Update: Walmart has a 30TB SSD for $39 — don’t fall for this scam.
Samsung has announced the follow-up to its current flagship SSD. Named the 990 Pro, this PCe 4.0 M 2 storage device hits all the required specifications for the PS5 and packs seriously impressive speeds.
The Verge reports that the 990 Pro is significantly faster than its predecessor, the already speedy 980 Pro. Samsung’s new SSD offers a sequential read speed of 7,450 MB/s and a write speed of 6,900 MB/s, plus it can achieve 1,400K random read input/output operations per second. This is compared to the 980 Pro which offers a read and write speed of 7,000 MB/s and 5,000 MB/s respectively, and 1,000K random read IOPS.
If the above is all technical jargon to you, it basically just means this SSD is crazy fast. In fact, it’s arguably too fast, offering speeds only necessary for the most advanced PC gaming rigs out there. The SSD is also fully compatible with the PS5, but it's level of performance is a little excessive for a console that only requires 5,000 MB/s of sequential read speed.
The SSD also comes with an optional heatsink sporting RGB lighting. Although if you’re planning to score one for your PS5 those twinkling lights won’t be visible once the drive is slotted into the console’s storage expansion bay. However, if you’re building a gaming PC, and have opted for a case with a transparent panel, the SSD will add some sci-fi flair to your rig.
The Samsung 980 Pro SSD will be available starting in October, and will retail at $179 for the 1TB model and $309 for the 2TB. That’s a modest price increase compared to the launch prices for the 980 Pro. Granted, it's not quite as hard to swallow as the recently confirmed PS5 price hike in some territories.
If you’re looking for a new SSD either for your PS5 or gaming PC, we’d probably advise picking up the 980 Pro instead. The faster speeds of the 990 Pro are impressive. But unless you desperately want to shave every millisecond possible off load times or boot up speeds, its increased performance is overkill for most users. Plus, the launch of the 990 Pro should see the price of its predecessor drop even further just in time for Black Friday sales.
