Pros & Cons
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- Available in capacities up to 8TB
- Version with heatsink available for $20 more at each capacity
- Blazing sequential read/write speeds
- Excellent PCMark 10 Overall result
- TCG/Opal V2.0 security compliant
- Heatsink version is PS5-compatible
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- Feeble Crystal DiskMark 4K write score
- Unimpressive 3DMark Storage gaming-centric benchmark results
Samsung 9100 Pro SSD Specs
| Bus Type | PCI Express 5.0 |
| Capacity (Tested) | 4 |
| Controller Maker | Samsung |
| Internal Form Factor | M.2 Type-2280 |
| Internal or External | Internal |
| NAND Type | TLC |
| NVMe Support | |
| Rated Maximum Sequential Read | 14800 |
| Rated Maximum Sequential Write | 13400 |
| Terabytes Written (TBW) Rating | 2400 |
| Warranty Length | 5 |
The Samsung 9100 Pro SSD (starts at $199.99 for 1TB, $549.99 for 4TB as tested) is the company's first foray into the PCI Express 5.0 arena, and it's an admirable effort. The 9100 Pro is available with a PlayStation 5-friendly optional heatsink, and an 8TB version of the drive is expected later this summer. It has scorching sequential throughput speed, but notably slow random 4K write speeds. Otherwise, the 9100 Pro is similar in features and performance to the Editors' Choice-winning WD Black SN8100, and bargain hunters would do well to consider it when its price is substantially lower than the SN8100, as is the case as of this writing.
Design: Homegrown Innards, Optional Heatsink
The Samsung 9100 Pro SSD is a four-lane solid-state drive running the NVMe 2.0 protocol over a PCIe 5.0 bus. This internal SSD comes in the standard M.2 Type-2280 "gumstick" format. This drive is single-sided (it keeps all its chips on one side), and uses all homegrown (as opposed to third-party) components: 236-layer Samsung TLC (V8) NAND flash and a Samsung Presto controller. (Baffled by some of this lingo? Check out our handy guide to SSD jargon.)
Unlike two recent Gen 5 SSDs we have reviewed—the Crucial P510 and Addlink G55H—the 9100 Pro's controller has its own dynamic random access memory (DRAM) cache. According to Samsung, the controller's 5nm architecture provides up to 49% greater power efficiency than the SSD 990 Pro, the company's flagship PCI Express 4.0 SSD. Although it is priced higher than these DRAM-less sticks, the 9100 Pro's performance—for the most part—is considerably better. (We'll discuss speed tests later in the review.)
The 9100 Pro is available with or without a heatsink that is compact enough for a drive equipped with it to fit the spare M.2 slot in the PlayStation 5.
System Requirements: You Need a Gen 5-Friendly Motherboard
PCIe 5.0 SSDs such as the SSD 9100 Pro offer major throughput speed boosts over PCIe 4.0 drives, but you can take full advantage of them only if you have recent hardware that supports the standard. Recent enthusiast desktops and a few high-end laptops are likely to be PCIe 5.0-ready off the shelf, but otherwise, you may have to build your own PC from the ground up or update an existing system to gain the connectivity required. For a desktop, you'll need an Intel 12th Gen or later Core CPU with a motherboard based on Intel's Z690 or Z790 chipset or later; or an AMD Ryzen 7000 or 9000 processor with an AM5 motherboard built around an X670, X670E, or B650E chipset, or later ones.
Note that just because you have a motherboard with one of those chipsets doesn't guarantee that the board maker actually included a PCIe 5.0-capable M.2 SSD slot or slots. That's up to the board maker, so check your system's or motherboard's specs and documentation to make sure you actually have such a slot before investing in one of these drives. (Some boards have PCIe 5.0 expansion slots for graphics cards and other PCI Express cards, but you need a PCIe 5.0-capable M.2 slot, specifically.)
According to Samsung, an 8TB version of the 9100 Pro will be available in the second half of this year; no pricing information is yet available for it.
Durability: Typical of Gen 5 Sticks
As for durability, expressed as lifetime write capacity in total terabytes written (TBW), the 9100 matches the WD Black SN8100, Teamgroup Z540, and Crucial P510, T700, and T705 in the capacities they share. Its durability rating is a notch below the Corsair MP700 Pro, Lexar NM1090 Pro, ADATA Legend 970, and Aorus 10000, which are rated at 700TBW for 1TB and 1,400TBW for 2TB. And the Seagate FireCuda 540 is the reigning Gen 5 durability champ, with ratings of 1,000TBW for the 1TB stick and 2,000TBW for 2TB.
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The TBW spec is a manufacturer's estimate of how much data can be written to a drive before some cells begin to fail and get taken out of service. Samsung covers the 9100 with a warranty of 5 years or until you hit the rated TBW figure in data writes, whichever comes first. But the drive's durability rating is such that unless you're writing unusually large amounts of data to the SSD, it's a good bet that the 9100 will last the full warranty period and beyond.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Samsung includes its Samsung Magician suite of SSD optimization tools with the 9100 Pro, which allows you to streamline the data migration process for SSD upgrades. In addition, Samsung Magician protects data, monitors drive health, and provides firmware updates. The 9100 Pro meets the TCG/Opal V2.0 security standard for self-encrypted devices.
Performance: Great for Raw Speed and General Storage
In benchmarking the Samsung 9100 Pro, we used our latest testbed PC, designed specifically for benchmarking PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs. It is built around an ASRock X670E Taichi motherboard with an AMD X670 chipset, 32GB of DDR5 memory, one PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 slot (with lanes that have direct access to the CPU), and three PCIe 4.0 slots. The system has an AMD Ryzen 9 7900 CPU using an AMD stock cooler; a GeForce RTX 2070 Super graphics card with 8GB of GDDR6 SDRAM; and a Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 Snow 750-watt power supply. The boot drive is an ADATA Legend 850 PCIe 4.0 SSD. (The reviewed SSD is tested as a secondary data drive.)
We put the Samsung drive through our usual slate of internal solid-state drive benchmarks: Crystal DiskMark 6.0, UL's PCMark 10 Storage, and UL's 3DMark Storage benchmark. The last measures a drive's performance in a number of gaming-related load and launch tasks.
Crystal DiskMark's sequential speed tests provide a traditional measure of drive throughput, simulating best-case, straight-line transfers of large files. We use this test largely to see if our recorded speeds are in line with the manufacturer's rated speeds.
The 9100 Pro put up wicked-fast Crystal DiskMark sequential speed numbers, a hair short of its own read and write ratings, and second only to the WD SN8100 in each. While its 4K read speed was near the top of the second tier (though well short of the SN8100's prodigious score), its 4K write score was feeble, well below the other Gen 5 drives we have reviewed and more in line with the two elite previous-generation (PCI Express 4.0) SSDs we included in our comparison. Good 4K write performance is especially important for an SSD used as a boot drive, though we test them as secondary drives.
The PCMark 10 Overall Storage test measures a drive's speed in performing a variety of routine tasks such as launching Windows, loading games and creative apps, and copying both small and large files. It did well in this benchmark, with the third-highest score, just behind the Crucial T705. In the individual tests that, when aggregated, make up the PCMark 10 Overall score, the 9100 Pro did best on the Windows boot and the Call of Duty: Black Ops, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Adobe Photoshop launching trials, with second-place finishes in each.
In 3DMark Storage, which aggregates a drive's performance at a variety of gaming-related tasks, the 9100 Pro's score was in the lower middle of the pack.