The Samsung 990 Pro remains the Gen4 drive to beat: benchmarks put it atop the PCIe 4.0 charts, owners give the 2TB model 4.7 stars across 16,700 ratings, and a firmware update fixed its health-reporting bug. It runs hot without a heatsink and costs more than the SN850X — buy the heatsink SKU for PS5 or heavy workloads.
— THE VERDICT · JUDGEANY EDITORSWhat the 990 Pro is
Launched in late 2022, the Samsung 990 Pro is the company's flagship PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD — M.2 2280, NVMe 2.0 — in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB sizes, with or without a factory heatsink. Samsung rates it at up to 7,450 MB/s sequential reads and 6,900 MB/s writes, plus up to 1.4 million read and 1.55 million write IOPS on the 2TB model. The hardware is all Samsung: Pascal controller, V-NAND flash and LPDDR4 DRAM cache. The 2TB drive carries a 5-year warranty and 1,200 TBW of endurance.
What published tests found
Tom's Hardware's review found the 990 Pro posting the best 3DMark Storage results they had measured from any drive at the time — ahead of the WD Black SN850X and SK hynix Platinum P41 — with an even bigger lead in PCMark 10, where it "devastates" the 980 Pro. Their later 4TB review called it "the way to go if you need that much capacity and a high level of performance," and Tom's still ranks it the best PCIe Gen4 SSD in its roundup. We don't run a lab; these are published findings, and the scores below are editorial judgments based on them.
The firmware health bug — and the fix
The launch was not clean. In early 2023, owners watched the drive-health readout in Samsung Magician fall far faster than it should — about a percent a day in the worst-reported cases, with one user's drive at 64% health after just 2TB written. TechPowerUp and Tom's Hardware covered it, and workstation builder Puget Systems suspended the use of most Samsung SSDs over the concern. Samsung confirmed a firmware bug was misreporting SMART health data and shipped a fix on February 13, 2023. If you're buying one today, update the firmware through Magician first — new drives ship with the fix, but it's the first thing worth checking.
Thermals and the heatsink question
Heat is the other thing to plan for. The bare drive runs hot under sustained load — NASCompares noted it "certainly ran quite hot" in testing — so the factory-heatsink SKU (MZ-V9P2T0CW for 2TB) is the sensible pick for a PS5, where the drive clears Sony's 5,500 MB/s minimum with headroom, or for workstations doing long writes. If your motherboard already has a decent M.2 heatsink, the bare drive plus board cooling is fine.
What owners say
Owners agree with the reviewers. The 2TB model holds 4.7 out of 5 stars across more than 16,700 Amazon ratings, and owners consistently call it one of the fastest Gen4 drives they've used — it's one of the most popular PS5 expansion picks. The complaints repeat the reviews: it costs more than rivals like the SN850X, the bare drive wants cooling under sustained work, and the early firmware saga dented trust even though the fix is long out.
Who should buy it
Gamers, creators and anyone on a PCIe 4.0 platform who wants the top of the Gen4 charts should consider it — check it live on Amazon. Skip it if your board supports PCIe 5.0 and you want the newest tier, if the budget is tight (the SN850X often matches it in everyday use for less), or if you do heavy sustained writes and would feel the post-cache slowdown.
Sources
- Samsung 990 Pro official specifications
- Tom's Hardware — Samsung 990 Pro SSD Review: The Return of the King
- Tom's Hardware — Samsung 990 Pro 4TB Review: The Best Gets Bigger
- TechPowerUp — 990 Pro health-reporting issue
- Tom's Hardware — Puget Systems suspends Samsung SSDs
- Wccftech — Samsung's February 2023 firmware fix
- NASCompares — 990 Pro 4TB review and benchmarks
- Amazon — Samsung 990 Pro 2TB listing (B0BHJJ9Y77)