Can you use it for gaming? Whether you need a boost for gaming or a seamless workflow for heavy graphics, the 980 is a smart choice for outstanding SSD performance. The 980 delivers value, without sacrificing sequential read/write speeds up to 3,500/3,000 MB/s³, over 6.2x the speed of SATA SSDs. Get details in Samsung (MZ-V8V1T0B/AM) 980 SSD 1TB – M.2 NVMe interface internal solid state drive review.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- AES 256-bit hardware encryption
- Competitive performance
- TurboWrite 2.0 is impressive
- Large, fast-recovering dynamic SLC cache
- Attractive design
- Software package
- 980 Pro-like endurance and 5-year warranty
- Excellent Samsung Magician
- Reasonably affordable
- Good sustained read/write performance
Cons
- Slow write speeds after the SLC cache fills
- Last-gen interface
- Reliance on Host Memory Buffer slows down random file performance
Specs
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
CPU Cooler: AMD Wraith Spire
RAM: 32GB T-Force Vulcan Z CL18 @3,600MHz
Motherboard: MSI B550 Pro VDH Wi-Fi
Graphics card: Gigabyte RTX 3070 Vision OC
OS SSD: Samsung 980 Pro @ 500GB
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 750W
Case: ThermalTake Core V21
Price
$129 (£119, AU$201) for a 1TB SSD is a decent bargain for any SSD, let alone a PCIe SSD and even more surprising to see it coming from Samsung. Samsung also offers a 500GB model for $69 (£64, AU$108) and a 250GB model for $49 (£46, AU$77), but their value proposition drops considerably as the capacity goes down, especially since the performance of the smaller models also drops.
Compare Samsung (MZ-V8V1T0B/AM) 980 SSD 1TB – M.2 NVMe interface internal solid state drive
| Product | 980 250GB | 980 500GB | 980 1TB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $49.99 | $69.99 | $129.99 |
| Capacity (User / Raw) | 250GB / 256GB | 500GB / 512GB | 1000GB / 1024GB |
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 |
| Interface / Protocol | PCIe 3.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 | PCIe 3.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 | PCIe 3.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 |
| Controller | Samsung Pablo | Samsung Pablo | Samsung Pablo |
| DRAM | DRAMless / HMB | DRAMless / HMB | DRAMless / HMB |
| Memory | Samsung 128L V-NAND TLC | Samsung 128L V-NAND TLC | Samsung 128L V-NAND TLC |
| Sequential Read | 2,900 MBps | 3,100 MBps | 3,500 MBps |
| Sequential Write | 1,300 MBps | 2,600 MBps | 3,000 MBps |
| Random Read (QD1) | 17,000 IOPS | 17,000 IOPS | 17,000 IOPS |
| Random Write (QD1) | 53,000 IOPS | 54,000 IOPS | 54,000 IOPS |
| Random Read | 230,000 IOPS | 400,000 IOPS | 500,000 IOPS |
| Random Write | 320,000 IOPS | 470,000 IOPS | 480,000 IOPS |
| Security | AES 256-bit encryption | AES 256-bit encryption | AES 256-bit encryption |
| Endurance (TBW) | 150 TB | 300 TB | 600 TB |
| Part Number | MZ-V8V250BW | MZ-V8V500BW | MZ-V8V1T0BW |
| Warranty | 5-Years | 5-Years | 5-Years |
Samsung (MZ-V8V1T0B/AM) 980 SSD 1TB – M.2 NVMe interface internal solid state drive review
Design
The Samsung SSD 980 is a four-lane PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 drive manufactured on an M.2 Type-2280 (80mm long) design. It employs the NVMe protocol over the PCIe 3.0 bus, and it features an in-house Samsung controller. It’s based on what the company calls its own sixth-generation, “up to 136-layer”, three-bit multi-level-cell (MLC) V-NAND flash
Without DRAM
It is impressive that Samsung’s drive is standing its ground as well as it is without DRAM. The drive does use Host Memory Buffer, which may help partially explain how it’s still keeping up so well. While DRAM may have helped it go even faster and maybe keep up with SK Hynix, the omissions undoubtedly helps keep the price down
Magician Software
Samsung has updated its excellent Magician software for the Samsung 980 as well, with the introduction of Full power mode, which effectively turns off lower power states to ensure the drive never goes to sleep and is always available. Given we didn’t have a problem with the drive’s operating temperatures, this doesn’t seem a problem, although at the same time, if you’re after serious performance, there are other, faster drives out there—such as the Samsung 980 Pro, Sabrent Rocket 4.0 Plus and the WD Black SN850.
Transfer rate
The real-world tests are a bit more telling though, with the 30GB folder transfer taking 2 minutes and 40 seconds to complete, some 14 seconds slower than the 970 EVO, and 11 seconds behind the WD SN750. The Final Fantasy XIV game loading benchmarked took 8.358 seconds, which isn’t bad for a PCIe 3.0 drive, although almost a second behind the fastest drives out there.
Read & write speed
Interfacing with the host over a PCIe 3.0 x4 link, the 980 NVMe SSD can up to 3.5/3 GBps of sequential read/write throughput and even sustain up to 500,000/480,000 random read/write IOPS at its highest capacity. But, while peak figures are eye-catchers, the real key to application performance lies in the QD1 random performance rating. Samsung rates the drive with up to 17,000/54,000 read/write IOPS at QD1, which promises responsive performance in everyday desktop PC workloads.
TurboWrite
Samsung also touts its new Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 secondary caching scheme/algorithm. The company claims it allots three times more NAND for secondary cache on average than with the 970 EVO. Our testing confirmed that.
