Samsung PM981a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD

Samsung PM981a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD

M.2

R 1,300.00
In Stock(1 available)
Condition: Refurbished - Good
Warranty: 3 Months

1TB PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 NVMe M.2 SSD powered by the Samsung Phoenix controller and 96-layer V-NAND, delivering up to 3,500 MB/s read and 3,000 MB/s write speeds.

Product Details

Overview

The Samsung PM981a 1TB is a high-performance OEM client NVMe SSD engineered to deliver enterprise-grade speed and reliability in a compact M.2 2280 form factor. Serving as the OEM sibling to Samsung's revered 970 EVO Plus, the PM981a incorporates proprietary Samsung engineering from the ground up, pairing their proven 8-channel in-house controller with dense 96-layer 3D TLC V-NAND. Designed for rigorous thermal conditions and continuous workloads, it features a single-sided PCB layout optimized for both ultra-slim notebooks and performance desktop rigs.

Architecture & Performance

Operating over a PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 interface on the NVMe 1.3 protocol, the PM981a is driven by the Samsung Phoenix (S4LR020) controller. This octa-channel silicon is paired with 1GB of dedicated LPDDR4 DRAM cache to handle extensive flash translation layer (FTL) mapping without host memory overhead. Leveraging Samsung's Intelligent TurboWrite technology, the drive creates an adaptive SLC buffer zone that accelerates sequential read speeds up to 3,500 MB/s and sequential writes up to 3,000 MB/s. Random 4K read and write performance scales up to 580,000 IOPS and 500,000 IOPS respectively, virtually eliminating I/O bottlenecks during operating system boot cycles, heavy multi-tasking, direct asset streaming in open-world games, and 4K ProRes/RAW video timeline scrubbing.

Key Technical Specifications

  • Controller: Samsung Phoenix (S4LR020) 8-Channel NVMe Controller
  • NAND Flash: Samsung 96-Layer 3-bit MLC (TLC) V-NAND v5
  • Form Factor & Interface: M.2 2280 (Single-Sided), PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3
  • DRAM Cache: 1GB Low-Power LPDDR4
  • Sequential Read/Write: Up to 3,500 MB/s Read | Up to 3,000 MB/s Write
  • Random 4K Throughput: Up to 580,000 IOPS Read | Up to 500,000 IOPS Write
  • Endurance & Reliability: 600 TBW (Terabytes Written), 1.5 Million Hours MTBF
  • Thermal Management: Dynamic Thermal Guard (DTG) with integrated nickel-coated controller heat spreader
  • Power Consumption: ~5.8W Active Read/Write, 30mW Idle, 5mW L1.2 Low Power Standby

Who It's Built For

The Samsung PM981a 1TB is specifically engineered for PC enthusiasts, competitive gamers, and workstation professionals who demand maximum PCIe Gen 3 throughput without thermal throttling. It serves as an exceptional drop-in upgrade for gaming laptops, compact Mini-ITX builds, secondary high-speed game libraries, and workstation scratch disks handling intensive compiling, rendering, and multimedia production.