becausememoryand flash memory chips (NAND Flash) continue to be out of stock and prices rise.SSD It has increased several times so far. Originally, a 1TB SSD could be purchased for about NT$1,900, but now it has risen to almost NT$4,000. For those in need, in addition to spending more money to buy, they should also be careful of another risk when buying: “There are more and more fakes.” Because the larger the price difference, the greater the profit of fakes. For counterfeiters, they can make their products more like genuine products.
Recently, the Japanese media “Akiba PC Hotline!” discovered a horrifying case of fake Samsung 990 Pro. Not only the appearance is almost identical, but the running scores are very close to the genuine product, making it impossible for ordinary consumers to tell the difference.
Image source:Akiba PC Hotline!
It’s almost impossible to tell the difference between a fake Samsung 990 Pro SSD! The running scores are still very close to genuine products.
According to Japanese media “Akiba PC Hotline!” shared that they obtained a counterfeit Samsung 990 Pro 1TB SSD on the market for detailed disassembly and analysis.
In terms of appearance, the packaging box of this fake product is very exquisite. Whether it is printing quality, font layout or color matching, there is almost no difference from the original product. Even if the two boxes are compared together, it is difficult for ordinary people to see the difference. However, there is still a slight difference. The outer box of the fake product has an additional hanging hole for hanging on a display stand, while the original Samsung packaging box does not have this design:
Image source:Akiba PC Hotline!
The sticker on the back of the fake product also reveals the Maxio model information. This is also a way to identify it, but most people will not look at it specifically and it is difficult to notice:
Image source:Akiba PC Hotline!
After testing the performance on a computer, the scariest thing about this fake SSD was found. In the common SSD speed test software CrystalDiskMark, the fake’s sequential read speed reached 7,255 MB/s, and the sequential write speed was 6,090 MB/s. The official Samsung 990 Pro 1TB’s official speed is 7,450 MB/s read and 6,900 MB/s write. Just looking at this set of numbers, the difference between fakes and genuine products is less than 10%. If you only rely on running scores to judge, it is really easy to be fooled:
Image source:Akiba PC Hotline!
Although there are flaws in the random 4K read and write performance, many people will not pay special attention to this item. Once they see that there are writes and reads of 7,000MB/s, they think there is no problem. Random 4K reading and writing is the speed of frequent small file access such as opening programs and loading games in daily use. The fake one only ran 3,537 MB/s, while the genuine one ran 6,446 MB/s, which was nearly half the difference:
Image source:Akiba PC Hotline!
Therefore, Akiba PC Hotline! used the FastCopy tool to move a file of about 397.2 GB. The genuine Samsung 990 Pro only took 3 minutes and 33 seconds to complete, with a sustained write speed of 1,861 MB/s. The fake took a full 25 minutes and 20 seconds, and the sustained write speed was only 261 MB/s, which was nearly 7 times slower:
Image source:Akiba PC Hotline!
Use the H2testw tool to verify the capacity and confirm that the storage space of this fake product is real 1TB, not the low-level scam that “marks 1TB but actually only 64GB”:
Image source:Akiba PC Hotline!
So how does this fake Samsung 990 Pro achieve such speed in the speed test?
The genuine Samsung 990 Pro uses Samsung’s own Pascal master chip, paired with LPDDR4 memory as cache, and Samsung’s own 176-layer V-NAND TLC flash storage particles.
However, the fake product uses the Maxio MAP1602 main control chip internally, which is a public version of the main control solution from China. It is smaller than Pascal and is a “DRAM-less” design, which means that it does not have additional cache memory at all. The NAND particles are suspected to be QLC, not genuine TLC. The durability and performance of QLC are usually worse than TLC.
Image source:Akiba PC Hotline!
When tools like CrystalDiskMark test sequential read and write, the amount of data tested is usually only 1GB to several GB, and the time is very short. Therefore, the SSD will write the data into the SLC cache first, so the writing speed will be very fast. As long as the amount of test data does not exceed the cache capacity, the running speed will be very beautiful.
When moving large files up to 397 GB, the SLC cache quickly fills up. At this time, the data must be written directly to the native speed of the QLC particle. Coupled with the lack of DRAM cache assistance, the speed will drop off a cliff.
Therefore, since the current shortage of memory and the price increase do not know when it will end, when purchasing, try to buy from official authorized channels or find reputable merchants. Do not be greedy for cheap and start from unknown stores or auction platforms. If the price is significantly lower than the market price, be particularly careful.
If you are buying a Samsung SSD, you can also install the official management software “Samsung Magician”. This tool can detect whether the SSD is genuine. Fake products will be marked as “unrecognized” or displayed as incompatible after being connected:
Image source:Akiba PC Hotline!
Source: KOCPC Chinese