The Samsung 9100 Pro is a 2TB PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSD that’s about as fast as storage can get right now. Read and write speeds hover around 14,000 MB per second, which is double what PCIe 4.0 drives could do. The 2TB model is the sweet spot for most buyers. It’s big enough to store tons of media files or games, but it isn’t overwhelmingly expensive. One thing to note is that the version in this deal comes without a heatsink, so make sure your motherboard has one over the slot you’re installing it into, or pick one up separately if you’re planning to install the 9100 in a PS5.
Amazon currently has the Samsung 9100 PRO 2TB at $445, reduced from $680, which is $235 or 35% off.
A hard drive to ensure you’ve got plenty of storage space on your PC and beyond
The biggest problem you’ll have with the Samsung 9100 Pro is actually using all that speed. It’s great if you’re working with raw photos or videos and need to move around multi-gigabyte files a ton. With games or regular desktop work, you’re going to see diminishing returns, but this is a fairly future-proof purchase since you won’t need faster read and write speeds for the foreseeable future. Samsung pairs the drive with a low-power LPDDR4X DRAM buffer, which keeps performance consistent during long sustained writes rather than dropping off once an internal cache fills.
One thing to watch with the 9100 Pro is heat. PCIe 5 drives tend to get hotter, so you’ll want to make sure they’re equipped with a heatsink. Most motherboards these days come with heatsinks pre-installed over the M.2 slots. So, you’re probably good to go if you’re installing it into a PC. However, if you’re using it as PS5 storage expansion, you’ll need to purchase a heatsink separately. You don’t want to skimp here, because some PS5 owners who didn’t install a heatsink on their SSDs have reported thermal shutdowns and even complete drive failures.
The SSD is rated for up to 1,200 TBs of writes, which is backed by a 5-year limited warranty. That means that you can expect full performance for the first 1,200 TB you write to the device, which is a number most people will never reach. That’s equivalent to formatting the 9100 and completely filling it for 600 days in a row. You can also install the optional Samsung Magician software on Windows to handle firmware updates, health monitoring, and performance tuning.
At $445 on Amazon, down from $680, the 9100 PRO 2TB offers a top-tier PCIe 5.0 drive at a well below its usual price. It’s one of the best you can get right now, and it’s a great way to future-proof your desktop’s storage for the next decade or so.