The new 980 NVMe SSD is Samsung's first DRAM-less SSD, 1TB for under S$200

The new 980 NVMe SSD is Samsung's first DRAM-less SSD, 1TB for under S$200

Note: This article was first published on 11th March 2021.

Samsung has a new SSD. It's positioned as the successor to the popular 970 Evo and it's called the 980 NVMe SSD.

It's Samsung new entry-level SSD. But even so, performance is respectable. Thanks to Samsung's own Pablo memory controller and fast 128-layer 512Gb TLC NAND, the company is claiming sequential read and write speeds of up to 3,500MB/s and 3,000MB/s respectively. Random read and write IOPS are up to 500k and 480k respectively.

It can't quite match the crazy speeds of the 980 Pro, but it's worth remembering that the 980 Pro is a PCIe 4.0 SSD. The 980 NVMe SSD relies on a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection.

To keep prices down, the 980 NVMe SSD uses a DRAM-less controller. To make up for this lack of onboard memory, the SSD taps into the Host Memory Buffer feature in the NVMe specification and uses a small amount of your system's DRAM (usually around 64MB) for its internal drive mapping.

Yes, performance takes a hit as a result. But as you can see from the specs above, the 980 NVMe SSD is still a fairly speed drive. Besides, Samsung employs other technologies such as TurboWrite 2.0 and faster NAND memory to make up for whatever loss in performance.

The 980 NVMe SSD also supports 256-bit AES and TCG/Opal V2.0 encryption.

Local availability and pricing

The Samsung 980 NVMe SSD is available now in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities, with prices starting at S$72.

You can find the drives at the Samsung Online Store, the Samsung Flagship Store on Lazada, the Samsung Official Store on Shopee, and all major retailers like Best Denki, Challenger, Courts, Gain City, and Harvey Norman.