Samsung had announced the 9100 Pro SSD which is their flagship consumer grade PCIe Gen 5 SSD back in February this year. In this review, we put the 2TB variant to the test to evaluate its real-world performance and see how it stacks up in today’s high-speed storage landscape.
Specifications
| Category | Samsung SSD 9100 PRO |
| Interface | PCIe 5.0 x4, NVMe 2.0 |
| Form Factor | M.2 (2280) |
| Storage Memory | Samsung V NAND TLC (V8) |
| Controller | Samsung In-House Controller |
| DRAM (Cache Memory) | 1GB LPDDR4X (1TB) 2GB LPDDR4X(2TB) 4GB LPDDR4X(4TB) 4GB LPDDR4X(8TB) |
| Capacity | 1TB,2TB, 4TB, 8TB |
| Sequential Read/Write Speed | Up to 14,800 MB/s, Up to 13,400 MB/s |
| Random Read/Write Speed (QD32) |
Up to 2,200K IOPS, 2,600K IOPS |
| Management Software | Samsung Magician Software |
| Data Encryption | AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption, TCG/Opal V2.0, MS eDrive / Encrypted Drive (IEEE1667) |
| Total Bytes Written | 600 TBW (1TB) 1200 TBW (2TB) 2400 TBW (4TB) 48000 TBW (8TB) |
Packaging and Box Contents
The SSD ships in the familiar box which securely holds the drive and some paperwork. The package does not have any plastic seems to be fully paper based from a sustainable packaging found on most Samsung products in the market. You see a mention of 14700MB/s read speed on the front and the 5-year warranty on the back.
The model we tested was the MZ-VAP2T0BW (2TB) and the drive was made in South Korea
Test System
- AMD Ryzen 9 7950x 16-core CPU
- Asus TUF GAMING X870-PLUS Wi-Fi Motherboard with PCIe gen 5.0 support
- Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX5080 16GB GDDR7 OC Edition
- Corsair 16GBx2 – 32GB DDR5 5200MHz RAM
- Deepcool 850w SMPS
- Windows 10 Pro 64bit
One of the key elements testing the newer generation drives is to have a motherboard which is fully compatible.
Asus was kind to send us the Asus TUF GAMING X870-PLUS Wi-Fi Motherboard, and this board is fully loaded in terms of features. Samsung sells the drive without a heat sink and this board comes with a neat heat sink for the PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot. It also comes with 2 PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots and 2 PCIe 4.0 slots, which is very handy.
The screw-free M.2 slots are also convenient, and you can easily install the drives without having to deal with the screws. You would need a screwdriver to install the heat sink though.
Design and Thermals
The Samsung 9100 Pro uses an in-house controller built on the newer 5nm process and features a nickel coating to improve heat dissipation.
Samsung claims up to 49% improvement in power efficiency with advanced thermal control compared to the previous generation 990 Pro SSD. There is a nickel coating on the controller.
Samsung continues to use copper film on the back for heat dissipation.
Samsung 9100 Pro SSD Benchmarks
Here are a few benchmarks of the drive :-
Samsung Magician
Samsung Magician is the company’s own disk management software and lets you update the firmware, monitor the health and also perform benchmarks. It works only with Samsung SSDs. Here we see that the Sequential Read Speeds were over 14167 MB/s and write speeds were over 13257MB/s. The IOPS are also very high.
You can also see the performance jump over PCIe Gen 4 and Gen 3 drives from our previous review. You can also more than 2X jump in performance when compared to a PCIe Gen 4 drive for read and write speeds. This was the same case when Gen 4 drives come out few years back and gave double the performance of Gen 3 drives.
CrystalDiskMark 8.01
Crystal Disk Mark is one of the most popular tools for assessing drive performance and the drive showed good sequential read(14.67GB/s)/write (13.425GB/s) speeds in Peak Performance profile.
Real World Performance profile.
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
In Blackmagic Disk Speed Test which is generally used to measure video editing capabilities, the Pro came up with 10866.5 MB/S Read and 10550.9 MB/s write speeds
ATTO Disk
Atto Disk is another good tool to measure sustained performance and the 9100 Pro shows a peak of 12.56 GB/s read and 13.50 GB/s write speeds
AS SSD Benchmark
The Samsung 9100 Pro scores 12356 in the AS SSD benchmark on the whole and 5828 for write and 4432 for read.
In the file copy benchmark, the drive scored 4350MB/s in ISO copy, 1125MB/s in program and 2506 MB/s in games.
PC Mark 10
In the PC Mark 10 Quick System Drive benchmark scored 4634 points.
3D Mark Storage Benchmark
The storage benchmark is focused on gaming workloads and the drive managed to score 3678 points. Average bandwidth was 619.58 MB/s and access time was 48 microseconds
Apart from benchmarks, the real world performance for applications which are very data intensive such as games, video editing and programming, the 9100 Pro does offer a good experience. If you are planning to build a PC for gaming, video editing or AI workloads the 9100 Pro can be at the top of your list.
Conclusion
The market for PCIe Gen 5.0 drives is just warming up and this comes at a time when both AMD and Intel offerings support these faster drives. The prices have also stabilized currently and the price premium for Gen 5 drives over Gen 4 is getting smaller.
The Samsung 9100 Pro is one of the fastest NVMe SSD drives we have tested so far. It also runs a lot cooler than other Gen 5 drives in the market even though we used just heatsink on the motherboard.
The Samsung 980 Pro expanded the market for PCIe gen 4 SSDs, and we expect the 9100 Pro to do the same for the PCIe Gen 5 SSDs. If you are building a PC in 2025, investing in a PCIe Gen 5.0 drive is a great option for those looking for the fastest storage option. The big question here is if you can utilize all that performance for your workflow. Data intensive workloads which make use of the faster speeds offered by PCIe Gen 5.0 include 4K/8K video editing, 3D rendering and AI/ML model training. For the vast majority of users PCIe 4.0 drives will work just fine, but for performance enthusiasts and early adopters who want the absolute best, the Samsung 9100 Pro is one of the best offerings in the market currently.
Pricing and Availability
The Samsung 9100 Pro starts at INR 14,999 for the 1TB model and goes all the way up to INR 49,999 for the 4TB version. The 8TB model is not available in India yet. Samsung offers a 5-year limited warranty for the drives in India.
| Capacity | India Launch Price | Link |
| 1TB(MZ-VAP1T0BW) | INR 14,999 | Amazon |
| 2TB (MZ-VAP2T0BW) | INR 25,499 | Amazon |
| 4TB (MZ-VAP4T0BW) | INR 49,999 | Amazon |
Alternatives
Sandisk’s latest WD_BLACK SN8100 PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD, which has launched in India recently priced starting at INR 17,499 is also available on Amazon.in. There is also Kingston FURY Renegade G5 PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD.
Pros
- Samsung 9100 Pro is one of the fastest drives in market today
- Really fast read and write speeds for data intensive workloads
- Backward compatible with PCIe 4.0 motherboards
- Samsung Magician software is quite useful
- 5-year warranty
Cons
- Pricey
- Overkill for most users who don’t have compatible hardware