Samsung has remained the go-to brand for NVMe SSDs for many years, and we understand why. You’re getting close to the maximum bandwidth of a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, with Samsung touting sequential read speeds of up to 7,450MB/s. My testing backs up Samsung’s claims, making it one of the SSDs Fastest PCIe 4.0 you can buy today.

Unlike most other SSDs on the market, Samsung uses its own NAND and controller for the 990 Pro, making it generally less prone to hardware swaps post-launch. Other SSD brands that outsource NAND and controllers may experience supply issues and replace components, sometimes at the expense of advertised speeds. Fortunately, that’s not the case here. You also get a small amount of DDR4 as cache, speeding up drive performance.

Price is where things get interesting. This model of the 990 Pro is heavily targeted at the PS5 due to its own heatsink. That bit of extra metal drives the price up. At 2TB, you can save $10 by opting for the 990 Pro model without the heatsink. And if you upgrade to 4TB, you’ll save $30. This is also compared to Samsung’s 990 Pro. If you buy a drive like the WD Black SN850X, you’ll get similar speeds for a lot less money, without the heatsink.

Samsung may have fast drives, but it also has great management software. I wouldn’t blame you for ignoring the software that comes with most SSDs, but Samsung Magician has plenty of options and it’s worth taking a little space to install the app.

You get high-level statistics, such as disk health, and you can perform benchmarking and diagnostics to see how your disk is performing. Most importantly, Samsung gives you a host of options to improve your drive performance. You can enable TRIM to let deleted blocks reappear for writing, as well as prevent the SSD from going to sleep for maximum performance. Samsung also offers overprovisioning options to increase drive life.

Beyond performance, you get options for encryption, data migration, and a proper wipe feature. This will restructure all data on the disk so that it cannot be recovered by forensic analysis.

Setting the scene, CrystalDiskMark shows that the 990 Pro with heatsink actually achieves a bit above Samsung’s claimed speeds for both sequential reads and writes. We are close to maximizing the bandwidth available on a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, at least for sequential reads and writes. However, this is not what your reader will do most of the time.

Looking at real-world applications provides important context, as the margins between the 990 Pro 2TB and a much cheaper (and slower) drive like the WD Blue SN5000 shrink significantly. In large file transfers, as you can see in my AJA Video Systems review, the 990 Pro reigns supreme. There are some minor differences between the 1TB and 2TB models I tested, but not a significant enough difference to note.

In gaming, however, the 990 Pro 2TB with heatsink actually lagged behind the pack. The standard SN5000 and 990 Pro performed better in 3DMark – which loads games via the benchmark – and Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail. The 2TB 990 Pro isn’t far behind, and when we’re talking about half-second margins, you’ll never notice a significant difference in performance. On paper, however, it’s a little late.

If you’re looking for one of the fastest SSDs on the market for your PC, the Samsung 990 Pro hits that goal squarely. There’s no doubt that the Samsung 990 Pro is a fast SSD, but I’m not sure going with this specific model is the right decision for the PS5. There are several important reasons for this.

First, the heatsink. There are only a few cases where an SSD requires a heatsink, and even then you probably won’t reach damaging temperatures without a heatsink. If you’re planning to install the 990 Pro in a PC, save some money and go for the model without a heatsink.

The biggest issue is gaming speed. This player is heavily targeted at the PS5, which is a platform that really can’t take advantage of the extra speed on offer. In gaming, even the objectively slower SN5000 shows similar results, and you can buy this drive for $120, which is $60 less than the 990 Pro 2TB with heatsink.

The best use case for such a fast drive isn’t gaming: most PCIe 4.0 SSDs are sufficient for gaming, with only minor differences in loading speed. The 990 Pro really shines when it comes to large file transfers, where its sustained speed advantage becomes clear. In this context, the 990 Pro is worth spending on.