The race is on, Nvme is now mainstream, and new faster drives are coming in thick and fast. Samsung, one of the largest global suppliers of storage and electronics, has just announced the release of the Samsung SSD 980 PRO.
This form of M.2 NVMe solid-state drive has been around for a few years, and early technology was used in the old MacPro 2013’s. At the time, the memory was incredibly expensive and only in its infancy when it comes to speed.
This new generation of drive marks a turning point for photographers and videographers, enabling affordable access to storage speeds that just a couple of years ago would have been unthinkable.
“Over the years, Samsung has continuously challenged the limits of high-speed flash memory storage solutions,” said Dr Mike Mang, vice president of Memory Brand Product Biz at Samsung Electronics. “The new 980 PRO SSD reflects our continuing commitment to delivering exceptional products consumers have come to expect from Samsung.”
The new Samsung SSD 980 PRO has been designed for speed and is ideal for anyone needing the ultrafast transfer speeds required by applications such as Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premiere Pro, Motion and After Effects when handling 4K and 8K footage.
Unlike many other manufacturers Samsung design all the key components, including the Elpis controller, V-NAND and DRAM, to ensure that the full PCIe 4.0 potential is realised.
What this all means is that these solid-state drives can deliver sequential read speeds of 7,000MB/s and write speeds of 5,000MB/s that’s faster than any other SSD we’ve seen.
To use one of these drives you will need to either have the correct connections within your PC or Mac or opt for an external enclosure such as the Netstor we looked at a while back.
Video editing puts a huge strain on solid-state drives, and heat can be a real issue, not just for the drive itself but also the system. Here Samsung has added nickel coating on to the controller as well as applying a heat spreader label on the backside of the SSD for efficient thermal management. Hopefully, that will all keep the drive cool under load.
The new SSD will be available in October in 1TB, 500GB and 250GB capacities. There will also be a 2TB version available towards the end of the year. The 256GB version will be available for £82.99
For more information, please visit samsung.com/SSD or samsungssd.com