Samsung 9100 PRO SSD review

Samsung 9100 PRO: 30-second review

In the past, when reviewing M.2 SSDs, the task has been essentially straightforward—pop it into the machine and get on with some work. As my main flow of day-to-day tasks is usually sorting images and video from shoots, whatever storage I’m using is usually put through its paces, and 4K and 8K video will usually, in one or two quick transfers, highlight whether the medium is fast or not. That all changed with the arrival of the 990 Pro last year, with transfer rates that topped 7,000MB/s—a speed at which you sometimes had to check to see if you had actually initiated a move of files only to find that the transfer had already completed. Now the 9100 Pro offers speeds that are double that.

Installing the drive was at first hampered by my motherboard, which is PCIe M.2 ready, although it only features one slot, with the others all being PCIe 4.0. This led to a quick swap around of drives, reconfiguration of boot sequences, and a few other configuration issues that were easy to resolve, all was set to go. Suffice to say, those issues were all pretty standard, and once the drive was installed, the actual operation was identical to what you would usually expect from a high-performance SSD—just faster.

Using Premiere Pro and Photoshop, loading, rendering and saving files everything was extremely quick. The speed difference between this and a drive that offers up to 4,000MB/s transfer rates, such as the 960 EVO, is obvious, and you can witness that difference in speed from within apps. However, the speed leap between this and the 960 Pro is at first less obvious, as that drive is already incredibly quick.

Taking a close look at speeds when editing 8K footage captured on the Canon EOS R5C, there is a slight uptick in render speeds, but the real difference comes when transferring files from one location on the drive to another when initially organising the production workflow. Copy speeds of 8K files from a LaCie Rugged Pro5 to the drive’s internal storage through Thunderbolt 4 were fast—my PC motherboard as yet doesn’t support Thunderbolt 5—but nothing too different from other SSDs. However, once the files were on the drive and being moved from one location to another, or cache files were created, the process was near instantaneous, to a point.

Likewise, pushing Adobe Premiere Generative AI features such as Generative Extend, highlighted that the process was notably faster. As the integration of AI use of scratch disks expands, utilising SSDs with this speed is going to be an essential necessity, especially with the release of CoPilot+ ready PCs or if you’re running a Linux machine with ChatGPT running locally.

At the end of the test, I felt that I had only just scratched the surface of what this SSD enables, with the latest PCIe speeds offering the speed that enables advanced AI integration to have a better platform to run. At a base level and used in a more traditional sense, this speed is now pushing the upper limits of what traditional apps require, falling back to the speeds of the processors. Essentially, for traditional applications, you will see a boost in performance within some high-demand apps, but it’s when you start to utilise the power of AI and the demands that places on traditional computers that you’ll really start to see the advantages of one of the best SSDs around.

Samsung 9100 PRO: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? TBC
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Directly from Amazon.com

At time of review, the full details of the pricing of the 9100 Pro have yet to be confirmed, but the drive itself will be widely available through most online retailers.

Editor’s note: We’ll update this review once we get confirmation from Samsung.

Samsung 9100 PRO: Specs

Capacities: 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB
Controller: Samsung Presto controller
NAND: Samsung V-NAND TLC
Cache Memory: Up to 8GB LPDDR4X
Sequential Read Speed: Up to 14,800MB/s
Sequential Write Speed: Up to 13,400MB/s
Random Read Speed: Up to 2,200K IOPS
Random Write Speed: Up to 2,600K IOPS
Power Efficiency: 49% improvement over the 990 PRO
Form Factor: M.2 (2280)
Thermal Management: Heatsink model available, compatible with PlayStation 5

Samsung SSD 9100 PRO: Design

The Samsung 9100 Pro is available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB versions, and in this review, I’ve taken a look at the mid-range 4TB option, which should be more than enough for most general applications. The drive is also available in two options, which is quite common for this type of drive: either with or without the heatsink.

While the drive is available without a heatsink, this is really aimed at those incorporating it into an existing system that might have an integrated heatsink of some type. If your machine is heatsink-free, then the small additional cost for the heatsink-equipped version is well worth it in the long run. Essentially, if you’re going to be putting this drive through its paces, don’t use it without some type of heat dissipation or cooling.

When it comes to the dimensions, the drive fits the M.2 2280 form factor, and the 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB versions all measure 80.15 x 22.15 x 2.38mm, while the 8TB option is slightly thicker at 3.88mm.

If you go for the version with the integrated heatsink, then this is slightly thicker, but again with the same length and width dimensions of 80.15 x 25 x 8.88mm, and the 8TB version increases the thickness to 11.25mm.

So, for most workstations, that should be fine; for more customised solutions, NAS, and other specialist machines, it’s worth just checking the height you have available.

As the drive follows the M.2 2280 standard, fitting the drive into any machine should be straightforward—just make sure that it’s popped into a PCIe 5.0 slot to make the most of the speeds available.

Samsung 9100 PRO: Features

Samsung’s latest SSD is a step into the future when it comes to features, and while the mainstay for ultra-fast SSDs is at the moment PCIe 4.0, the emergence of PCIe 5.0 is becoming more common. However, it’s worth checking out the hardware you’re running to see if there is an available PCIe slot. As I discovered through the test, my ASUS motherboard supports the format, but as with other PCIe 5.0 M.2 hardware there will often only be one PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot, with the others usually being assigned to the more current PCIe 4.0 interface.

