Samsung 980 - M.2 PCIe Gen3 NVMe SSD - 1TB

The Samsung 980 is Samsung's budget Gen3 NVMe SSD, positioned below the 980 Pro. It uses Samsung V-NAND TLC with a DRAMless design that relies on Host Memory Buffer (HMB) instead of a dedicated DRAM cache. Sequential reads hit 3,500 MB/s on the 1TB and 3,100 MB/s on the 500GB.

DRAMless Design

The lack of dedicated DRAM keeps costs down but affects sustained random I/O under heavy queue depth. For typical consumer workloads (booting, launching applications, light file transfers), HMB is sufficient. The flash translation layer is partially cached in host system RAM, so performance degrades less than older DRAMless designs. Heavy random writes over extended periods will still show the gap versus DRAM-equipped drives.

Gen3 in a Gen4 World

The PCIe Gen3 x4 interface caps theoretical bandwidth around 3,500 MB/s, which the 1TB 980 essentially saturates. Gen3 compatibility is the main reason to consider this drive: older platforms (pre-AMD Zen 3, pre-Intel 11th gen) that lack Gen4 slots still benefit from NVMe speeds. On newer platforms, a Gen4 drive like the 990 EVO or a budget Gen4 option makes more sense.

Endurance

Samsung typically rates the 980 at 300 TBW (500GB) and 600 TBW (1TB). Five-year warranty. Samsung Magician software for drive health monitoring.

Best for: Older Gen3 systems that need an NVMe upgrade. Secondary storage or boot drives in budget builds where Gen4 bandwidth isn't needed. Linux home servers running on Gen3 platforms.

Avoid if: Your platform supports Gen4. The price difference between this and a Gen4 drive is minimal, and Gen4 drives offer meaningfully more bandwidth.