The company’s first-ever 4TB NVMe drive, price and release date unknown
Samsung solid-state drives consistently rate among the best, but up until now, the company’s consumer NVMe SSDs have all been limited to a maximum capacity of 2TB. As SSD prices continue to drop, consumers will soon have another 4TB option from a reputable manufacturer.
The famous 990 Pro solid-state drive will soon come in a 4TB version, according to a recent announcement from Samsung. Although the price and release date are still pending, the product signifies the company’s entry into the market for quick, large consumer drives.
The new model, MZ-V9P4T0BW, will be a PCIe 4.0 SSD with comparable performance to its 2TB predecessor, with sequential read and write rates probably approaching 7.5 GB/s and 7 GB/s, respectively. Samsung also verifies 1,400K and 1,550K read and write IOPs, respectively. On a PC or PlayStation 5, the 4TB 990 Pro will probably be a wise choice for keeping a sizable game library.
You wanted it so badly, we had no choice but to deliver. The 4TB 990 PRO by #SamsungSSD is coming. Same blazing-fast storage with double the max capacity for gaming, video, 3D editing, and more. Stay tuned for more details. pic.twitter.com/B3iRso9Q3p
— Samsung Semiconductor (@SamsungDSGlobal) August 24, 2023
As costs fall and new, big video game releases require more and more capacity, more consumers may start seeking for 4TB drives. Forza Motorsport, Starfield, and Baldur’s Gate 3 each need about 130GB. Similar storage requirements can apply to upcoming games like Alan Wake II and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.
Samsung hasn’t yet disclosed a price, although competing 4TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives sell for between $170 and $350. If the 2TB version’s current lowest price of eight and a half cents per gigabyte is maintained, a 4TB 990 Pro will most likely be priced similarly to the latter. Additionally, adding a heatsink often results in an increase in an SSD’s price, but the 2TB 990 Pro is oddly less expensive thanks to its built-in heatsink. It’s unclear how the company’s choice of the future model may be influenced by the state of the SSD market today.
Prices for 1TB and 2TB SSDs have fallen throughout the year due to oversupply in the NAND flash market, and the trend may continue into September. 4TB drives, however, have experienced far less volatility. One example is the MSI Spatium M461, whose price has dropped by $50 since April.
Samsung has not yet entered the PCIe 5.0 consumer SSD market. Although read rates of up to 10 GB/s are claimed for products implementing the new standard from firms like Crucial and Gigabyte, the market for them is still in its infancy. When PCIe 5.0 motherboards are more widely used, rivals like Samsung and Western Digital will probably release their products.