Samsung 980 Pro - M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD - 2TB

The Samsung 980 Pro was Samsung's first Gen4 NVMe consumer drive, and it set the Gen4 performance standard at launch. It uses Samsung's in-house Elpis controller with V-NAND TLC and a dedicated LPDDR4 DRAM cache. Sequential speeds reach 7,000 MB/s reads and 5,000-5,100 MB/s writes depending on capacity.

The Gen4 Pioneer

When it launched, the 980 Pro was the fastest consumer NVMe drive available. The Elpis controller delivered a meaningful jump over the 970 EVO Plus and established Samsung's Gen4 architecture. The 990 Pro has since replaced it with the Pascal controller, higher write speeds (6,900 MB/s vs 5,100 MB/s), and better random I/O. The 980 Pro remains a solid Gen4 drive, but it's the previous generation.

Write Speed Gap

The 980 Pro's most visible weakness versus its successor is write performance. At 5,000-5,100 MB/s sequential writes, it falls roughly 26% behind the 990 Pro's 6,900 MB/s. For read-heavy workloads (game loads, application launches), the difference is negligible. For sustained writes (large file copies, video editing renders), the gap is noticeable.

Endurance

The 2TB model includes a 2GB LPDDR4 DRAM cache. Endurance scales linearly: 600 TBW per 1TB of capacity. Five-year warranty. Samsung Magician for health monitoring and firmware updates.

Best for: Budget Gen4 builds where it's available at a discount versus the 990 Pro. Read-heavy workloads where the write speed gap doesn't matter. Still a good PS5 upgrade option.

Avoid if: You're buying new at full price. The 990 Pro offers substantially better write performance and random I/O for a similar cost. The 980 Pro only makes sense if it's significantly cheaper.