Be careful if you buy your SSD in China since counterfeits are in circulation… As always, you may say. However, the counterfeit product is none other than the 980 Pro, a popular model despite its 4 years of existence. Finally, what do we find in this fake?
980 Pro, beware of fakes from China!
First of all, you should know that the original model of Samsung, the real one, has an in-house memory controller. It is a question of an Elpis controller engraved in 8 nm using a DRAM cache in LPDDR4. As for the memory, we are talking about chips, also home-made, with 128 layers of TLC 3D V-NAND. Finally, a word on its performance, this Samsung model displays sequential read/write speeds of 7 GB / s and 5 GB / s depending on capacity.
For comparison, the Chinese counterfeit uses a Maxio MAP1602A memory controller engraved in 12 nm. The latter does not use a DRAM cache. The same applies to the memory used, which turns out to be 128-layer 3D TLC NAND. However, this memory comes from Xtacking 2.0 Technology. Obviously, this is reflected in the performance of 4.8 GB / s in sequential reading and 4.5 GB / s in sequential writing on CrystalDiskMark. Not really at the same level as a real Samsung SSD!
Finally, the fake is pushed to the software part since it embeds a firmware able to deceive Samsung Magician, the software of the brand. But that’s not all, since we find a Samsung sticker as well as a packaging in accordance with those used by the Korean company. As for the price, that’s where it gets tricky, since this fake model costs 880 yuan (~$127). For a real model, you have to count $169.99.
