Samsung flagship SSD 990 Pro: PCIe 5.0 is still too hot

Samsung flagship SSD 990 Pro: PCIe 5.0 is still too hot.

A few days ago, Samsung officially released a new generation of flagship SSD hard drive 990 Pro.

However, what is surprising is that the previous certification said it was a PCIe 5.0 SSD, but it turned out to be PCIe 4.0, with a continuous read speed of 7450MB/s and a continuous write speed of up to 6900MB/s.

Compared with the flagship products of other SSD brands, which mainly push PCIe 5.0, with a speed of 10-14GB/s, the Samsung 990 Pro is a toothpaste upgrade, rejecting PCIe 5.0 and sticking to PCIe 4.0.

Samsung already has a variety of PCIe 5.0 hard drives, especially enterprise-level products, so the PCIe 5.0 technology on the 990 Pro is no problem.

The active toothpaste squeeze is more likely due to other factors, such as the heat of the PCIe 5.0 hard drive.

Since the performance is doubled compared to PCIe 4.0 hard drives, the heat generation of PCIe 5.0 is also a problem.

The main control chip manufacturer Phison discussed this issue before, and believes that PCIe 5.0 and the future PCIe 6.0 require active cooling.

Phison said, “We have done a lot of work to ensure that SSD power consumption is within a reasonable range, but there is no doubt that SSDs will get hotter, just like CPUs and GPUs started to get hot in the 1990s. To PCIe In the 5.0/6.0 era, we have to consider active cooling.”

In Phison’s view, PCIe 5.0 SSDs must be equipped with large heat sinks, but ultimately have to rely on active fans to quickly dissipate heat.

On the 990 Pro, Samsung also launched two versions, one without a heat sink, and the other is the 990 Pro whith heatsink, which is the version with a heat dissipation vest.

In order to ensure that the heat can be controlled without a fan, the 990 Pro this time There is no choice for PCIe 5.0 master.