Samsung Targets Gamers With 3 Extremely Fast 990 Pro NVMe SSDs

[mrk]

Installed mine today and cloned over using Samsung Magician.

I've noticed this controller chip runs cooler than the 970 Evo Plus 1TB I had, ~50 vs 60+ when idle, and 75 under load vs the 85 or so the 970 reached.

 

[Grim5]

Mine runs a bit cooler than my 980 pro did, but also I've got a new motherboard - the Asus x670e hero and it has a large cooling heatsink built in, mine idles at around 42c to 45c, this is in a room with 26 to 29c ambient (it's summer here) and under load I haven't seen it go over 50c yet.

Of course it doesn't matter, the 990 pro won't throttle until 85c

 

[mrk]

Is that controller or memory chip though? My memory chips can hit 94 just like they did on the 970 too at times of high load on write benchmarking:



I'm not using the mobo's NVMe heatsink as the thermal pad was compromised, have ordered a 2mm Thermal Grizzly pad which should arrive tomorrow so will put the heatsink back on which should sort that out

 

[Firegod]

Just slotted in my new Kingston KC3000 drives if anyone is interested in seeing a comparison. 1TB for OS in GEN4 slot and 2TB for Games in GEN3 slot.

1TB

2TB

From what I've upgraded from, this is a nice boost for me. And the price was really good. 1TB was £79.99 and the 2TB was £167.99.

 

[Grim5]

Is that controller or memory chip though? My memory chips can hit 94 just like they did on the 970 too at times of high load on write benchmarking:



I'm not using the mobo's NVMe heatsink as the thermal pad was compromised, have ordered a 2mm Thermal Grizzly pad which should arrive tomorrow so will put the heatsink back on which should sort that out

Not sure, my HWinfo doesn't name the sensors it just has a senor 1, 2 and 3

Its a bit cooler today, ambient temp in room 24c at time of taking these readings

Idle:





After running 6 loops of the magician benchmark:

 

[^JP^]

I have my 990 Pro in the Gen-Z.2 riser on my X670E board which has a massive heatsink.
Got it in the Gen 5 side with the heatpipe.

Temperatures look like this after running some loops of crystal disk mark.

 

[mrk]

I've now installed the mobo NVMe heatsink as received a Thermal Grizzly thermal pad over the weekend. Temps much better now under the same loads:

 

[TNA]

I've now installed the mobo NVMe heatsink as received a Thermal Grizzly thermal pad over the weekend. Temps much better now under the same loads:

Do you get any extra performance for that? Or just piece of mind? I mean my 2TB WD SN850X does not have a heatsink on it and is for purely gaming as I have my OS on my Intel Optane which has much faster 4K access times. The only time I can see games stressing these is when direct storage games come out.

 

[mrk]

No extra perf that isn't within marginal variance between runs. It's more peace of mind really. The Tjmax for the memory ia around 115 degrees isn't it, and the throttling begins at 85 for the controller IC - Neither of which were reached previously anyways. My 970 Evo plus could regularly hit 85 controller though in the same slot and that was a Gen 3, so it is clear the 990 is running more free, even at max Gen 4

 

[Deleted member 258511]

Installed mine today and cloned over using Samsung Magician.

I've noticed this controller chip runs cooler than the 970 Evo Plus 1TB I had, ~50 vs 60+ when idle, and 75 under load vs the 85 or so the 970 reached.

My 990’s are much cooler than my 980 Pro’s. It’s a different MB but much better than I expected.

 

[Grim5]

I have my 990 Pro in the Gen-Z.2 riser on my X670E board which has a massive heatsink.
Got it in the Gen 5 side with the heatpipe.

Temperatures look like this after running some loops of crystal disk mark.

Very nice. I have one of those things as well, not gonna use it cause I'm worried it blocks airflow to the ram in my case but damn it's heavy, feels like a solid block of metal - mine doesn't have heatpipes though, none that I can see anyway

Edit:

Now that I look at it again, it would block airflow from the bottom of the case not the front. Mine mounts into one of the PCIE slots rather than by the ram like yours

 

[Murphy]

So i was doing my weekly check for a UK supplier with the heatsink version and came across this forum thread (Google translate hardwareluxx-de), the short of it is someone has been seeing an unusual decline in the life expectancy of the drive as shown by Crystal disk info (3TBW - 94% life).

I've sort of dismissed it as it's only one person but i was wondering what you's guys and girls drive health looks like, i assume all good like most people who responded to that thread on hardwareluxx-de.

 

[mrk]

99% according to crystaldiskinfo and "good" according to Magician. 1.8TBs written.

Keep in imnd that NVMe memory chips shoudl be running fairly hot anyway. It's the controller getting too hot that causes throttling to happen.

 

[Murphy]

Yea the person in that thread does seem to be an outlier, maybe a firmware bug misreporting something as i find it hard to believe even the worst NAND in world would degrade that quickly, it's a strange one.

I wanted the heatsunk version more for the looks than the temperatures, i don't use it anywhere near enough to warrant a heatsink, from what i understand the HS only adds $10-15 and seals the NVMe inside it so there'd be no need to separately unscrew the H/S and drive.

 

[Grim5]

So i was doing my weekly check for a UK supplier with the heatsink version and came across this forum thread (Google translate hardwareluxx-de), the short of it is someone has been seeing an unusual decline in the life expectancy of the drive as shown by Crystal disk info (3TBW - 94% life).

I've sort of dismissed it as it's only one person but i was wondering what you's guys and girls drive health looks like, i assume all good like most people who responded to that thread on hardwareluxx-de.

I have this as well Mine is down to 96%

but no idea as I expected life expectancy was calculated based on TBW based on how much has been written so far the drive should be on 99.7% not 96%

 

[Murphy]

I have this as well Mine is down to 96%

Is yours a similar TBW then? The 3 TBW on the 1TB drive in that hardwareluxx forum post is tiny when you consider it's rated for 600 TBW, it should be 0.5% of the total not the 6% mentioned in that forum post.

To reach your life expectancy level you'd need to have written something like 24TB to the drive, I'm guessing you're nowhere near that.

 

[TNA]

Glad I went WD SN850X 2TB. I had it longer than you guys and it's showing 100%

Even had a SN850 1TB for many months before selling it and that was 100% too.

Before that I had a Gigabyte Gen 4 1TB in my PC and that seemed to have a similar issue also where the percentage went down abnormally fast and it showed a lot more writes than I possibly could have done. Gigabyte were not very interested in solving or replacing it. Still works fine in a laptop I stuck it in and has over 3 years warranty if it fails. Doubt it will, but annoying nonetheless.

 

[Grim5]

Is yours a similar TBW then? The 3 TBW on the 1TB drive in that hardwareluxx forum post is tiny when you consider it's rated for 600 TBW, it should be 0.5% of the total not the 6% mentioned in that forum post.

To reach your life expectancy level you'd need to have written something like 24TB to the drive, I'm guessing you're nowhere near that.

2.4TB written so far, warranty is: 5-Year Warranty/1200 TBW Warranty

 

[Murphy]

2.4TB written so far, warranty is: 5-Year Warranty/1200 TBW Warranty

You've got the 2TB model then. It must be a bug in the firmware as with that amount of TBW the lifetime of the drive should be 99(.75)% not 96%.

 

[mrk]

Weird, now I'm seeing 98%, this drop has only been since putting the heatsink on - Anyone else check their drive?