Samsung promises mainstream value with their new 980 M.2 NVMe SSD

Samsung has entered the mainstream SSD market, launching its first DRAMless NVMe SSD with their new 980 M.2 NVMe drives. These SSDs are entry-level models which deliver peak speeds that compete with the popular 970 EVO drives, despite the fact that they ship with lower pricing. 

With their 1TB 980 model costing £120 in the UK, it is clear that Samsung is targeting the lower-end of the NVMe SSD market, focusing on the PCIe 3.0 specification with peak read and write speeds as high as 3,500 MB/s and 3,000 MB/s, respectively. 

Samsung is marketing this new SSD as a replacement for their popular 970 EVO, promising users a 56% increase in power efficiency and similar performance specifications. That said, the 980’s lack of a DRAM cache will place it behind the 970 EVO in several workloads, though these characteristics will not be a concern for most users. 

Samsung’s 980 series of PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSDs will ship with 250GB, 500GB and 1TB models, which will cost $49.99, $69.99 and $129.99 respectively in the US. These are value-oriented prices, highlighting the cost reductions offered by Samsung’s latest 3D V-NAND and controller technologies. 

In their press release on these drives, Samsung has claimed that their Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology counters the SSD’s lack of a DRAM buffer, overcoming the drawbacks of most DRAMless SSDs to deliver strong performance levels and affordable pricing. Samsung’s SSD Magician software also contains a new “Full Power Mode”, which is designed to enable this drive to “continuously run at peak performance for uninterrupted work and play.”