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Best Seller Ranking | #49 in Internal SSDs |
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Brand | SAMSUNG |
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Series | 980 PRO |
Model | MZ-V8P2T0CW |
Device Type | Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) |
Used For | Consumer |
Form Factor | M.2 2280 |
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Capacity | 2TB |
Memory Components | V6(12xL) V-NAND 3bit MLC |
Interface | PCIe Gen4. X4, NVMe 1.3c |
Controller | Elpis |
Cache | 2GB LPDDR DRAM |
Max Sequential Read | Up to 7000 MBps |
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Max Sequential Write | Up to 5100 MBps |
4KB Random Read | Up to 1,000,000 IOPS |
4KB Random Write | Up to 1,000,000 IOPS |
Terabytes Written (TBW) | 1200TB |
HeatSink | Yes |
Power Consumption (Idle) | 5 mW |
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Height | 8.60mm |
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Width | 24.00mm |
Depth | 80.00mm |
Weight | 30.50g |
Date First Available | October 22, 2021 |
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Pros: This thing is lightning fast. Out of the box, I was getting 6.5 GB/s seq. reads and writes. After installing a universal Samsung NVME driver (search google for it), those speeds went up to 11 GB/s! And with ASUS RAMcache, those speeds get pushed up to 14 GB/s for the first couple gigs of transfer!
Cons: No Samsung driver for the 980 or 980 Pro yet, which means I had to download an unofficial universal NVME driver from some forum that tinkers with the 970 Pro drivers to get them to work on the 980 Pro. Samsung is shooting themselves in the foot with the drivers here, generic Windows drivers only get you the rated transfer speeds, but a modified Samsung driver is giving me numbers they could use in marketing to blow away their competition. It's also TLC flash, but I literally haven't noticed a performance difference between it and my previous MLC drive.
Overall Review: Highly recommend, but search around for those Universal Samsung NVME drivers, they squeeze out so much more speed than generic Windows drivers.
Pros: This is an extremely fast SSD that is actually capable of pushing well beyond the limits of PCI Express 3.0 x 4, being advertised as 7000 MB/s read and 5000 MB/s write. As the attached benchmark picture shows, it pushes right up to those numbers, and man is it fast: this is one of few SSDs on the market which can actually use PCI Express 4.0 x 4 speeds. I upgraded from an old hybrid SSD/donut drive because Windows 10 processes such as Update and Windows Defender would periodically saturate the drive for 10+ minutes, especially on boot; Now, I boot from cold in 15 seconds (Fast-boot is enabled in Bios) and don't ever see the drive get above even 5% usage, allowing me to actually use that expensive hunk of silicon on my desk without issue (even while downloading games, updates, etc.) without seeing any drive-related performance hits. The difference is night-and-day, and since updates are bottlenecked by internet speed (which I somehow doubt will ever reach near the absurd write speed on this drive for most people), using one of these as your primary drive should give you a super-smooth computing experience for years to come. As an added bonus, game load-screen times have been slashed to around 5 seconds or less on average for me, even using graphics hardware from 2013 (hang in there R7 260x! I'm not done with you yet...).
Cons: Runs warm: if you slot it above your primary GPU slot (which is the only PCI 4.0 M.2 slot on many mid-tier motherboards), you might expect to see GPU, CPU, and VRM temperatures creep up a few degrees C. This can be mitigated by using an intake on the top of the side panel, but many modern cases forgo this fan slot for solid tempered glass panels. This shouldn't break the deal for a vast majority of people, considering the huge benefits this drive gives your computing experience, but for someone who is trying to go for some very high overclocks, you might wish to add additional cooling here or find a board which can slot the M.2 on the bottom and still run at PCI Express 4.0 speeds.
Overall Review: 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 lower-end M.2 drives. While pricey, most users won't need more than 1 GB for programs, games, files, etc. If you're looking for a drive just to boot from, the 250GB should be plenty without breaking the bank and you'll 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 single-sided, and M-keyed. This guarantees wide compatibility, but you will likely have to add a second (smaller) thermal pad on top of the pre-installed 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 B550M-Plus board, for example, the heatsink and thermal pads were pre-installed 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.
Pros: 2TB version Very fast Works great with an AMD 24 core thread ripper.
Cons: Wish it was 4Tb I keep kicking myself for not getting this sooner.
Overall Review: I use my computer for unreal development and source code compiling. My previous HD was a raid 10 with 4 7200 drives. I thought this was a good set up until i switched to the 980. h_o_l_y cow.. packaging times went from 18 mins to 6.. Full source compiles went from 1+ hour to 15 mins. If you get paid by the job you really need this for your work machines.
Pros: - Getting 6500 Mb/s read and 4800 Mb/s write on an Asus X570 platform which has the capable gen 4.0 slots. - The issues which previous customers had did have me quite concerned, but they appear to have been resolved. I at least have not noticed any such issues. I did update the latest firmware to it before cloning my OS over. - Just out of curiosity, I also benched this in PCIE 3.0 mode and in my old PCIE 2.0 motherboard that I BIOS-modded to run NVME drives. It was indeed still a tiny bit faster than the 970 and the dirt cheap Adata Gen 3.0 NVME.
Cons: - None that I can think of, it does run pretty hot even with a heatsink, but not to where it would become concerning.
Overall Review: I would indeed recommend this product and will be buying more eventually. It's not going to be life changing if you already have a 970 or equivalent, and it's 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 weren't 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.
Pros: Reading at 5GB/s on PS5 Packaging was adequate, not overkill with third party offers.
Cons: No SSD screws or risers but PS5 has them in the bay already, but be forewarned if you're getting it as a PC upgrade, make sure you have some screws to hold the SSD down.
Overall Review: Works as expected, fast little drive, added 1TB to my PS5 in 5 minutes.
Overall Review: Passmark rating speaks for itself. Most painless and easy install ever.
Pros: -Samsung quality -good performance for the most part -if you use these in a 2 or more NVME RAID 0, the data rates are much smoother and consistent.
Cons: -pricey
Overall Review: should have bought a 1TB drive instead for the OS boot UPDATE 8/27/21: bought 2 of the 1TB versions for RAID0... the 1TB versions are faster than the 500GB model normally...used in AMD motherboard raid0, I consistently get 9000 to 12000 GB/s in CrystalMark tests.... very nice!!!
Pros: Jumping from area to area in game are instant now. No waiting. I mean unless you count a quarter of a second. Large load times on other games I have are cut in half at least. When you see the load boarder in game and you jump through it, it insta loads and your back playing. Works well with my 3950x/x570 setup no issues. Just popped it in and used clonezilla to copy my data. no issues.
Cons: not even the price is a con.
Overall Review: Don't 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. It's 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 it's a solid choice for gaming.