The market launch of Samsung’s first PCIe 5.0 SSD for the consumer sector is slowly approaching. However, anyone hoping for particularly high speeds will be quickly disappointed. New details show that the upcoming SSD barely exploits the PCIe 5.0 standard.
Samsung 990 Evo appeared in September 2023 Samsung Magician version 8 installation instructions. Since then, however, there have been hardly any new details about the manufacturer’s latest EVO SSD. Meanwhile, the SSD is already listed at several retailers, including Amazon. However, entries have now been removed from online retailers. Samsung has now officially introduced the SSD: the Samsung 990 EVO will be available soon 124 US-Dollars (1 TB) own 209 US-Dollars (2 TB) A German dealer lists the SSD for 130 euros or 190 euros Experience shows that once widespread availability is achieved, prices should drop rapidly.
The Samsung 990 Evo maxes out at 5,000 MB/s
Accordingly, the Samsung 990 Evo will essentially be a PCIe 5.0 SSD, which only uses two lanes. M.2 SSDs typically use four lanes to utilize the full bandwidth. However, this will not be necessary with the new Samsung models, as “real” PCIe 5.0 speeds cannot be achieved here anyway. According to the entry, the SSD achieves… 4,200 MB/s read and 5,000 MB/s write. For comparison: the older 970 EVO (test) achieved 3,500 MB/s (read) and 3,300 MB/s (write).
More efficient than its predecessor
Furthermore, the 990 Evo consumes up to 70 percent less energy during operation than its predecessor. Power consumption should be around 5 watts. The first images also show Identifier S4LY022 recognized, which allows conclusions to be drawn about the controller used. Accordingly, this one 4-channel-regulator With the code name Piccolo, which is manufactured using a 5nm process. Apparently the SSD is working 176 layer TLC NAND, but does not appear to be a DRAM cache. Instead, a small portion of system RAM should be diverted.
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