Samsung SSD 990 EVO Plus Review (vs. 990 Evo): An (Almost) Perfected Alternative

The Samsung SSD 990 Evo Plus, first announced on September 25, 2024, is an upgrade to the previous version, the 990 Evo, both in performance and cost.

The new drive is faster in my testing and has more reasonable pricing at launch—the street pricing of the two varies. It’s a win-win.

Still, at the core, these two are similar. Both are part of Samsung’s innovative approach to PCIe 5.0, which combines the performance everyone can appreciate and the omission of the excessive heat nobody cares for.

Here’s the bottom line: The Samsung 990 Evo Plus is not a must-upgrade for those already with a PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive or the previous 990 Evo. But if you’re in the market for a top-performing SSD that’s friendly in cost and hardware requirement, this is the drive to get.

Dong’s note: I first published this post on September 25, 2024, as a new piece and updated it to an in-depth review on October 22, 2024, after thorough hands-on testing.

Samsung 990 EVO Plus: The same hybrid drive that’s faster

The first thing to keep in mind is that like the case of its predecessor, the Samsung 990 EVO Plus is a hybrid PCIe 5.0/ PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. Specifically, when used with a PCIe 4.0 motherboard, it functions as a four-lane (4×4) PCIe 4.0 drive, and when hosted by a PCIe 5.0 board, it’s now a 2×2 PCIe 5.0 drive.

Four-lane (4×4) is generally the norm of NVMe SSD, and with PCIe 4.0, this spec delivers up to 7.9GB/s of bandwidth.

Since PCIe Gen. 5 has double the bandwidth, the 2×2 pecs deliver similar performance as 4×4 PCIe Gen. 4. And 7.9GB/s (or ≈8000MB/s) is plenty fast. That makes Samsung’s approach innovative. Both the 990 Evo and 990 Evo Plus have proven really fast in my testing while not suffering from heat issues like the case of 4×4 PCIe 5.0 drives, such as the Crucial T700 or T705.

PCIe Gen	Commercially Available	Rate per lane (rounded)	x1  Speed	x2 Speed	x4 Speed	x8 Speed	x16 Speed
1	2003	2 Gbps	250 MB/s	0.5 GB/s	1.0 GB/s	2 GB/s	4.0 GB/s
2	2007	4 Gbps	500 MB/s	1 GB/s	2.0 GB/s	4 GB/s	8.0 GB/s
3	2010	8 Gbps	984.6 MB/s	1.97 GB/s	3.94 GB/s	7.88 GB/s	15.8 GB/s
4	2020	16 Gbps	1969 MB/s	3.94 GB/s	7.88 GB/s	15.75 GB/s	31.5 GB/s
5	2022	32 Gbps	3938 MB/s	7.88 GB/s	15.75 GB/s	31.51 GB/s	63 GB/s

Besides that, the new 990 Evo Plus shares the same feature set and the Samsung Magician dashboard software as the 990 Evo, allowing users to handle all of its features, including overprovisioning and firmware updates.

Addtionally, the software allows the drive to run in different performance modes, such as “Standard” (default) or “Full Power,” where it uses the system’s memory as a cache to boost performance further.

The table below shows the hardware specs of the two.

Hardware specifications: Samsung SSD 990 Evo Plus vs. 990 Evo

	Samsung SSD 990 EVO Plus	Samsung SSD 990 EVO
Interface	PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, PCIe 5.0 x2, NVMe 2.02
Form Factor	M.2 2280
Storage Memory	Samsung V-NAND 3-TLC
Controller	Samsung In-house Controller
Capacity	1TB, 2TB, 4TB	1TB, 2TB
DRAM (LPD DDR4)	Dram-less
Sequential Read Speed (up to)	1TB: 7,150 MB/s 2TB, 4TB: 7,250 MB/s	5,000 MB/s,
Sequential Write Speed (up to)	6,300 MB/s	4,200 MB/s
Random Read Speed (QD32) (up to)	1TB: 850K IOPS 2TB: 1,000 IOPS 4TB: 1050 IPS	1TB: 680K IOPS 2TB: 700K IOPS
Random Write Speed (QD32) (up to)	1TB, 2TB: 1350 IOPS 4TB: 1400 IOPS	800K IOPS
Management Software	Samsung Magician Software
Data Encryption	AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption, TCG/Opal V2.0, Encrypted Drive (IEEE1667)
Total Bytes Written	1TB: 600TB 2TB: 1200TB 4TB: 2400TB	1TB: 600TB 2TB: 1200TB
Warranty	5-year
US Price (at launch)	1TB: $109.99 2TB: 184.99 4TB: 344.99 (Buy now!)	1TB: $124.99 2TB: $209.99 (Buy now!)

Samsung SSD 990 Evo Plus’s performance: Definitely an improved drive

I tested the 2TB version of the Samsung SSD 990 Evo Plus for a couple of days—in both “Standard” and “Full Power” modes—and used it together with the 1TB version in real-world applications for a couple of additional days more.

The 4TB version was available at the time of testing, but Samsung said it would be available later in 2024.

Both capacities proved excellent overall. While the 1TB version was slated to be a tad slower, it made no difference in my real-world usage.

As noted in the table above, the 990 Evo Plus is slated to deliver up to 50% improvement in performance compared to the previous model. That’s not entirely true—in fact, it’s impossible since the 990 Evo was pushing the limit of the PCIe Gen. 4 standard in specific tests.

However, that proved to be more than true where it matters.

Specifically, the biggest complaint I had with the 990 Evo was the fact its sequential performance was throttled down during heavy tasks of simultaneous writing and reading.

That’s no longer the case with the 990 Evo Plus. The new drive can handle heavy tasks involving large files without slowing down. For this reason, its copy performance in my read-and-write tests averages more than three times that of the previous version, as shown in the charts above.

These sequential performance numbers put the new 990 Evo Plus neck and neck with the Crucial P310, though the new Samsung drive has much higher endurance.

Addtionally, the 990 Evo Plus did much better than the Crucial P310 in random access tests, where it was behind only the 4×4 PCIe Gen 5. SSDs.

Samsung attributes the 990 Evo Plus’ new performance to its latest 8th generation V-NAND technology and 5-nanometer (nm) controller.

The drive also uses a nickel-coated heat shield that minimizes overheating, with an estimated 73% greater power efficiency over the 990 EVO per Samsung.

And in my testing, it indeed remained cool, both with PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 4.0. I felt almost no heat when resting a finger on it. In fact, it’s safe to say the Samsung SSD 990 Evo Plus is one of the coolest, if not the coolest, NVMe SSDs I’ve tested.

Conclusion

The Samsung SSD 990 Evo Plus NVMe SSD is everything the previous version, the 990 Evo, wanted to be.

The drive continues the innovative hybrid approach to deliver user-appreciable excellent performance without the excessive heat of souped-up full-spec PCIe Gen. 5 SSDs.

While it’s not a must-upgrade, it’s an excellent drive to get for your computer today, no matter if it’s a PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 5.0 machine.