Samsung 9100 Pro SSD Review

The Samsung 9100 Pro is simply a big, powerful, flagship SSD from 1 of the biggest names successful the game. It brings high-end performance, pushing the limits of its PCIexpress 5.0 interface– connected paper, this should beryllium 1 of the champion SSDs ever made, accelerating record transfers and crippled load times similar ne'er before.

But Samsung wasn’t archetypal to marketplace with a top-tier PCIe 5.0 SSD, and determination is stiff contention for the benignant of cutting-edge show that Samsung has historically been known for. Still, it is very accelerated connected paper, with a beardown endurance rating, five-year warranty, and the enactment of an attractive, low-profile heatsink for a fewer dollars extra.

Design and Software

This is simply a modular M.2 2280 drive, truthful the dimensions and form-factor volition beryllium precise acquainted for anyone with an NVMe SSD. Samsung sent maine the heatsink mentation of the 9100 Pro and it’s intelligibly built to a high-standard, with a sturdy, compact plan and good machined heatsink fins that springiness it a prime look and feel. It’s disposable without the heatsink too, though, should your motherboard person large heatsinks for add-in drives, oregon you privation to usage a third-party alternative.

It’s disposable successful sizes from 1TB done 4TB astatine the clip of penning (I’m investigating the 2TB version), with plans to merchandise an 8TB exemplary down the line.

Forget CrystalDiskInfo, if you person a Samsung SSD you get to usage the fantabulous Samsung Magician Software which combines elaborate thrust monitoring with casual information migration, unafraid erase, thrust encryption, and show benchmarks, among different utile settings and tests.

It’s not thing everyone volition consciousness the request to play astir with, but if you privation to support a adjacent oculus connected your caller flagship SSD, Samsung’s Magician tracks thrust health, strategy information, and has utile built-in tools similar unafraid erase and thrust encryption.

Specs

The specifications for the Samsung 9100 Pro are astir arsenic bully arsenic you tin get with a modern, high-end PCIe 5 SSD. Although that’s ne'er the afloat representation for immoderate component, Samsung sets disconnected connected the close ft with this drive.

The 9100 Pro uses Samsung’s 236-layer TLC NAND Flash, which is the company’s astir effectual representation to date. This NAND is besides utilized successful the older 990 Evo Plus and 990 Pro models, but with a newer controller and interface, this thrust is overmuch faster.

The sustained work and constitute speeds of 14,700 MBps and 13,400 MBps, respectively, are competitory with different apical PCIe 5 drives similar Sandisk’s WD Black SN8100 and Crucial’s T710. While you’re improbable to brushwood these speeds extracurricular of benchmarks and ample record transfers, if you privation to determination a batch of information astir betwixt drives (ideally betwixt 2 PCIe 5 drives) past the 9100 Pro should bash it exceptionally quickly.

The random work and constitute show is arguably much impressive, though, and highlights however acold we’ve travel successful “smaller” capableness drives similar this, showing however susceptible Samsung’s apical flash designs are.

The endurance standing of 1200 TBW for this 2TB exemplary (up to 4800 TBW for the 8TB model) is plentifulness for the mean user, though determination are much durable nonrecreational drives retired determination if you expect to hammer yours connected a regular ground for nonrecreational workloads.

The Samsung 9100 Pro joins the high-end PCIe 5 marketplace astatine a clip of expanding competition. There are standouts similar the Crucial T705 with its immense heatsink and awesome numbers starring the pack, but its precocious terms of $260 reflects that. The WD SN8100 offers akin specs astatine a akin price, giving the 9100 Pro astatine $260 immoderate existent caput to caput enactment with small separating them. Ditch the heatsinks and their prices lucifer up adjacent closer.

Then there’s the somewhat slower, but inactive accelerated Corsair MP700 Pro and Elite, which are inactive blazingly accelerated successful real-world workloads, but importantly cheaper.

Considering the constricted inferior for the cutting-edge show of a apical PCIe 5 SSD successful 2025, too, it’s besides worthy considering high-end PCIe 4 drives. Those see Samsung’s ain 990 Pro, which is disposable astatine the aforesaid capableness for conscionable $150.

Performance

To trial the 9100 Pro I fitted it to my trial strategy with an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, an Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero, 32GB of RAM astatine 5,200MHz and a Radeon RX 7900 XTX. I installed the thrust successful the top-most PCIe 5 NVMe slot and tested connected a marque caller installation of Windows 11 moving the latest 24H2 version, with the latest drivers and BIOS updates applied.

In CrystalDiskMark, the 9100 Pro really surpassed its rated sustained work and constitute show showing however utterly accelerated this thrust tin beryllium erstwhile shifting earthy information around.

That was backed up by my 10GB record transportation test. Moving it from a PCIe 4 WD SN850X 2TB exemplary to the 9100 Pro (Write) took conscionable 3.9 seconds, and moving it backmost again (Read) was adjacent faster, astatine 3.4 seconds. If you often determination ample files oregon folders betwixt drives and privation 1 that volition bash it exceptionally quickly, the 9100 Pro is among the fastest determination is.

In real-world gaming benchmarks I saw arsenic awesome results. When moving the Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail benchmark, we clocked a full loading clip of conscionable 6.2 seconds. All scenes loaded successful nether 2 seconds, and the archetypal and 5th were good nether a 2nd a piece. That’s not overmuch faster than a high-end PCIe 4 SSD, but it’s inactive plentifulness fast.

The lone spot wherever I recovered immoderate benignant of anomalous show was successful 3D Mark Storage. There I recorded a respectable, if unimpressive, 3,269 points, with an mean entree clip astir 55 micro-seconds.

Although I’m not the lone 1 to person recorded a sub-4000 people with this peculiar thrust connected this peculiar benchmark, galore contemporaries person managed 5-6,000+ scores. Iran it aggregate times and it came backmost the aforesaid each time. I initially thought it mightiness beryllium the SLC moving out, but I had akin show passim each the idiosyncratic trial runs during the benchmark.

I’ve reached retired to Samsung for remark and volition update this reappraisal if and erstwhile I perceive back.

One country wherever this thrust did truly impressment me, though, was temperature. Although the thrust itself gets blisteringly blistery to the constituent that touching it became a morganatic pain hazard, the controller wrong was chilly the full time. Even aft sustained load during the 3D Mark trial run, it didn’t adjacent interruption 40 degrees.

That said, this thrust is intelligibly putting retired a batch of vigor truthful I’d urge the heatsink oregon immoderate benignant of beardown progressive cooling.