It’s taken a number of years, however Samsung has lastly signed as much as the PCIe 5.0 SSD membership, asserting a model new line of super-fast drives. The corporate says the brand new Samsung 9100 Professional is as much as 99% faster than its predecessor, the already-fast 990 Professional, and that it’s even quicker than the mighty Essential T705 and MSI Spatium M580 Frozr.
Samsung additionally turned up late to the PCIe 4.0 occasion, but it surely completely dominated the roost by way of sequential learn and write efficiency, as we present in our Samsung 990 Professional evaluate. It seems to be as if the corporate goes for the same method with the brand new 9100 Professional, which is available in capacities starting from 1TB to 8TB, and boasts a most claimed sequential learn pace of 14,800MB/s for the 4TB and 8TB drives.
As some extent of comparability, the Essential T705 maxes out at 14,500MB/s, whereas the PCIe 4.0 990 Professional has a claimed most sequential learn pace of seven,450MB/s. In our personal assessments, we discovered that whereas the 990 Professional was certainly the quickest PCIe 4.0 drive we’d examined, its high sequential learn pace of seven,198MB/s was nonetheless under Samsung’s claims.
There’s a small quantity of variation between the efficiency of various capacities of the 9100 Professional, however we’re solely speaking a couple of 100MB/s distinction within the learn and write pace for the 1TB drive, and simply on the learn pace for the 2TB mannequin. There are additionally substantial variations between the endurance scores of the drives, with the 8TB mannequin rated to jot down as much as 4,800TB in its lifetime, in comparison with simply 600TB for the 1TB mannequin.
The brand new drives can even be obtainable with and with no heatsink, with the latter trying fairly slim for a PCIe 5.0 drive, and measuring simply 0.35 inches tall.
Samsung 9100 Professional specs
| Samsung 9100 Professional | |
| Interface | 4x PCIe 5.0 |
| Capacities | 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB |
| Controller | Samsung in-house |
| Kind issue | M.2 2280 |
| Heatsink | Non-compulsory |
| Max seq learn pace | 14,700MB/s (1TB and 2TB) 14,800MB/s (4TB and 8TB) |
| Max seq write pace | 13,300MB/s (1TB) 13400MB/s (2TB, 4TB, 8TB) |
| NAND | Samsung V NAND TLC (V8) |
| Cache | 1GB LPDDR4X (1TB), 2GB LPDDR4X (2TB), 4GB LPDDR4X (4TB), 8GB LPDDR4X (8TB) |
| Endurance ranking (TBW) | 600 (1TB), 1,200 (2TB), 2,400 (4TB), 4,800 (8TB) |
| Guarantee | 5 years |
Samsung says it’s made some progress on thermals, although, because of the low energy draw of its new in-house 5nm controller, with the drive apparently being 49% extra power-efficient than its predecessor, the 990 Professional. The corporate describes the heatsink-equipped 9100 Professional as a “cooler, longer-lasting drive,” and we’ll have an interest to see how sizzling the drive runs in our personal assessments.
It’s additionally truthful to say that, definitely in our personal assessments, the highest sequential learn and write figures don’t at all times bear that a lot relation to real-world efficiency, until you’re repeatedly shifting big numbers of recordsdata between drives regularly. Even so, that is trying like a top-tier drive if Samsung’s claims maintain up in testing.
Samsung 9100 Professional worth
The Samsung 9100 Professional worth is $199.99 / £150.09 for the 1TB mannequin, $299.99 / £223.79 for the 2TB drive, and $549.99 / £406.79 for the 4TB drive, with the heatsink fashions including an additional $20 to those costs.
These costs are just a little costly in comparison with the likes of the Essential T705, which is now repeatedly discounted to round $169.99 for the 1TB drive and $164.99 for a 2TB mannequin, however we’re glad to see that the Samsung launch costs aren’t too excessive, and if previous Samsung SSD launches are a dependable benchmark, the drives will hopefully be discounted sooner or later.
Samsung 9100 Professional launch window
The Samsung 9100 Professional launch window is April 2025 for the 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB drives, with the corporate saying it expects to launch the 8TB mannequin within the second half of 2025.
Within the meantime, take a look at our information to the perfect gaming SSD in case you’re seeking to seize a storage improve proper now. It’s also possible to observe us on Google Information for day by day PC {hardware} information, evaluations, and guides, and be part of our group Discord to maintain up with the newest {hardware} happenings.
