From PC Mag: Counterfeit versions of Samsung's popular 980 Pro M.2 SSD have started appearing for sale, and it's difficult to tell they aren't the real thing.
As Tom's Hardware reports, a Chinese user posted images on the Baidu Tieba forums of a recently-purchased 2TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD. It arrived in official Samsung packaging, had the correct Samsung label attached to the SSD, and the firmware also looked to be legitimate on first inspection. Even Samsung's own Magician SSD management software detected the drive as the real thing.
It wasn't until the user started testing the drive that suspicions were raised. The real 980 Pro drives are capable of achieving 7,000MB/s read speeds and 5,100MB/s writes. This drive only managed 4,200MB/s and 3,900MB/s respectively.
That led the buyer to remove the Samsung sticker attached to the M.2 SSD to reveal the non-genuine parts. This fake 980 Pro uses a Maxio MAP1602A PCIe 4.0 SSD controller manufactured using TSMC's 12nm process and 128-layer TLC 3D V-NAND chips from Chinese manufacturer YMTC. The real drives use Samsung's own 128-layer V-NAND chips and an 8nm Samsung Elpis controller.
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