You may think that, with rising costs, now is not the time to buy data storage, but it is an essential part of your PC gaming experience. Samsung’s 9100 Pro M.2 solid-state drives are fast and should help you get the most out of your PC build. We were sent the 2TB version of the SSD with a factory-fitted heatsink to test.
Being a PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe SSD, the 9100 Pro has a theoretical maximum read speed of 14,700 MB/s. For comparison, the PlayStation 5 has a PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD only capable of 5,500 MB/s, which it uses to dynamically stream data directly to the console’s RAM to reduce loading times. Imagine your PC running with a storage solution just under three times as fast.
The Samsung 9100 Pro PCIe 5.0 x4 SSD comes in several flavours with or without a heatsink. Of the factory-fitted heatsink SSDs, the 1TB will cost around AUD$520, the 2TB AUD$1000, the 4TB AUD$1270 and the 8TB a breathtaking AUD$3820. The 4TB drive probably offers the best value for money right now, but that’s one hell of an investment. 2TB is probably the lowest that you ought to go, but at a grand, that’s still a chunk of change.
PC gaming has backed itself into a corner with the requirement for an SSD becoming common for new titles, especially those using Windows DirectStorage. With current prices of SSDs going through the roof, it may be time to consider cheaper 3.5” SATA3 hard disk drives for everyday data, and cloud storage for archiving, reserving an SSD for important data and games that need fast access.
The supplied 2TB Samsung 9100 Pro is a robust unit that’s easy to fit in your machine. A PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe SSD will need a heatsink, be it the factory heatsink, a 3rd-party heatsink or the integrated heatsink on your motherboard. Whether or not the factory-fitted version of the 9100 Pro is for you depends on your motherboard and/or preference for using your motherboard’s M.2 heatsink to improve aesthetics.
Personally, I prefer factory-fitted heatsinks as I know that they have been tested to provide adequate cooling for the drive. I appreciate the desire for a clean build, but the Samsung-branded 9100 Pro heatsink looked great in the test machine.
The Samsung 9100 Pro and PCIe 5.0 x4 SSDs, in general, are perhaps better suited for workstation use, especially at current price points. You will, however, still see improvements over other SSDs in games.
Testing the 9100 Pro in an MSI MEG Z890 Unity-X motherboard running with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, Crystal DiskMark reported a maximum read speed of 12046.63 MB/s and a maximum write speed of 12551.21 MB/s. This is a little shy of the maximum read speed on the box, but acceptably close enough.
Using UL Solutions 3DMark storage benchmark, I compared the Samsung 9100 Pro gaming data access performance against two other SSDs in the test rig. These tests use real-world gaming tasks like launching, installing, saving and streaming, rather than synthetic read/write speeds.
The Samsung 970 Evo Plus is a PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD. It was considered a high-performance storage option back in 2019 and is still considered a reliable SSD. The drive scored a very reasonable 1968 in the 3DMark storage benchmark with an average bandwidth of 343.68 MB/s and an access time of 93 microseconds.
The Kingston NV2 is a budget-friendly PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD it scored 1751 in the 3DMark storage benchmark with an average bandwidth of 307.35 MB/s and an access time of 105 microseconds.
The Samsung 9100 Pro scored 3780 in the 3DMark storage benchmark test. With an average bandwidth speed of 64069 MB/s and an access time of 47 microseconds, these results are about twice as fast as those of the other two SSDs.
Rising memory and storage prices due to AI datacentres hungry for these essential components are no fun if you are building a new PC or upgrading your existing rig. You are going to need fast storage if you plan to play the latest games.
An SSD is more of an investment than it once was, but it’s still an essential PC component. Storage prices are unlikely to reduce any time soon. Investing now for a great SSD that you are likely to still be using in five years may be the way to go.
The 2TB Samsung 9100 Pro PCIe 5.0 x4 delivers great performance and storage capacity. It may be at a price that’s higher than it was last year, but it is still worth considering.