If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.Err, a few things: your CrystalDiskMark, I just realized, is a little old: 3.0.4.

We've seen our fair shares of scam cases, like the $39 30TB portable SSD on Walmart or the $100 16TB SSD on Amazon. But even distinguished online shopping platforms, such as AliExpress or Taobao, are filled with malicious merchants ready to take advantage of less-knowledgeable consumers. There's always an imminent risk to buying computer hardware on the second-hand market, especially in China. Furthermore, he reportedly didn't have a PC at hand, so ten days had passed before he could test the drive. The scammed user claims he had been out of the PC game for a while, so he wasn't up to speed on the latest technology. The actual drive currently retails for $169.99 (opens in new tab) on the U.S.

The price alone makes it easy to see that the SSD is a sham. The drives even come in official Samsung packaging. The merchant sold fake Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSDs on Xianyu, Taobao's second-hand market, for 880 yuan or $127.77. More experienced consumers know that Samsung produces and uses its SSD controllers and NAND chips in the brand's SSDs. The SSD controller comes from TSMC's 12nm process node and features a DRAM-less design. The SSD utilizes the Maxio MAP1602A PCIe 4.0 SSD controller, the same one that powers the Acer Predator GM7. Once the sticker was removed from the fake drive, it had all the signs of a counterfeit SSD. When a consumer registers his Samsung SSD, the Samsung Magician software will put the 'Genuine' label to the right of the drive's serial number to show that it's a real Samsung SSD. In the case of a fake drive, the software will refuse to manage it.

The software always validates whether a drive is fake or not. Samsung’s Magician Software confirms that it's a counterfeit drive. The phony drive had everything that suggested that it was legit: the Samsung 980 Pro 2TB sticker and the firmware, which later turned out to be fake.

One Chinese user from the Baidu Tieba (opens in new tab) (via Harukaze5719 (opens in new tab)) forums recently encountered an imitation posing as the Samsung 980 Pro.

Crystaldiskinfo ssd