Samsung's New Gaming SSDs are Enormously Fast, Push the Limits of PCIe 4.0

Samsung just announced the 990 Pro, a new iteration of its flagship PCIe SSD made for gamers, creatives, and anyone with an unquenchable thirst for speed. 

How fast are these drives? The company says the 990 Pro nearly maxes out the theoretical speed limitations of PCIe 4.0 with sequential read and write speeds up to 7,450 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 6,900 MB/s, respectively and random read and write speeds up to 1,400K and 1,550K input/output operations per second (IOPS) respectively.

So, yeah, that’s pretty dang fast, with around 20 percent more speed than last year’s 980 Pro SSD models. These read/write stats put Samsung’s forthcoming SSD in the upper echelon regarding performance, easily dwarfing many other high-end offerings. 

The company is staying mum as to how they achieved such speeds without upgrading to a newer version of PCIe, but they have stated these SSDs include a “newly designed controller” that it claims is 50 percent more power efficient than the 980’s controller.

The 990 Pro is so powerful, as a matter of fact, that it benefits greatly from an integrated heatsink to keep things cozy. This isn’t any old heatsink, though, as this one is equipped with a suite of programmable RGB lights. 

The blazing-fast speeds may be overkill to all but those with the most-advanced gaming rigs or creative workstations. The PS5, after all, requires just 5,000 MB/s in sequential reads. 

Still, for those looking to future-proof their setup, the 990 Pro goes on sale in October and costs $180 for the 1TB model and $310 for the 2TB model. A 4TB model is on the way and set to arrive early next year.