Samsung SSD 990 Pro 4TB Review: Big, Fast Storage For PCs And PS5

EFD Software's HD Tune is described on the company's website as such: "HD Tune is a hard disk utility with many functions. It can be used to measure the drive's performance, scan for errors, check the health status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more." The latest version of the benchmark added temperature statistics and improved support for SSDs, among a few other updates and fixes.

HDTune v5.75 Benchmarks

The Samsung SSD 990 Pro 4TB drive performed well with HDTune's workloads, offering mid-tier sequential transfers with strong burst rates and some of the best latency characteristics of the bunch.

CrystalDiskMark x64 Benchmarks

CrystalDiskMark is a synthetic benchmark that tests both sequential and random small and mid-sized file transfers using incompressible data. It provides a quick look at best and worst case scenarios with regard to SSD performance, best case being larger sequential transfers and worse case being small, random transfers.
As we've mentioned a couple of time to this point, the Samsung SSD 990 Pro 4TB isn't going to hang with today's top PCIe Gen 5 SSD in terms of sequential transfers, which plays out again in CrystalDiskMark. Its performance is competitive relative to other Gen 4 drives, but not vs. the Gen 5 drives. Random transfers are another story, though. In the random transfer tests, the Samsung SSD 990 Pro 4TB drive finishes near the top of the charts.

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Game Level Load Times

We also tested game level load times using the Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker benchmark. This tool loads an array of different game levels during its graphics benchmark and outputs the average result when complete.


The Samsung SSD 990 Pro 4TB drive put up the best game level loads of the PCIe Gen 4 drives, but the Gen 5, Phison-based drives took the top three spots.

UL's 3DMark Gaming Storage Benchmark

UL recently added a gaming-centric storage benchmark to 3DMark, that leverages trace-based tests of actual PC games and gaming-related activities (like streaming with OBS) to measure real-world gaming performance in a variety of scenarios. The tests include things like loading Battlefield V, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and Overwatch from the initial launch to the main menu, recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS while playing Overwatch, installing The Outer Worlds and saving game progress. And finally, copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive from one drive to another.


Throughput in 3DMark's storage tests looks good with the Samsung SSD 990 Pro 4TB drive and it hangs with the best of them.


This drive's latency results also look relatively good and are generally lower then the other drives, save for a few outliers like loading CoD.


The overall score reflects what we saw in the individual tests. The Samsung SSD 990 Pro 4TB is a competent gaming drive, but its mixed results ultimately kept it from landing in the pole position.

UL's PCMark 10 System Drive Storage Test

We like PCMark 10's new quick storage benchmark module for its real-world application measurement approach to testing. PCMark offers a trace-based measurement of system response times and bandwidth under various scripted workloads of traditional client / desktop system use cases.

In the trace-based PCMark tests, which are comprised of a broad mix of consumer workloads, the Samsung SSD 990 Pro 4TB trailed all but the Innogrit-based ADATA XPG Gammix S70. The Phison-based Gen 5 drives took the top three spots, but the higher-clocked Crucial T700 taking the lead.

Samsung SSD 990 Pro PCIe Gen 4 SSD: The Verdict

With the release of the Samsung SSD 990 Pro 4TB drive (with and without heatsink), the 990 Pro series is complete. When we first took a look at the 2TB version of this drive last year, Samsung informed up a 4TB model would be coming in 2023, and while it is a bit late in the year, the company delivered. At this moment, the Samsung SSD 990 Pro line-up looks like this...

• 1TB Samsung 990 Pro: $69.99
• 1TB Samsung 990 Pro w/ Heatsink: $79.99
• 2TB Samsung 990 Pro: $134.99 (versus $149.99 last week)
• 2TB Samsung 990 Pro w/ Heatsink: $149.99
• 4TB Samsung SSD 990 Pro: $344.99 (MSRP)
• 4TB Samsung SSD 990 Pro w/ Heatsink: $359.99

At those prices, the 1TB and 2TB Samsung SSD 990 Pro drives are priced competitively. The new 4TB model, however, commands a bit of a premium versus other high-end PCIe Gen 4 drives. As availability ramps up, we suspect street pricing will come down somewhat, but that's going to take a while, so we'll have to wait and see.