The fake Samsung 990 Pro features a sticker that closely mimics the original. This is where the technical know-how comes into play. The drive may look authentic on the surface, but a closer inspection reveals drastic discrepancies. For starters, the Samsung 990 Pro leverages the brand's proprietary Pascal SSD controller. The fake uses the Maxio MAP1602 SSD controller, which has a different design and is smaller than the Pascal controller. Tellingly, the rear of the counterfeit SSD even openly states the Maxio model number.

Another key distinction lies in DRAM and NAND. The Samsung 990 Pro features LPDDR4 memory, a component absent from the fake due to the DRAM-less nature of the Maxio MAP1602 SSD controller. As for the NAND, the original uses Samsung’s 176-Layer V-NAND TLC flash, while the type in the counterfeit remains uncertain. It’s likely QLC, though, since counterfeiters won't spend extra on TLC for a product whose primary purpose is to bamboozle the buyer.

Typical Samsung 990 Pro lookalikes fall flat when you benchmark them. Some fakes are slower than a USB 2.0 pendrive, while others perform similarly to a PCIe 3.0 SSD. However, the one that Akiba PC Hotline! had in its possession exhibited a solid, very convincing performance. The drive delivered sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,255 MB/s and 6,090 MB/s, respectively, just a bit shy of the Samsung 990 Pro 1TB's rated speeds of 7,450 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s.

Here is the changelog:

Halo Infinite: Texture corruption may occur on R595 drivers
Hitman: World of Assassination: Game stability issues when NVIDIA Smooth Motion is enabled
Game stability issues after enabling DLSS FG when Instant Replay is enabled

The trick, which ported a Windows Server 2025 feature to consumer PCs running Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2, had delivered up to 85% higher random write performance in earlier benchmarks. Unfortunately, the four FeatureManagement registry overrides that previously activated the native NVMe stack no longer function.

The native NVMe driver (nvmedisk.sys) replaces the legacy storage path that has routed NVMe commands through a SCSI translation layer since before NVMe SSDs existed. Microsoft originally shipped the driver in Windows Server 2025 last December, claiming up to 80% higher IOPS and 45% lower CPU utilization under high I/O loads. The driver binary was already present in Windows 11 but disabled by default.

Samsung likely sees less value in dedicating engineering and production capacity to optimizing new high?density NAND for the 600MB/s ceiling of SATA, especially when NVMe can use the same NAND at much higher speeds. If Samsung eventually scales back SATA SSDs, the market may rely more on smaller brands and lower?tier OEMs, which can make it harder to find high?quality, long?warranty SATA drives at consumer?friendly prices. That doesn’t mean Samsung?grade reliability is gone, but the easiest path to it through Samsung’s 800?series may narrow.

To begin with, SATA drives are easy to cool. Their plastic/metal 2.5-inch shells act as natural heat sinks, meaning you don't have to implement active cooling. However, NVMe drives aren't so easy to deal with. As you migrate to high-capacity M.2 drives to replace your SATA storage, you might encounter thermal throttling. High-capacity NVMe drives, particularly faster, more modern drives, run extremely hot and, as a result, can slow themselves down to prevent overheating and damaging their internal components.

In order for you to prevent this further, you also need to make sure you have active cooling in place or at least a heat sink, which doesn't come included with the drive itself. This is another cost you have to incur on top of the price of the drive itself being more expensive than SATA to begin with.