Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB Review – Packs A Speedy Punch

Unboxing & Walkaround

Samsung SSDs is one of the best in the business, owing to its expertise in designing some of the fastest SSDs on the market with its components like in-house controllers and NAND packages. Today we’re taking a look at the new Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB SSD, promising maximum speeds from its PCIe 5.0 x2 / PCIe 4.0 x4 protocol and highly capable random I/O performance.

The 2TB version of the 990 EVO Plus packs everything into one side of the board in M.2 2280 form factor, with just one 236-layer 8th-gen TLC V-NAND package capable of containing all the data of this drive. The controller is unsurprisingly Samsung’s very own design (called ‘Piccolo’), and aside from that you won’t see other chips on this drive.

Notably, there’s an exposed BGA (ball grid array) pad next to the lone NAND chip designed for 4TB models, by combining two 2TB TLC NAND chips; on the other side of the drive, Samsung has also pre-installed a conductive copper sticker to help direct the heat away from the drive. Since this is a single-sided design, it’ll fit into low-profile M.2 slots commonly seen in ultra-thin laptops.

Specifications

Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB (MZ-V9S2T0)

Full specifications available on product webpage and datasheet.

Capacity	1TB, 2TB (as tested), 4TB
Form Factor	M.2 2280
Interface	PCIe 5.0 x2, PCIe 4.0 x4
Controller	Samsung “Piccolo” controller (ARM Cortex-R8)
NAND Type	Samsung 8th Gen V-NAND 236-layer TLC
DRAM	None, HMB (Host Memory Buffer) only
Read/Write Speed (Rated)	1TB: 7,150 MB/s (Read) / 6,300 MB/s (Write) 2TB: 7,250 MB/s (Read) / 6,300 MB/s (Write) 4TB: 7,250 MB/s (Read) / 6,300 MB/s (Write)
IOPS	1TB: 850,000 IOPS (Read) / 1,350,000 IOPS (Write) 2TB: 1,000,000 IOPS (Read) / 1,350,000 IOPS (Write) 4TB: 1,050,000 IOPS (Read) / 1,400,000 IOPS (Write)
Write Endurance	1TB: 600 TBW 2TB: 1200 TBW 4TB: 2400 TBW
Power Draw	1TB: 4.3W 2TB: 4.6W 4TB: 5.5W *Average values
Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)	1,500,000 hours
Warranty	5 years
Dimensions	22.15 x 80.15 x 2.38 mm (single-sided)

Test System

CPU	Intel Core i9-13900K
Cooling	Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux 30th Anniversary Edition Polartherm X-10
Motherboard	ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Apex
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition
Memory	Kingston FURY BEAST RGB DDR5-6800 CL34 (2x16GB)
Storage	ADATA LEGEND 960 MAX 1TB > Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB
Power Supply	GameMax Rampage GX-1050 PRO (ATX 3.1) 1050W
Case	VECTOR Bench Case (Open-air chassis)
Operating System	Windows 11 Home 24H2

Performance

CrystalDiskMark

Starting off with CrystalDiskMark test, we see the 990 EVO Plus 2TB reaching over 7GB/s on sequential read, and 6.1GB/s sequential write; mixed workloads sees the drive clocking at 4.6GB/s instead. Random I/O is decent, though it’s neck-and-neck against cheaper offerings like the Kingston NV3 2TB on this particular metric.

AS SSD Benchmark

Next is AS SSD Benchmark, and here the SSD records 5.6GB/s sequential read and almost 5.3GB/s in sequential write. Compared to the Kingston NV3 2TB, it’s better in all metrics (except 4K write), though the margin is relatively small. The drive is particularly performant on random reads, roughly 30% faster than the Kingston SSD – though it’s not quite on the level of the PCIe 5.0 SSDs like the MSI SPATIUM M570 1TB HS.

Anvil’s Storage Utilities

The Anvil benchmark provides us with more insight on how each individual metric of the SSD looks like, and the 990 EVO Plus is once again a smidge faster than the Kingston drive in all metrics. However, comparing to the MSI SSD we see different characteristics: the MSI drive excels in sequential and low-depth (QD4) random write, while the Samsung drive excels in high-queue (QD16) write. The drive is also faster in random reads in larger block sizes compared to MSI’s PCIe 5.0 solution.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

In ATTO Disk Benchmark, we see the 990 EVO Plus 2TB achieving a peak write speed of around 5.5GB/s, while the read speed peaks at 6.6GB/s, before falling off slightly in 48MB and 64MB block sizes. Peak I/O figures are 16KB for read (137K IOPS), and 2K for write (147K IOPS).

Write Endurance (AIDA64)

Finally, the write endurance test courtesy of AIDA64 shows great long-term write performance, sustaining over 1.2GB/s throughout the duration of the write test once the pseudo-SLC (pSLC) cache is exhausted. While the pSLC cache is only covering roughly 12% of the storage (which is around 240GB), that’s still plenty for large file transfers, and over 1GB/s sustained write performance is still very good for such cases.

Value

The current market price as listed on Samsung’s official Shopee store is RM1,120 (ignoring the discounts), and that’s a pretty pricey SSD to get – though the SSD market in general has seen increased prices in the past few months, with 2TB SSDs once again approaching the RM1,000 mark. Value-wise, the 990 EVO Plus 2TB sits on the pricier end of the chart, just ahead of the PCIe 5.0 offerings like the MSI SPATIUM M570. (While the Samsung SSD technically counts as an PCIe 5.0 SSD, it’s just x2 – which is functionally the same as PCIe 4.0 x4).

Verdict

So, should you buy the Samsung 990 EVO Plus SSD for your storage upgrade or the boot drive for the next PC? If you like performance, the answer is yes; if your work involves transferring lots of large files (like videos), the answer is also yes. If you prefer value, however, perhaps the grass is greener elsewhere – and with the matured PCIe 4.0 SSD market that we have today, there’s plenty of choices that can be nearly or as good as this one.

Special thanks to Samsung Malaysia for providing the 990 EVO Plus 2TB SSD for this review.