For a long while now the EVO 960 has been the go to for anyone craving the best SSD speed money can buy; but it’s time for it to move over and welcome in the 970 PRO and 970 EVO SSDs.
The Samsung 970 PRO and EVO are the third generation of the industry-leading consumer solid state drive (SSD) lineup. Samsung continues to push the performance barriers with each generation of SSD that target tech enthusiasts and professionals, enabling them to enjoy higher bandwidth for intensive workloads on PCs and workstations.
“Samsung has led the NVMe SSD industry since its inception, and the company continues to define the latest standards of consumer storage with unprecedented performance of the 970 PRO and EVO SSDs,” said Un-Soo Kim, senior Vice President of Brand Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “The 970 series sets a new bar in all aspects for the NVMe SSD market with groundbreaking performance, superior reliability and best-in-class capacity.”
The Samsung 970 PRO and EVO are designed based on the M.2 form factor standard and with the latest PCIe Gen 3×4 lane interface. The 970 series maximizes the potential of NVMe bandwidth, delivering unparalleled performance for processing large volumes of data, including 3D 4k graphics work, high-end games and data analytics.
The 970 PRO will features sequential read speed up to 3,500 MB/s with sequential write up to 2,700 MB/s, while the EVO features sequential read of up to 3,500 MB/s and sequential write up to 2,500MB/s. These sequential write speeds represent an enhancement of up to 30 percent over the previous generation, thanks to Samsung’s latest V-NAND technology and the newly designed Phoenix controller. The 970 EVO, in particular, utilizes the Intelligent TurboWrite technology, which uses a large buffer size of up to 78GB to enable faster write speeds.
The 970 PRO and EVO will also deliver exceptional endurance and reliability, features a five-year warranty, or up to 1,2000 terabytes written (TBW); this is 50 percent higher than those provided for the previous generations. The Dynamic Thermal Guard technology safeguards against overheating by automatically monitoring and maintaining optimal operating temperatures, while a heat spreader and new nickel-coated controller further lower the SSD temperatures.
The 970 EVO will be offered in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, and the 970 PRO in 512GB and 1TB capacities. The 970 PRO and EVO will be available for purchase worldwide starting May 7, 2018, with manufacturer’s suggested retail prices starting at $329.99 and $119.99 USD, respectively. For more information, including warranty details, please visit www.samsung.com/SSD, www.samsungssd.com.
Key Specifications
| Category | 970 PRO | 970 EVO | |||||
| Interface | PCIe Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 | ||||||
| Form Factor | M.2 (2280) | ||||||
| Storage Memory | Samsung 64L V-NAND 2-bit MLC | Samsung 64L V-NAND 3-bit MLC | |||||
| Controller | Samsung Phoenix Controller | ||||||
| Cache Memory | 1GB LPDDR4 DRAM (1TB) 512MB LPDDR4 DRAM (512GB) | 2GB LPDDR4 DRAM (2TB) 1GB LPDDR4 DRAM (1TB) 512MB LPDDR4 DRAM (250GB/500GB) | |||||
| Capacity | 512GB and 1TB | 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB | |||||
| Sequential Read/Write Speed | Up to 3,500/2,700 MB/s | Up to 3,500/2,500 MB/s | |||||
| Random Read/Write Speed | Up to 500,000/500,000 IOPS | Up to 500,000/480,000 IOPS | |||||
| Device Sleep | 5mW | ||||||
| Management Software | Samsung Magician Software | ||||||
| Data Encryption | Class 0 (AES 256), TCG/Opal v2.0, MS eDrive (IEEE1667) | ||||||
| Total Byte Written | 1,200TB (1TB) 600TB (512GB) | 1,200TB (2TB) 600TB (1TB) 300TB (500GB) 150TB (250GB) | |||||
| Warranty | Five-year Limited Warranty* | ||||||
