Fourteen gigabytes per second: at that rate, a 100GB folder of video rushes copies in about seven seconds, at least on paper. That is the headline figure of Samsung’s PCIe 5.0 SSD, and the drive is far below its usual price during Amazon’s Prime Big Deal event, where Prime members can get the 2TB Samsung 9100 PRO for $349 instead of $679, with 49% off the list price. The offer concerns the version without a heatsink.
PCIe 5.0 Speed, if Your Motherboard Can Use It
The 9100 PRO is an M.2 drive built on the PCIe 5.0 interface, with sequential speeds of up to 14,700MB/s for reading and 13,400MB/s for writing. Samsung describes that as twice as fast as its 990 PRO, the model many enthusiasts already consider quick. Random performance, which governs how snappy a system feels when it juggles thousands of small files, is rated at up to 1,850,000 read and 2,600,000 write operations per second. People who move large video projects, load big AI models from disk or work with huge datasets are the ones who will see those numbers translate into time saved. For a video editor, it is the difference between watching a progress bar while a project opens and getting straight to the first cut.
There is a condition, and it sits on the motherboard. Reaching these speeds requires an M.2 slot wired for PCIe 5.0, which only recent computers provide. In an older PCIe 4.0 slot the drive will still work, limited to what that slot can carry. I should also be straightforward about games: load times depend on much more than raw throughput, and in my view the difference with a good PCIe 4.0 drive is small today. Buying this one for gaming alone is buying headroom for the future.
Fast drives run hot, and Samsung has worked on that side. The controller is made on a 5nm process, which the company says makes it considerably more power-efficient than the one in the 990 PRO, and thermal management is built in to keep performance steady under load. This version ships bare, so it should sit under the M.2 heatsink that many recent motherboards include. For a board without one, the same page lists a 9100 PRO style with its own heatsink. The drive uses the standard M.2 2280 format, about the size of a stick of gum, and Samsung presents it as suitable for laptops as well as desktops, provided the machine has a compatible slot.
Samsung’s Magician software handles the housekeeping, with firmware updates, encryption options and monitoring of the drive’s health. Two terabytes is the capacity I’d choose for a main drive: enough for the operating system, applications, a working project folder and a library of large games without constant pruning. The brand also points out that it makes the controller, the memory and the flash chips itself, an argument for consistency more than for speed. Other sizes are discounted for members as well, including 1TB at $206 and 4TB at $749.
Prime membership is required: the Samsung 9100 PRO in 2TB costs $349 on Amazon against a list price of $679, without a heatsink, as a Prime Big Deal. Returns are free.