The new technology enables some of the fastest transfer rates that I have seen, with quoted read speeds of up to 14,800MB/s and write speeds of 13,400MB/s. This is down to not only the interface but also the use of Samsung’s eighth V-NAND technology and Presto controller. This all leads to performance that is double the speed of the 990 series and sees random read and write speeds of up to 2,200K and 2,600K IOPS.

Once again, the drive features Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 technology, with the new 9100 PRO series offering a dynamic SLC buffer region to accelerate read/write speeds. Essentially, this speed boost makes it an obvious choice for 8K and higher-resolution video footage.

Energy efficiency should always be a consideration, and the 5nm process controller and firmware optimisation result in a 49% increase in efficiency over the 990 series. However, it does draw 2.5W more power.

More power will inevitably mean more heat, so the drive is available as a heatsink version, with models up to 4TB being designed for both PC and PS5 use, while the thicker 8TB is designed for PCs where there’s a little more room.

One of the main features of the new PCIe 5.0 technology is its use with Large Language Models (LLMs), so if you have a local version set up on your Linux machine, the speed of PCIe 5.0 enables newer engines to operate at greater speeds. An example given by Samsung is that the GPT-3 model has a parameter count of 175 billion, but GPT-4 has increased to 1.76 trillion—an increase of ten times in the number of model parameters.

With the enhancements to the efficiency of the latest LLM model, the final size of data stored in the storage can increased by about three times, so from 17GB with GPT-3 to 45GB using GPT-4.

This use of internal storage will expand through more mainstream AI integration, with technologies such as CoPilot+, Adobe Firefly, and many more.

Samsung 9100 PRO: Performance

Crystal Disk Mark Read: 14,671.08 MB/s
Crystal Disk Mark Write: 13,470.69 MB/s
AJA System Test Read: 11536 MB/s
AJA System Test Write: 11255 MB/s
AS SSD Rear: 11020.10 MB/s
AS SSD Write: 9867.36 MB/s
ATTO Disk Read: 13.63 MB/s
ATTO Disk Write: 12.63 MB/s

Fitting the Samsung SSD 9100 Pro follows the usual installation guide lines as other M.2 2280-fit SSDs. Pop it into the PCIe 5.0 slot, and then reboot the machine.

However, as this stick features the latest interface and my motherboard only features one slot of the type, it meant a quick swap around of drives to configure correctly. Before doing so, the 9100 Pro was popped into the PCIe 4.0 slot, formatted ready for use, and then installed into the PCIe 5.0 slot, after which the drive boot sequence was realigned to the correct order.

Once installed, the machine, applications, and accessories were ready to test. The first set of tests looked at the real-world potential of the drive, starting with file transfers from a Thunderbolt 4 drive—the LaCie Rugged Pro5—to the internal SSD. While the drive is Thunderbolt 5, my machine is at present limited to Thunderbolt 4, and I am still awaiting the arrival of a PCIe Thunderbolt 5 card. However, the speeds were impressive, as 2TB of 8K RAW Light Canon footage transferred to the internal storage in just over six minutes. Try this on a Mac with Thunderbolt 5, and that time drops to just over three minutes. The point here is that the 9100 hardly breaks a sweat, with the write speeds being far in excess of the connection technology.

Copying the files internally from one section of the drive to another when organising the files was also quick, although with the drive reading and writing, the transfer rates were again just over four and a half minutes, while moving the files between folders was slightly faster. In reality, the speed for the quantity of data involved was superb and considerably quicker than the 4TB 960 drive presently in the machine. After the tests, it was time to stretch the abilities of the drive.

Using Premiere Pro, I selected the Generative Expand feature, something that pushes my present system. Here, the potential of the future of AI can be seen, and the time it takes to expand a clip varies greatly depending on the content of the clip. There’s also the two-second limitation, although this can be enough to get you through an edit. With the 9100 Pro selected as the scratch disk, the test on a short clip of seascape footage was applied, and the results were impressive—time-wise, however, there was little difference between the 960 and the 9100. In reality, while this drive is AI-ready, the apps that I presently utilise are not quite taking full advantage of the technology at present.

Samsung 9100 PRO: Final verdict

Through the test, I feel like I have only just scraped the surface of the potential of the 9100 Pro. In the ASUS motherboard, the benchmarks were able to show the biggest advantage of this storage, highlighting the speed of transfers and the potential performance boost that this SSD will bring.

At present, the one application that did see a significant performance boost was Adobe Premiere, with the faster transfer rates making it possible to handle longer 8K and RAW 4K footage with ease. It also enabled the faster transfer of files, and, sorting out the files in the first place into an organised manner was far quicker than I’m used to, although when you’re handling 8K footage, nothing is ever quick.

The real benefits of this drive will come with the application of AI models and applications. Loading a Linux interface and running a local LLM would essentially expand on the potential of the drive and open up opportunities for the future. Likewise, as CoPilot+ and rivals start to further integrate with our everyday lives, the need for this next-generation storage will definitely become more relevant.

At present, this is a blindingly fast SSD with some serious potential if you have the kit and experience to access it.

Should I buy the Samsung 9100 PRO SSD?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

---

For fast, on-the-go storage, we’ve reviewed the best portable SSD units around.