The Samsung 990 PRO M.2 model was found in the lists of PCIe 5.0 x4 compatible SSDs of the PCI-SIG consortium – it will replace the popular 980 PRO. This will be Samsung’s first consumer SSD with a PCIe 5.0 interface and will likely offer buyers speeds up to twice that of PCIe 4.0.
Already this year, the mass appearance of motherboards equipped with PCIe 5.0 based on Intel and AMD chipsets is expected, which means that a lot of compatible drives will appear in the second half of the year. Today’s fastest PCIe 4.0 drives offer over 7000MB/s sequential read speeds – PCIe 5.0 doubles the bus bandwidth, meaning compatible drives should be twice as fast
Image source: pcisig.com
Samsung already has a PM1743 SSD for PCIe 5.0, but it is addressed to the server and workstation segment – the drive really offers almost cosmic 13 GB / s today thanks to the latest NAND chips from the Korean manufacturer and the corresponding controller. Technical indicators of the Samsung 990 PRO are not yet available, but they are unlikely to be inferior to those offered by corporate counterparts. The form factor of the SSD is also unknown: it could be the traditional M.2 2280 (22×80 mm) or the larger M.2 2580 and M.2. 25110 – New design motherboards can set new standards.
