Fake Samsung 990 PRO SSD reaches 7.2 GB/s read, but it fails in real-world test
Here’s how to check if your new drive is genuine.
Japanese AKIBA PC Hotline has published a report on a counterfeit Samsung 990 PRO that is much harder to spot than the usual fake SSD. The drive reportedly ships in near-identical packaging, carries a convincing 990 PRO label, and is even detected by Windows and CrystalDiskInfo as a 1TB Samsung 990 PRO running over PCIe 4.0 x4.
But the hardware inside is not the same. According to the report, the fake drive uses a Maxio MAP1602 controller and does not include a dedicated DRAM cache. That differs from Samsung’s official 990 PRO design, which uses Samsung’s own controller, Samsung V-NAND 3-bit TLC memory, and LPDDR4 DRAM.
What makes this case different is that the counterfeit drive does not fail the usual quick checks. AKIBA says CrystalDiskMark returned up to 7,255 MB/s read and 6,090 MB/s write on the fake drive, which is close enough to Samsung’s official 1TB 990 PRO rating of up to 7,450 MB/s read and 6,900 MB/s write to avoid immediate suspicion. H2testw also reportedly completed a full-capacity write and verify pass, which means this was not a simple capacity-spoofed product.
Source: PC Hotline
The gap shows up once the cache runs out. In AKIBA’s 370 GiB file copy test, the counterfeit drive averaged 261 MB/s and needed 25 minutes 20 seconds to finish. The genuine 990 PRO completed the same transfer in 3 minutes 33 seconds with an average of 1,861 MB/s. The report says the fake drive dropped to around 100 MB/s after its SLC cache was exhausted, which points to a much lower-tier NAND setup than the retail 990 PRO.
Source: PC Hotline
Samsung’s Magician utility appears to be the easiest way to catch it. AKIBA says the fake drive is shown as “Non-Samsung” even though the model name appears as 990 PRO, while a genuine retail unit is authenticated properly.
Japanese publication gives one important hint, to avoid getting scammed, always buy from a reputable source. That is becoming increasingly difficult given the current state of storage and memory pricing. Perhaps it is better to buy a cheaper brand you are sure of, or consider waiting for prices to stabilize a bit.
Source: AKIBA PC Hotline!