The 980 is warrantied for a full five years with a TBW rating (TeraBytes that can be Written) of 300TBW for every 500GB of capacity. That’s about average until you hit the top tier, and far more than the drive is likely to see in ten years let alone five.
Storage options
The 980 will ship in three flavors: 250GB ($50 MSRP), 500GB ($70 MSRP), and the capacity we tested, 1TB ($130 MSRP). You could find cheaper NVMe SSDs, but these are by far the least expensive from a major vendor. For Samsung, it’s tantamount to throwing drives off the back of the truck.
Form factor
The 980 uses the common 2280 (22mm wide, 80mm long) form factor, and is single-sided. That makes it quite suitable for upgrading thinner laptops that might not accommodate a double-sided drive. The controller is an in-house Samsung design, and the NAND is what the company refers to as 100+ layer TLC.
Samsung (MZ-V8V1T0B/AM) 980 SSD 1TB – M.2 NVMe interface internal solid state drive Performance review
We tested the 1TB model, and though it performs near the front of the pack for PCIe 3.0 SSDs in spite of its lack of DRAM, it doesn’t lead the way. Though its sequential read speed of 3,569MB/s is impressive, it falls short of the 3,602MB/s of the SK Hynix Gold P31.
Samsung trades blows with the Corsair MP400, but that drive has an edge in capacity, as Corsair offers 2TB, 4TB, and even 8TB options.
The gap widens even more when it comes to random writes, where Samsung only hits 2,846MB/s, dropping nearly 600MB/s short of SK Hynix’s offerings. Random read and write speeds, the bread and butter of SSDs, go even further in SK Hynix’s favor with a nearly 400MB/s lead in reads and almost 800MB/s gap in writes.
CrystalDiskMark Sequential: 3,569.82MB/s (read); 2,846.2MB/s (write)
CrystalDiskMark Random Q32: 2,055.83MB/s (read); 1,898.29MB/s (write)
10GB file transfer: 4.71 seconds
10GB folder transfer: 5.19 seconds
PCMark10 SSD: 2,526 points
Samsung (MZ-V8V1T0B/AM) 980 SSD 1TB – M.2 NVMe interface internal solid state drive customer review
Finally the affordable Samsung NVME we have wanted
Since 2013, I have been rocking a 500 GB Samsung 840 SATA SSD in my primary system and its many iterations. It has served me well and still going strong to this day. It eventually became the oldest component in my system.I made sure full NVME port was on my current motherboard when I built it so I was ready when it was time to upgrade … and thats exactly what I did with the Samsung 980. I wanted full NVME speeds, latest-gen NVME technology, and most importantly affordable. I was not/do not need the PRO-tier speed variety’s.
I had the SN550 and similar in my cart many times but never pulled the trigger for some reason. I really did not want to go with an “off brand” and I also wanted to order some place local just in case my motherboard did not play nice with it and I needed to return it.
One day when I was about ready to purchase the SN550 or the SN750, I noticed this new affordable Samsung drive on the SSD page that sat in the middle price wise. I had no idea they were about to release one and I immediately searched review sites.
The review sites and benchmarks showed what I hoped for. An affordable NVME drive that punches in the middle between high-end and the low-end drives. While it would have been nice to have DRAM, that seems like a niche situation for most users and Samsung compensated with a larger cache and faster Flash chips.
Samsung arguably also has one if not the best Software suites to support their SSDs. Little to no bloatware, lightweight, easy to use and get the information you want.
Compared to my old SATA SSD (that could hit max throughput for SATA), going full speed NVME is like fully opening the faucet when it felt like we were 2/3 or 1/2 open on SATA. No the jump is not as significant when going from Platter HDD to SSD, but there is a noticeable difference. Everything is just quicker. Loading Large/High Quality pictures and videos are the most noticeable for me personally.
Final note: Im about 2/3rds capacity (temporarily storing some backup data) and there is no performance drop – which has plagued SSDs since they existed. This is with 10% Overprovisioning
By wvcrusader at Best Buy
Alternate of Samsung (MZ-V8V1T0B/AM) 980 SSD 1TB – M.2 NVMe interface internal solid state drive
WD Black SN850
Specs
Capacity: 1TBController: WD_Black G2Memory: BiCS4 96-layer TLCInterface: PCIe Gen4 x4Seq. read: 7,000 MB/sSeq write: 5,300 MB/s
Pros
+Blistering PCIe 4.0 throughput+Excellent real-world performance+Solid 5 year warranty
Cons
-Runs hot-No AES 256-bit encryption
The Western Digital Black SN850 makes a fashionably late entrance to the PCIe 4.0 party. It can hit 7,000MB/s reads and 5,300MB/s writes in sequential transfers, which is well beyond most drives’ capabilities. That’s because it uses the latest PCIe 4.0 interface, which has double the theoretical bandwidth limit of other PCIe 3.0 drives.
Out of the current PCIe 4.0 drives on the market, the SN850 is hands down the most impressive out of the gate with its impressive real-world performance though it does run a little hot. If you want the fastest next-gen drive, this is it, and it’s suddenly incredibly affordable too.
Performance ultimately defines any SSD; the WD SN850 really stands out from the crowd. The synthetic benchmarks, spearheaded by ATTO and AS SSD, show that this is very much a second-generation PCIe 4.0 drive, with peak sequential read speeds knocking on 6,750MB/s and 5,920MB/s, respectively. Writes are lower than the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus but still healthy, at either side of 5GB/s. The 4K write performance in AS SSD manages to flip this over, and the WD SN850 outpaces the Sabrent drive.
Editor’s recommendation
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