Samsung 980 NVMe PCIe NVMe 1.4 M.2 2280 Up to 1TB SSD Without DRAM for Consumers

Samsung Electronics America announced the 980 NVMe SSD ^[1], the company’s first consumer drive without DRAM.

Delivering the performance among DRAM-less SSDs ^[2], the 980 makes NVMe speeds more accessible to a range of users.

“Through both hardware and software innovations, our new 980 SSD brings greater value without compromising the high-end NVMe performance,” said KyuYoung Lee, VP, memory brand product business team. “The 980 offers an excellent blend of speed, power efficiency and reliability, making it suitable for everyday PC users and gamers as well as content creators.“

Previously, DRAM-less designs have presented a disadvantage in speed without the short-term memory at hand for fast access to data. The SSD 980 utilizes Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology, which links the drive directly to the host processor’s DRAM to overcome any performance drawbacks. This technology, coupled with the company’s latest sixth-gen V-NAND as well as optimized controller and firmware, enables to provide NVMe performance with 6x the speed of SATA SSDs. Sequential read and write speeds come in at up to 3,500 and 3,000MB/s, while random read and write performances are rated as 500,000 IO/s and 480,000 IO/s ^[3], respectively.

The upgraded Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 also offers enhanced sustained performance over the previous iteration ^[4] by allocating a much larger buffer storage area inside the drive.

Magician 6.3 software screen

Click to enlarge

For users working with large files or running graphics-heavy games, the ‘Full Power Mode’ added to the firm‘s Magician 6.3 software allows the drive to continuously run at peak performance for uninterrupted work and play.

Additionally, consumers will no longer have to worry about their drive overheating, thanks to its thermal designs. Users can enjoy stable and reliable performance even during prolonged use thanks to the same Dynamic Thermal Guard technology, nickel-coated controller and heat spreader label solutions available in the company‘s high-end 980 series.

The SSD also features improved power efficiency of up to 56% when compared to the previous 970 EVO,^[5] allowing laptop users to better manage power usage.

The 980 SSD is available for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $49.99 for the 250GB, $69.99 for the 500GB and $129.99 for the 1TB.

^[1] The NVMe design mark is a registered trademark of NVM Express, Inc.   
^[2] PCIe 3.0 NVMe DRAM-less SSDs, as of March 2021
^[3] Performance may vary depending on the SSD’s firmware version and the system hardware and system configuration. Performance measurements are based on IOmeter 1.1.0. Sequential and random write performance were measured with Intelligent TurboWrite technology activated. Intelligent TurboWrite operates only within a specific data transfer size.
* Test system configuration: Intel Core i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, DDR4 2133MHz 8GBx2 OS-Windows 10 Pro 64bit Asrock Z-170 Extreme7+
^[4] TurboWrite region has been increased, from up to 42GB in the 970 EVO to up to 160GB in the NVMe SSD 980
^[5] Power efficiency (measured as IO/s/watts) improvement determined in comparison to the 970 EVO 1TB. Power consumption measured with IOmeter1.1.0 version with AMD Ryzen 3700X 8 Core @3.6GHz, DDR4 8GBx2, OS-Windows 10 Pro 64bit Chipset-GIGABYTE-X570-AORUS MASTER
^[6] Samsung Electronics will not be responsible for any damages not covered by the limited warranty, including but not limited to any loss of data or other information stored on Samsung Electronics product or any loss of profit or revenue which may be incurred by user due to loss of data. More information on the limited warranty.
^[7] Product covered for 5 years or until fulfillment of the TBW rating, whichever comes first.