Samsung 990 EVO

Released in 2024, the 990 EVO is an entry-level NVMe M.2 solid-state drive based on Samsung's proprietary Piccolo controller and technology and 133-layer TLC V-NAND. Its target audience is consumers and it is designed for general use.

The 990 EVO stood out in the 2024 market by being a PCIe 4.0/5.0 hybrid, offering compatibility with both interfaces but with identical bandwidth (Gen5 x2 or Gen4 x4).

Controller and Architecture

Samsung's 4-channel Piccolo controller is built with a 5 nm production process and is optimized for use with affordable DRAM-less SSDs. It provides native support for the NVMe 2.0 protocol and is allegedly also available in a variant for QLC NAND memory (PiccoloQ).

Although the 990 EVO uses TLC NAND and not QLC, it lacks an onboard DRAM cache, instead relying on Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology to utilize system RAM for metadata storage.

Samsung's Intelligent TurboWrite technology is also present. This utilizes a portion of the NAND flash as a high-speed pseudo-SLC (pSLC) buffer significantly improves write performance for bursty workloads. The cache size varies by capacity, with larger drives featuring more substantial cache allocations.

NAND Flash Memory Type

The Samsung 990 EVO is equipped with 133-Layer TLC NAND flash memory. Its V-NAND architecture employs vertical stacking of memory cells, allowing for higher density storage while maintaining reliability.

Power Consumption and Efficiency

As an entry-level SSD, the 990 EVO is designed with power efficiency in mind, consuming approximately 5.5W during active operation and less than 25mW in sleep mode. It supports multiple power states and implements aggressive power management features, making it suitable for laptops and other mobile devices where battery life is key.

Write Endurance

As always, write endurance varies by capacity. The 990 EVO is in line with industry standards being rated at 600 TBW (Terabytes Written) for the 1 TB model and 1,200 TBW for the 2 TB variant.

Performance

The Samsung 990 EVO delivers sequential read speeds up to 5,000 MB/s and write speeds up to 4,200 MB/s, depending on capacity. Random performance reaches up to 700,000 IOPS for 4K random reads. Its performance is optimized for consumer workloads, and it's considerably lower compared to high-end SSDs like the 990 PRO.

Specifications

Official datasheet

Market Impact and Reception

The 990 EVO is positioned as Samsung's mainstream consumer NVMe offering, sitting below the high-performance 990 PRO series while aspiring to offer better performance than entry-level alternatives. It was not overly well received by the tech media, as some reviewers were disappointed with both performance and power efficiency.