Don’t be caught out by alleged listings of the Samsung 1080 Pro NVMe SSD; despite progress made with Gen 5 NVMe SSDs, the South Korean manufacturer has yet to release a successor model to its popular 980 and 990 Pro. While they may look legitimate to the untrained eye, delving deeper into the details gives them away, and you’ll want to steer clear.
As spotted by PC Gamer, fake Samsung 1080 Pro NVMe SSDs can be purchased on AliExpress and eBay for ludicrously low prices claiming leading speeds which would put even the best SSDs to shame. While the listing or model itself does not inherently bear a Samsung logo, it’s apparent that these drives are made to resemble the perennially popular 980 Pro with its white, black, and red color scheme.
Hilariously, the imitation Samsung 1080 Pro SSD claims sequential performance of up to 15,800 MB/s read and 14,500 MB/s write. While these rates are technically possible from bleeding-edge Gen 5 models, you simply cannot expect this level of performance from an alleged “Gen 4.0” model such as this, especially at the bargain bin listing price of just $28.25 / £22.85 down from the original MSRP of $60.11 / £48.62. Nearly 40 of the “4TB variant” have been sold, whether out of sheer curiosity or ignorance.
As a frame of reference, Gen 4 NVMe SSDs max out at around 7,400 MB/s sequential performance when paired with a top-end controller, DRAM cache, and high layers of TLC flash memory, so it’s simply absurd that the imitation 1080 Pro is claiming double of what’s possible at laughably low rates. While Gen 4 models have seen some serious price reductions in 2024, you can still expect to pay around $100 / £100 for the Samsung 980 Pro 1TB or $200 / £200 for the 2TB model, with other brands coming in cheaper than this.
Samsung is yet to announce a Gen 5 NVMe SSD, with the manufacturer’s latest effort being the 990 Pro from the end of 2022 which capped out Gen 4.0. Once a successor is unveiled, we’re confident it will push the needle as the likes of the Gigabyte Aorus 10000, Seagate FireCuda 540, and Crucial T700 have. Until then, avoid listings like this, and we recommend only buying from trusted retailers such as Amazon, Newegg, Best Buy, and Micro Center.
