Accidental store listing details Samsung 990 EVO SSD before formal launch

Samsung has accidentally revealed the upcoming Samsung 990 EVO SSD on its Ukrainian website. While the new SSD isn’t available for purchase yet, the listing has given away all the marketing and hardware specifications. At the core, it has a unique configuration with support for two PCIe 5.0 lanes.

While the PCIe 5.0 x2 sounds good on paper, it’s actually equivalent to PCIe 4.0 x4 in terms of bandwidth. So, although the key selling point of the Samsung 990 EVO is PCIe 5.0 support, you won’t get to enjoy the higher bandwidth that the standard brings as it is limited to two lanes.

But the support for the latest standard will certainly come in handy in specific scenarios, such as when you put the 990 EVO SSD in a two-lane PCIe 5.0 slot. Without the PCIe 5.0 x2 support, a PCIe 4.0 x4 will see its bandwidth reduced by half in such a setup. The upcoming Samsung SSD, on the other hand, will be able to retain its normal bandwidth in those data connectors.

Speaking of the bandwidth, the accidental official listing of the Samsung 990 EVO confirmed that the SSD can offer up to 5,000 MB/s sequential read speed and 4200 MB/s sequential write speed.

From these read and write speeds, it’s clear that the 990 EVO offers a modest uplift over its predecessor, the 970 EVO. It can also deliver higher performance SSD than the 970 EVO Plus (1 TB curr. $95 on Amazon), which has edged the limits of PCIe 3.0. But even with PCIe 5.0 support, the PCIe 4.0 990 Pro (1 TB curr. $100 on Amazon) is still a better performer.

But the odd thing is the accidental Amazon listing in Germany suggests that the upcoming 990 EVO isn’t that far off from the 990 Pro in terms of pricing. Specifically, the 1 TB variant was listed at €114.90, while the 2 TB had a listing price of €189.90. These convert to around $126 and $208, respectively.

To compare, on Samsung's online shop, the 990 Pro has a listing price of €129.90 for 1 TB and €199.90 for 2 TB. Of course, the actual listing prices of the Samsung 990 EVO can drop when the SSD officially goes on sale.