Beware: Counterfeit Samsung 980 PRO SSDs Circulating In The Market

Beware: Counterfeit Samsung 980 PRO SSDs Circulating In The Market

While Samsung’s 980 PRO SSD are one of the highest-performing PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market, these counterfeit ones are not.

Over at Baidu Forums, one user has showed a photo of what looks like a Samsung 980 PRO SSD – which the user claimed they bought it off from a second-hand market of Taobao. However, under the heat spreader is an entirely different thing: unlike the real product with Samsung’s in-house Elpis controller and dedicated DRAM, this counterfeit version (which reports itself as the Samsung drive) comes with a DRAM-less design and is using Maxio MAP1602-I as the controller.

As a result, the performance figures do not match the real deal. As shown on the photo below, the counterfeit drive only manages 4.8GB/s read and 4.4GB/s write performance, far from the 7.0GB/s / 5.1GB/s read/write performance the real drive is rated for.

The Chinese-made Maxio controller does support the PCIe 4.0 standard, however this does not belong to any of the (actual) 980 PROs in existence. Also worth noting is the NAND flash themselves, which is reported as YMTC – another Chinese company specializing in memory chip products. Like the controller, Samsung also produces its NAND in-house so these chips are not supposed to be in the 980 PRO as well.

If you’re buying SSDs from the second-hand market – be very sure to deal with trusted sellers, and inspect the drive and its performance wherever you can before you make the purchase.

Source: Wccftech | @haruzake5719 (Twitter)

Pokdepinion: Pay attention when buying drives wherever you can.