Knowledgeable’s Score
Execs
- Quickest benchmarking NVMe SSD we’ve examined.
- DRAM for quick random operations
- Obtainable in as much as 4GB capacities, and shortly 8TB
Cons
- Costly overkill for many customers
- A hair off the tempo in Home windows file transfers
Our Verdict
The quickest Shopper NVMe SSD you should buy — however it ain’t low-cost.
Value When Reviewed
This worth will present the geolocated pricing textual content for product undefined
Greatest Pricing As we speak
Greatest Costs As we speak: Samsung 9100 Professional
$199.99
There was a time when Samsung was the long-reigning, undisputed efficiency king of the NVMe SSD market. Lately… Not a lot.
Nicely, the fallen are mighty as soon as extra due to the corporate’s 9100 Professional — the quickest NVMe SSD I’ve ever examined in keeping with the benchmark software program. Welcome again, Samsung!
Learn on to study extra, then see our roundup of one of the best SSDs for comparability.
What are the 9100 Professional’s options?
The Samsung 9100 is a state-of-the-art, PCIe 5.0 x4 (four-lane) NVMe 2.0 SSD with 1GB of DRAM per terabyte of capability for main caching duties. The controller is an in-house Samsung improvement in keeping with the corporate, and the NAND is 236-layer(3D/stacked) TLC.
The SSD is on the market within the 2280 (22mm large, 80mm lengthy) type issue and at present — 1TB via 4TB capacities. An 8TB model can be out there the second half of 2025.
Jon L. Jacobi / Foundry
Most customers received’t care that the 9100 requires about half the facility of the earlier top-of-the-line 990 Professional. However it quantities to longer battery life in laptops, and fewer warmth in any gadget.
The 9100 Professional is warrantied for 5 years and rated for 600TBW (terabytes which may be written) per terabyte of capability. The time span is okay, however the TBW score, whereas par for the course, could possibly be a bit extra beneficiant given the worth. Talking of which…
How a lot does the Samsung 9100 Professional value?
As of this writing the 1TB model of the 9100 Professional is $200, the 2TB capability is $300, and the 4TB mannequin is $550. Add $20 in order for you a heatsink.
Earlier than including the price of the latter, be sure you really want one (most customers don’t), or that your system doesn’t have already got a heatsink, and if not, can accommodate one. Our testbed’s upside-down secondary PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot forbids heatsinks — it’s a factor.
By way of the general SSD market, you’re positively paying extra for the premium efficiency. 4TB PCIe 4.0 host reminiscence buffer (DRAM-less) NVMe SSDs can be found for round half what the 9100 prices. However as you’ll see under, the efficiency can be premium — in case you have the software program to take benefit.
In the suitable system with the suitable software program, the 9100 Professional will run rings across the competitors.
How briskly is the Samsung 9100 Professional?
The cat’s already out of the bag on this one. The 4TB 9100 Professional that Samsung despatched me aced all of the artificial benchmarks I threw at it when it comes to sequential throughput: CrystalDiskMark 8, AS SSD 2.0, and ATTO Disk all positioned it simply in first place — with a bullet. It additionally simply outstripped its PCIe 4.0 990 Professional predecessor in all methods.
However, real-world efficiency, whereas nicely above common, was a only a hair off the quickest I’ve seen. That noticed the drive sitting in third place amongst all of the drives I’ve examined, behind the Essential T705 and Corsair MP700 Professional SE — each of that are additionally PCIe 5.0 DRAM designs.
Samsung performed up the 9100 Professional’s random efficiency in its press supplies, largely compared to the 990 Professional, however it fell a bit in need of the competitors. In truth, it was nicely down the charts with multi-queue random operations.
Nonetheless, there may be not a whole lot of software program that makes use of a number of NVMe queues at present, so the single-queue random efficiency is what you must actually have a look at. The 9100 Professional was fairly good at that.
Whereas the 9100 Professional reigned supreme in CrystalDiskMark 8, it lagged a hair behind its rivals in real-world transfers. Together with the 48GB reads and writes proven under. That stated, the 2-second distinction is true across the margin of error for this take a look at.
Although solely 6 seconds slower within the 450GB write, that hole value the 9100 Professional the general crown. Whereas lagging in random operations, host reminiscence buffer drives are likely to excel at this specific take a look at so the 9100 truly fell to seventeenth finest out of the 52 NVMe SSDs I’ve examined.
In fact, we’re solely speaking a few 16 second/11 % lag from the primary drive writing 450GB — the 8TB WD SN850X.
About our real-world switch exams… They don’t at all times exhibit the last word capabilities of a drive, solely what you’ll see when transferring information utilizing Home windows Explorer. Once more, that’s largely as a result of Home windows makes use of solely a single queue throughout transfers, negating a lot of NVMe’s benefit and rendering a vendor’s distinctive controller methods principally moot.
I’m hoping for higher from Microsoft sooner or later. It might be good to lastly see real-world I/O that matches that of benchmarks.
Must you purchase the Samsung 9100 Professional?
In case you have the bucks, completely. In the suitable system with the suitable software program, the 9100 Professional will run rings across the competitors. However, most customers not loading massive language fashions or such can be simply superb with an HMB design for half the worth.
How we take a look at
Drive exams at present make the most of Home windows 11, 64-bit working on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence complete). Each 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch exams make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking on 58GB of the 64GB of complete reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a 2TB Samsung 990 Professional which additionally runs the OS.
Every take a look at is carried out on a newly NTFS-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Observe that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency might lower as a consequence of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements. This may be much less of an element with the present crop of SSDs with far sooner late-generation NAND.
Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can range by capability as a consequence of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND out there for secondary caching. Distributors additionally often swap elements. Should you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.