How fast do you need your computer’s storage to be? It probably doesn’t have to be as fast as you think (especially if you’re building a gaming PC). But if you’re moving big files around, you can definitely see the benefit of a faster drive — and Samsung’s first full-fat PCIe 5.0 SSD is the 9100 Pro, and it’s allegedly the fastest consumer drive in the world.
Samsung previously released a less-capable Gen 5 drive, but the 990 Evo only has two of its PCIe lanes fully upgraded to the latest standard. By comparison, the 9100 Pro is a full PCIe 5.0 x4 drive in the standard 80mm M.2 format, meaning it’s competing with some of the latest and fastest drives you can put in a desktop or laptop.
Samsung’s specs for the new drives clock the 4TB and 8TB models at 14,800 MB/s sequential write speed, beating out speed demons like the Crucial T705 by a healthy margin (which advertises 14,500 MB/s). The 1TB and 2TB versions are only a tiny bit slower at 14,700 MB/s. Samsung also claims that the 4TB version only uses 9 watts of power while active.
Though, of course, we don’t have the new drive at hand for testing, and any number of factors could put real-world performance below Crucial’s current top-spot speed of 14,100 MB/s.
You can pick up the drives with or without a heatsink starting March 2025, with prices ranging from $200 for the bare 2TB model to a whopping $570 for the 4TB version with heatsink. The 8TB versions of the 9100 Pro won’t be ready until the second half of the year, nor will we know its suggested retail price until that day comes closer.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.