Samsung Officially Launches the 990 Pro SSD in 4TB Capacity

In what can only be referred to as a "storage encore," Samsung released a 4TB version of its flagship NVME SSD almost a year after it launched in smaller capacities. The new version of the drive comes in direct response to outcry from its customers who demanded a 4TB version of Samsung's best SSD. The arrival of the new drive marks the first time in recent memory a hardware company has listened to its fans and provided exactly what they were asking for, and it's done so at a pretty reasonable price, too.

The Samsung 990 Pro arrived in November 2022, and expectations were high since Samsung is known for producing the fastest NVME SSDs in the industry. Despite this reputation for "raising the bar," Samsung toed the line a bit with the 990 Pro by making it a PCIe 4.0 drive instead of Gen 5 like the entire world expected. In Samsung's defense, those drives are not quite ready for prime time and won't be for another year or two, at least. Intel and AMD's latest chipsets only support PCIe Gen 4 storage, though the X670E chipset does support a single Gen 5 storage device. Therefore, there's little tangible benefit in the real world in buying a Gen 5 drive versus a Gen 4 device at this time, so Samsung's decision was pragmatic.

The heatsink version adds a bit of flair to your PC's innards. Credit: Samsung

That means the 990 Pro doesn't set new performance records but is still one of the fastest PCIe 4.0 drives around. Tom's Hardware notes that its sequential read/write speeds are at the top of what a Gen 4 interface allows, reaching 7,450 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s. However, its random read/write speeds equal those found on Gen 5 devices, capable of performing 1.4 million random read operations per second (IOPS) and 1.55 million random writes per second. Samsung says its random read/write performance is 40 and 55% faster than its predecessor, the 980 Pro 2TB. Combine that level of performance with 4TB of storage, and you have a juicy device for those who need it.

Like its 1TB and 2TB predecessors, the 4TB version is offered in a standalone "naked" version or with a flashy heatsink if you want extra cooling and some red lights on the M.2 2280 drive. Surprisingly, pricing is reasonable, too, with the base drive costing just $345 and the heatsink version coming in at just $10 more directly from Samsung. The drive is compatible with PCs and laptops, and Samsung says it also works with the PlayStation 5.