Meet Maggie, PCMag'sSeeing a brand-new internal SSD from Samsung—the SSD 990—is reassuring at a time when major manufacturers have slowed launches to a trickle amid the ongoing memory shortage. The SSD 990 (starts at $269.99 for 1TB; $529.99 for 2TB as tested) is a DRAM-less, energy-efficient, PCI Express (PCIe) 4.0 model that performed well in our tests. It includes the well-regarded Samsung Magician software, and it supports AES hardware-based encryption. Whether it's as good a buy as the Editors' Choice-winning WD Black SN850X (which has since been redubbed the Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850X) largely depends on its eventual retail price; right now, the SSD 990's MSRPs are quite high across both capacities Samsung offers.
The SSD 990 is the latest in Samsung’s line of PCI Express 4.0 internal SSDs, which also includes the SSD 990 Pro and the SSD 990 EVO.
The SSD 990 Pro is the company’s flagship PCIe 4.0 drive, while the SSD 990 EVO is a mainstream option geared toward energy efficiency. The SSD 990 is meant to fit in between the two as something of a sweet spot, at least according to Samsung's positioning. It has a shorter warranty than the 990 Pro and EVO drives, though.
Samsung also rolled out an SSD 990 EVO Plus in 2024, but we did not have the opportunity to review that drive.
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SSD prices are much higher than they were a year ago due to the ongoing global memory shortage. (In some cases, their street prices have doubled or more.) Part of the reason why: Many storage manufacturers have shifted their manufacturing focus to higher-margin products amid the AI data center boom, spurred by huge demand. That has left flash memory in short supply (and correspondingly more expensive) for SSDs used in consumer applications, such as PC upgrades. This situation is likely to persist for the foreseeable future.
The SSD 990 is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities. In the months after launch, Samsung's SSDs tend to come available at retail at substantially discounted prices versus their MSRPs. (Note that the prices of drives launched before the shortage have understandably skyrocketed compared with their original list prices.) I suspect the same will be true of the SSD 990.
If that doesn't pan out, though, the SSD 990 will be a poor value. For example, the 2TB version of the Samsung SSD 990 EVO currently sells for around $379. That's nearly twice its $209.99 launch price in early 2024, but still much less than the new SSD 990's MSRP. Prices for other drives are similar. The SSD 990 Pro now sells for $389.99 for its 2TB stick, up from its $289.99 list price when it launched in October 2022. The 2TB version of the SN850X retails for $348, up from $289.99 at launch.
How good a value (and consequently how good a drive overall) the SSD 990 is will depend on how its eventual street price shakes out compared with the rest of the market. It's especially important in this sort of market to compare its prices with those of similar products. If it doesn't settle at around $380 for 2TB, I wouldn't recommend buying it as long as the alternatives mentioned above are still available for close to the prices I cited.
The SSD 990 is manufactured on an M.2 Type-2280 (80mm long) "gumstick" printed circuit board and uses the NVMe protocol over the PCIe 4.0 bus. It combines Samsung V-NAND flash memory (the company's implementation of 3D NAND) with a homegrown DRAM-less controller.
By using host memory buffer (HMB) technology, the drive employs the PC’s own main DRAM for caching. That helps Samsung keep costs down and achieve reasonable performance with a DRAM-free controller. Omitting a built-in DRAM cache also improves power efficiency; Samsung claims a 38% improvement over the SSD 990 Pro, which uses onboard DRAM.
The SSD 990's durability ratings, expressed as lifetime write capacity in total terabytes written (TBW), are 800TBW for the 2TB version and 400TBW for the 1TB version. These are lower than those of many other PCIe 4.0 SSDs at those capacities, including the Samsung SSD 990 Pro, the SSD 990 EVO, and the WD Black SN850X, which have ratings of 1,200TBW for a 2TB stick and 600TBW for 1TB.
The terabytes-written spec is a manufacturer's estimate of how much data can be written to a drive before some cells begin to fail and get taken out of service. Samsung covers the SSD 990 for three years or until you reach the rated TBW figure in data writes, whichever comes first. Most Samsung internal SSDs we've reviewed, as well as those from other major manufacturers, have five-year warranties. That said, unless you plan to write large amounts of data regularly to the SSD 990, it is unlikely to exceed its TBW rating during its warranty period.
