Samsung is adding another SSD to its extensive portfolio of storage solutions. The new SSD 980 is a PCIe 3.0, DRAM-less solid state drive available with up to 1TB of storage for the entry-level market.
Although these SSDs haven’t been officially announced yet, they are already available for pre-order at some European retailers, so we’ve already had a good look at the specs.
Available with 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB storage capacities, the NVMe M.2 SSD 980 will offer slightly less performance than the SSD 970 Evo Plus with reading speeds of up to 3500MB/s and writing speeds of up to 3000MB/s. 4K random read and write speeds are also slightly lower, featuring up to 500K IOPS while reading and 480K IOPS while writing. Given the rated MTBF of 1.5M hours and up to 600TBW of endurance, this drive seems to be TLC-based just like the SSD 980 Pro.
Test Suite Overview
Synthetic Tests: Basic IO Patterns
Advanced Synthetic Tests: Block Sizes and Cache Size Effects
Power Management, Conclusions
The last major update to our consumer SSD benchmark suite was introduced in 2017. A lot has changed in the SSD market over the past several years, and our SSD testing methods need to change in response to those trends. SSDs in general have been getting more complex, so there are more ways for benchmarks to end up being misleading or unrealistic. This might be on accident, or as part of a deliberate PR strategy to obfuscate the real world performance behind a holy unified metric. [pun intended]
Before we begin, let us discuss
why you want to upgrade the internal storage to Surface Pro X.
There are two reasons to consider, with the first being the most obvious:
You want more internal storage
You want a faster SSD
The first reason is self-evident. You bought a Surface Pro X with 128 or 256GB of storage, and you want more. Maybe you want 512GB or even 1TB.
A faster SSD is less of a reason to upgrade, and should be seen as more of a side benefit. Microsoft ships Surface Pro X with a BG3 M.2 2230 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive Internal SSD. But Toshiba/Kioxia now has a BG4 version. On a technical level, BG4 changes from 64L to 96L TLC NAND with four PCIe lanes (instead of two) and can boost capacity to 1TB for the first time in this form factor. And while BG4 lacks DRAM, which is found on more traditional (and larger) SSDs, it does use the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) feature. Anandtech does an excellent deep dive into the improved format.
line-up
is the Spectrix S20G PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSD. Aimed at gamers, esports pros, and tech enthusiasts, this new SSD features RGB lighting and incredible read/write speeds for shorter loading times.
Available in 500GB and 1TB capacities, the NVMe 1.3-compliant Spectrix S20G PCIe 3.0 SSD has maximum sequential read/write speeds of 2500/1800Mbps. Thanks to the use of an SLC cache and HMB (Host Memory Buffer), this drive is capable of up to 160/190K maximum 4K random read/write IOPS.
The sleek and stylish Spectrix S20G features a heatsink with X-shaped RGB lighting that’s customisable through RGB software.