Whether you're an editor, a solo creative, or someone who just needs an upgrade to their gaming device, NVMe SSDs are crucial in safely storing our data.
Be it a film or regular old social media content, the speed at which we create new work is increasing. Having a solid (pun intended) storage solution allows creatives not to worry about the technical side of it all and focus on...well, being creative.
The Samsung 990 Pro 4TB NVMe Gen4 SSD packs blinding speed in a hot little package.
So why should creatives care if Gen5 is already out?
4TB of High Performance
As with all new technologies, the best version of it comes at the tail end of its lifespan. All the workflow and manufacturing have been refined to peak performance.
While Gen5 SSDs are out in the wild, they are relatively new to the market and come with the quirks all early adopters should be used to. But with Gen4, all of those issues have been overcome.
This makes the Samsung 990 4TB NVMe SSD the highest-performing Gen4 SSD in the market, at least according to NASCompares.
Should You Buy the Samsung 990 Pro 4TB SSD?
According to Samsung, the new 4TB 990 features an improved controller and offer near-max performance in a PCIe 4.0 interface. Creatives should see sequential read speeds of up to 7,450 megabytes-per-second (MB/s) and write speeds of up to 6,900MB/s.
For editors, this should mean better timeline playback and transfer speeds when moving footage from one drive to another.
It's also single-sided, meaning all of it's NAND modules are on one side of the PCB. If you're working on a laptop with an M.2 slot, you'll get better thermal management if you include a heatsink. And you'll need it. The 4TB 990 runs hot.
Check out NASCompares full review below:
Is This Something You Need?
If you're an editor working with massive amounts of footage like me, having extra space on a single SSD is a lifesaver. Especially if you build out a NAS or put these M.2 drives onto a PCIe card.
My live production content usually runs about 300GB per project, with five projects a year. That's 1.5 TB just for raw footage per year. And I've been doing this for over ten years.
That's over 15 TB of storage and doesn't include project files, masters, and other assets.
Samsung 4TB 990 PRO
Built using V-NAND 3-bit MLC flash technology and a new controller, the Samsung 4TB 990 PRO PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 Internal SSD offers an M.2 2280 form factor and a PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 2.0 interface to deliver sequential read speeds of up to 7450 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 6900 MB/s.
Yaroslav AltuninFor narrative films or documentaries, storage needs will be double, if not triple. While you can archive to regular old HDDs, having fast storage to get your footage onto your workstation, edited, and archived is mandatory in today's high-paced production environments.
A pair of these new 4TB SSDs will fit nicely into my workstation and workflow. How they will work for you all depends on your needs and requirements for speed.