With the SSD 990, Samsung includes its well-regarded Samsung Magician suite of SSD optimization tools, which helps you streamline data migration for SSD-to-SSD or hard drive-to-SSD upgrades. In addition, Samsung Magician protects data, monitors drive health, and provides firmware updates.
The SSD 990 also supports AES 256-bit full-disk hardware encryption and meets the TCG/Opal V2.0 security standard for self-encrypted devices.
We test PCIe 4.0 internal SSDs on a desktop testbed PC with an MSI X570 motherboard and an AMD Ryzen CPU, 16GB of Corsair Dominator DDR4 memory clocked at 3,600MHz, and a discrete Nvidia GeForce graphics card. We put the SSD 990 through our usual suite of solid-state drive benchmarks, comprising Crystal DiskMark 6.0, PCMark 10 Storage, and 3DMark Storage.
Crystal DiskMark's sequential speed tests provide a traditional measure of drive throughput, simulating best-case, straight-line transfers of large files. On these tests, the SSD 990 slightly exceeded both its sequential-read and -write speed ratings.
In Crystal DiskMark's 4K read and write tests, which measure how long it takes for an SSD to access or save a group of files in 4K cluster sizes, the SSD 990's scores were on the low side among our group of comparison drives, which consists of mainstream PCIe 4.0 SSDs with similar sequential read scores, plus the 990 EVO. While the SSD 990's 4K read speed effectively matched the SSD 990 EVO's, its write speed was slightly higher. It bested the SSD 990 Pro's 4K write results while lagging the SSD 990 Pro's 4K read results.
The PCMark 10 Overall Storage test measures a drive's speed in performing a variety of routine tasks such as launching Windows, loading games and creative apps, and copying both small and large files. On this, the SSD 990 landed in the middle of the pack, besting the SSD 990 EVO and several other drives and effectively tying the SSD 990 Pro while running behind two Crucial SSDs (which have been discontinued, though you can still find them for sale).
While the PCMark 10 Overall Storage score aggregates the results of multiple tasks, you can also see the scores for some of the SSD 990's individual trace-based tests in the chart below. It was an average performer in our gaming-centric traces (though easily besting the SSD 990 EVO) and slightly above average at launching the indicated Adobe programs.
In 3DMark Storage, which measures an SSD's proficiency at performing a variety of gaming-related tasks, the SSD 990 had a score similar to the SSD 990 EVO and several other drives near the bottom of the pack, and was well behind our champ, the WD Black SN850X, and the Crucial T500.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Samsung SSD 990
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
It's nice to see Samsung launching a mainstream internal SSD at a time when many manufacturers are standing pat or even fleeing the market (RIP Crucial). The SSD 990 is a welcome addition to the company's PCI Express 4.0 line. Its benchmark performance generally falls short of elite models such as the Samsung SSD 990 Pro and the Editors' Choice-winning WD Black SN850X, but it is better than the value-oriented SSD 990 EVO. It has goodies that we've come to expect from Samsung SSDs, such as the Magician software suite and 256-bit AES encryption, but its warranty and durability ratings are on the low side for a Samsung product.
Is it a good value? It has a relatively high list price—even in light of the lofty SSD pricing in 2026's market—so it will largely depend on where its retail pricing lands. If it winds up being a value-line product in actual street price—its performance and features suggest it is one—it may be worth snapping up. But keep an eye on the other SSDs we've mentioned as points of comparison, and particularly the WD Black SN850X. (As mentioned up top, it has been rebranded as the Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850X, but it is also available in its original WD packaging, and at only a modest markup over its original MSRP.)
About Our Expert
Since 2004, I have worked on PCMag’s hardware team, covering at various times printers, scanners, projectors, storage, and monitors. I currently focus my efforts on 3D printers, pro and productivity displays, and drives and SSDs of all sorts.
Over the years, I have reviewed smart telescopes, iPad and iPhone science apps, plus the occasional camera, laptop, keyboard, and mouse. I've also written a host of articles about astronomy, space science, travel photography, and astrophotography for PCMag and its past and present sibling publications (among them, Mashable and ExtremeTech), as well as for the former PCMag Digital Edition.
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