The primary PCIe Gen 5 SSDs from the likes of Seagate and Essential started hitting the market practically two years in the past, however Samsung has been notably absent with its personal mannequin. That can change in March with the arrival of the Samsung 9100 Pro series, its first consumer-ready pure PCIe Gen 5 SSD constructed with NVMe 2.0. At launch, it will likely be accessible in 1TB (beginning at $199.99), 2TB ($299.99), and 4TB ($549.99) capacities in an M.2 type issue, with or with out heatsinks. An 8TB configuration, a primary for Samsung NVMe SSDs, is slated for the second half of 2025.
By the numbers, the 9100 Professional’s theoretical most random learn and write speeds — 2,200K and a pair of,600K input-output operations per second (IOPS) — are at the very least twice as quick because the last-gen Samsung 980 Professional, a PCIe Gen4 SSD. Our earliest comparability of that SSD with Seagate’s Firecuda 540 and Crucial’s T700 confirmed no noticeable advantages for PC gaming; nonetheless, the distinction could also be extra evident for heavier computing workflows. If nothing else, it’d be good to know you’re future-proofed, at the very least till PCIe Gen 6 arrives.
The features may be extra obvious if you happen to’re speaking about large-volume file transfers, although, which videographers or software program engineers working with massive datasets would possibly respect. Samsung says the 9100 Professional (constructed on its V Nand TLC V8 with a customized controller) can attain sequential learn and write speeds of as much as 14.8GBps and 13.4GBps, respectively. That’s roughly double the last-gen 980 Professional, and about 2-3GBps per second quicker than the earliest PCIe 5 SSDs can handle.