig development on those now yes you're going to be paying more for those but in terms of future proofing Gen 5 is starting to come down in price and you might see the benefits as Hardware client systems are improving more and more so if you're buying just the SSD now basically going to scale up the rest of your Hardware architecture later go and Gen 5 might make more sense in the long run and then you've got Brands like Seagate then you've got lots of other gigabyte team group all of these Brands all rolling at Gen 5 ssds right now starting to crack the 10 gig to 12 gig getting closer to the 14 gig and more SSD controllers being developed for Gen 5 means that Gen 5 although it's not there yet is very much on the way and in terms of future proofing right now buying a Gen 4 SSD right now if you wait just a handful of months might mean you miss out on spending just a few more Bob and getting a great Gen 5 SSD and all of the future proofing that it includes [Music] and following up my earlier point about the 990 Pro being the follow-up to the you know almost two two and a half years older 980 Pro there I gotta say the fact that the 980 Pro exists kind of undermines the 990 Pro in some ways these are not a follow-up these are two drives designed to exist in the same space and I don't see Samsung phasing out this drive anytime soon and when you look online this drive is on sale a lot it is around a lot it's got a heatsink version that's coming down in price it is incredibly common as a driver Not only was one of the first to crack the 7K gen but 7 000 Megs per second gen 4 SSD generation but on top of that has persisted and been around for a long long time and it's done a lot of firmware updates yes I'm going to touch on that one in a moment but the 980 Pro there I gotta say the fact that it exists for a lot of you when it's price point it's these insane sales sometimes and give even its performance is still pretty darn good cracking 7000 Megs over five thousand five hundred Megs and was one million iops in both read and write and exactly the same durability as the 990 Pro and it doesn't get as hot as that SSD sometimes may mean that the fact that the 980 Pro exists may very well undermine buying the 990 Pro for you anyway but just bear in mind that the 4tb 990 Pro they're the only Samsung SSD commercially at 4tb in the Gen 4 space but this drive arrives in 120 gig 250 gig 500 gig once they're a huge range of capacities which is just another reason why if you're only looking for a smaller OS Drive there's no point spending extra on a faster drive you might not be able to take advantage of or space that you're never even gonna need [Music] layer to be honest if I hadn't touched on this one you guys would have absolutely lynched me in the comments but it is important to note because if you're just buying this STD now you may not be aware but earlier in 2023 and in the late stages of 2022 Samsung suffered something of a PR firmware based what do I mean by that well ultimately they their firmware started showing some users ssds to have degrading Health in the smart values what does that mean in English what it means is the SSD was showing a degrading health value which if it gets down to zero your drive cannot be used ultimately tells the system now we're not using it now we never really got confirmation if the degrading Health was actually happening or if this was um kind of a misleading false positive or positive false whatever you want to call it of the firmware showing the SSD Health depreciating but it wasn't actually depreciating we never really found out for certain if that was the case but ultimately it led to a lot of people with ssds that were declining in health not after years after weeks or months and it turned to be it turned out to be a firmware update that was causing this now since then Samsung have rolled out a patch which again future ssds in the fourth TV will definitely not have this Factor this it won't this isn't a thing anymore and you apply that firmware update and that depreciating health value isn't a thing however all indications on lights and indicate one that those of you that had had an SSD that had the free Shane Health it didn't just go back to 100 into that question mark about the legitimacy yes or no with that Health depreciation in fact it was real or not but also that the ssds that have got that old firmware update are still out there now when you buy an SSD as it rolls off the production line the latest stable firmware is applied to that SSD but the 980 Pro and the 990 Pro were both impacted by this and the 980 has been around for a long time and this firmware issue pertained to both the 919 and 980 that firmware was across both of them so a lot of users when they buy an SSD if you're putting in a PC system you can update the firmware pretty easy you just download the Samsung magician software that's included firmware update is really really quick and it's done within the OS you can't really or indeed easily update the firmware on an M2 and vme over a USB dock there are a few PCI and Thunderbolt external docks that allow you to do it but they're very expensive but users that were buying drives like these to go in a PS5 there are no ways to update the firmware of an SSD within the PS5 closed system so so many users that went out bought an SSD slammed it in their PS5 and started gaming and there's no way for them to know that that health value is going down because you can only see it in smirt tests and Samsung's magician everywhere else you can't see it so you might be inside your PS5 now and you don't know that that depreciating health value is going down unless you slam it inside a PC to find out now again this firmware update has been rolled out that fixes it and 990 Pro particularly the 4tb do not have that firmware knocking around on there but still nonetheless we cannot ignore the fact that Samsung not only let this happen but it took as long as it did for the firmware up to turn around and there are still users out there that aren't satisfied with the conclusion based on the sscs they have or the fact that they're still not aware whether they are SSD they have in their position uh possession is hit by this and remember early 990 Pros that were rolled out had that too which are going to be out there in the world so again if you regardless of the outcome of this video for you whether you go for the 990 Pro or not check your firmware and win if possible you know if you can have access to a system that has an M2 slot update the firmware on an SSD the day you get it to get the latest firmware to make sure not only you benefit from performance or durability improvements that that firmware update has eeked out of Gen 4 and that architecture across the land and the controller but on top of that to make sure there's any fixes that stop stuff like those Health uh depreciating values kick in but this has been five reasons you should go for the new Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB and you know the other capacities and five reasons or you might want to sit on the fence or Outland or look at a competitor in the description there's a link to our massive Samsung 990 Pro review as well as a link to the video I mentioned earlier which goes through all of the benchmarks and all of that stuff to do check that out but apart from that thank you so much for watching if you still need assistance she's not uh SSD for your needs you can of course use our free advice link below the Discord the free community support Forum ask Nas Compares or just go into the comments and let me know there or email me on an email address which I'm pretty sure you can figure out what it is um apart from that thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time

Channel: NASCompares

Views: 20,345

Keywords: Best Cheap PS5 SSD, Recommended PS5 SSD, PS5, PS5 SSD Best, ps5 ssd, playstation 5 m2 ssd, SSD for PS5, PS5 Cheap SSD, PS5 more storage, PS5 SSD Upgrade, PS5 SSD Drive, Samsung 990 Pro, Samsung 990 Pro SSD PS5, Samsung 990 heatsink, Samsung 990 Pro 2024, Samsung 990 Pro SSD, Samsung 990 Pro Heatsink, Samsung 990 Pro Review, Samsung 990 Pro Speed, Samsung 2023, samsung 990 pro heat, samsung 990 Pro Temperature, Samsung 990 Pro 4TB, MZ-V9P4T0BW, MZ-V9P1T0BW, MZ-V9P2T0BW

Id: FRnXl9RtOZw

Length: 26min 5sec (1565 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 01 2023