Samsung's 9100 Pro SSD is the world's fastest consumer drive, hitting 14,800 MB/s sequential read speeds

[DragonSlayer101]

What just happened? Samsung has expanded its consumer SSD lineup with the launch of the 9100 Pro series solid-state drives featuring PCIe 5.0 speeds. Built on an improved version of Samsung's TLC V8 V-NAND flash, this is the South Korean company's first "true" Gen 5 SSD, delivering blazingly fast speeds and more storage capacity than its predecessors.

Samsung claims that the 9100 Pro series delivers up to 14,800 MB/s of sequential read speeds, potentially making it the fastest consumer SSD on the market. It also achieves 13,400 MB/s of sequential write speeds, making it twice as fast as the company's existing products. The new drives reach random read/write speeds of up to 2,200K/2,600K IOPS, enabling users to access large games, files, and apps faster than ever before.

Samsung is launching the 9100 Pro in four configurations: a 1TB variant with 1GB of LPDDR4X cache, a 2TB model with 2GB of LPDDR4X cache, a 4TB model with 4GB of LPDDR4X cache, and an 8TB model with 8GB of LPDDR4X cache.

The 9100 Pro drives use an advanced 5nm controller, making them more power-efficient than Samsung's older SSDs. The company claims they deliver up to 49 percent more power efficiency compared to their predecessors. Samsung is also offering a version with an added heatsink for an additional layer of thermal control, helping it run cooler and giving it a longer lifespan.

The 9100 Pro drives are aimed at professional photo and video editors, gamers, and AI content generators. Samsung claims that the new drives will deliver "a new benchmark" for storage performance on laptops, desktops, and video game consoles, including the PS5. For peak performance, reliability, and data security, the drives will ship with the Samsung Magician Software.

The 9100 Pro SSDs will be available starting this March, but they won't be cheap. The base 1TB model is priced at $199.99, while the 2TB and 4TB models will cost $299.99 and $549.99, respectively. The 9100 Pro with Heatsink will start at $219.99 for the 1TB model, while the 2TB and 4TB variants will cost $319.99 and $569.99, respectively. Samsung didn't announce the price of the 8TB models, which will be available in the second half of 2025.

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Samsung's 9100 Pro SSD is the world's fastest consumer drive, hitting 14,800 MB/s sequential read speeds

 

[yRaz]

So what's the SSD end game? Going from spinning rust to SSDs immediately brought improvements for everyone, but why should I pay more for this drive than a gen4? Outside of content creators and workstation applications, I don't see much use for continuing these super fast SSDs.

If the costs per TB stay the same then you'll get no argument from me, but there is part of me that does just have to ask, "but why?"

 

[Primey]

So what's the SSD end game? Going from spinning rust to SSDs immediately brought improvements for everyone, but why should I pay more for this drive than a gen4? Outside of content creators and workstation applications, I don't see much use for continuing these super fast SSDs.

If the costs per TB stay the same then you'll get no argument from me, but there is part of me that does just have to ask, "but why?"

You said it yourself, you don't see much use therefore you aren't the targeted consumer.

 

[fraggleki]

So what's the SSD end game? Going from spinning rust to SSDs immediately brought improvements for everyone, but why should I pay more for this drive than a gen4? Outside of content creators and workstation applications, I don't see much use for continuing these super fast SSDs.

If the costs per TB stay the same then you'll get no argument from me, but there is part of me that does just have to ask, "but why?"

We have all seen game sizes increase, including texture sizes. When games load the textures have to be sent to the GPU to be store in memory. As texture size increases load times will slow down. So the faster the SSD the better. This may only save you a second or less now but in 5 years it will probably save you 10 seconds of load time.

 

[VariableSpike]

Another reason for the nand / ssd manufacturers to keep prices sky high, who the hell will need it this fast? (And how quickly will it thermal throttle)

 

[bviktor]

Not sure about this one. Feel like we're kinda going backwards. We got rid of fans on chipsets, then the moving parts in storage.

Now it's all about burst and throttling and active cooling. No thanks.

 

[disinfect8280]

Not sure about this one. Feel like we're kinda going backwards. We got rid of fans on chipsets, then the moving parts in storage.

Now it's all about burst and throttling and active cooling. No thanks.

Where does it say it requires active cooling? There is an optional heatsink version. Pretty standard.

 

[TechSam]

I don't see much use for continuing these super fast SSDs.

Power efficiency is one of the big improvements. In theory, it should run cooler and last longer. You are correct with speed. Gaming performance is very dependent on graphics card now.

 

[bviktor]

Where does it say it requires active cooling? There is an optional heatsink version. Pretty standard.

A heat sink is no silver bullet, it doesn't warrant sustained performance, it only warrants throttling kicking in a bit later.

We'll have to see some benchmark results, but the mere fact that it requires a thermal solution is worrisome. It means your SSD's performance WILL depend on ambient temperature, the load on your GPU (which usually sits just above your SSD), etc.

 

[DrSuess]

So what's the SSD end game? Going from spinning rust to SSDs immediately brought improvements for everyone, but why should I pay more for this drive than a gen4? Outside of content creators and workstation applications, I don't see much use for continuing these super fast SSDs.

If the costs per TB stay the same then you'll get no argument from me, but there is part of me that does just have to ask, "but why?"

For those of us that do task that are data intensive and have 4 or 8 memory channel machines the faster read and right speeds make a difference. I have 4 990 Pros in a raid 1+0 configuration and the performance is notable between 990 pro 7500 MB/s (single drive) and 14000 MB/s (4 drive rad 1+0), when performing the same tasks (particularly on tasks with long execution times).

 

[magoid]

A heat sink is no silver bullet, it doesn't warrant sustained performance, it only warrants throttling kicking in a bit later.

We'll have to see some benchmark results, but the mere fact that it requires a thermal solution is worrisome. It means your SSD's performance WILL depend on ambient temperature, the load on your GPU (which usually sits just above your SSD), etc.

Well, you don't expect that all the godlike performance top of the line hardware can have come for free right?

Overheating is not warranted for all high performance drives, nor all users. Not all drives are made the same, some do overheat because of bad design of the controller. There are stress tests on the internet for those high performance drives. Some of them can sustain high performance for prolonged time.

Also, your motherboard layout can contribute a lot to the overheating issues. The absolute worst place is bellow the GPU. But most boards today put the main SSD slot above the GPU. Also, laying flat on the board is thermatically the worst way to connect a SSD. I got one of those PCIe-to-m.2 adapters and was shocked on how much the temps dropped.

At least SSDs can throttle to save themselves. HDDs can suffer from heat issues too. I myself have a couple 7,200RPM drives that idle above 50C on hot days. And as Blackgate studies say, that is a bad temp for HDDs to operate.