Samsung 9100 PRO 2TB - PCIe 5.0 SSD at 14,700 MB/s

Our analysis

Same 2 TB as the SanDisk Optimus GX PRO 850X, at about twice the rated speed: up to 14700 MB/s reads and 13400 MB/s writes here, against 7300 and 6600 on the SanDisk's Gen4 interface. The SanDisk comes with a heatsink fitted for the PS5; this is a bare M.2 2280 drive that needs a PCIe 5.0 slot to reach its numbers. It is built for creators and pros who game on the side, not the reverse.

What stands out

• Reads up to 14700 MB/s, writes up to 13400 MB/s. Samsung's figures. When you edit 4K video, move multi-gigabyte project files or run AI models locally, sequential speed is what shortens the copy.
• PCIe 5.0 x4. Twice the bandwidth per lane of PCIe 4.0, which is where the jump in sequential numbers comes from.
• 2 TB in the standard M.2 2280 size. Room for a working library of projects plus your games on one drive that fits normal desktop slots.
• A five-year warranty. A long coverage window for a drive meant to carry work files.

Where it falls short

• For gaming we recommend a Gen4 drive instead; our SSD guide explains why the extra sequential speed adds little to load times.
• It needs a free PCIe 5.0 slot and decent airflow. If your motherboard does not include a heatsink for that slot, there is a heatsink version of the drive.

Look elsewhere if

• You mainly play: the Samsung 990 PRO 2TB is the Gen4 drive we recommend for a high-end gaming PC, with a DRAM cache and, per Samsung, up to 1.4 million random-read IOPS. If the most capacity for the money is the goal, the Crucial P310 2TB is our pick for price per terabyte for gaming.

We explain when Gen5 is worth it in our gaming SSD guide, and you can compare every drive in the comparison tool.