15-05-2025
Sandisk WD Hits a Blistering 14,900MBps With PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD
Gamers have a new Gen 5 SSD to consider for their next upgrade. Sandisk released its WD_Black SN8100 NVMe SSD, which, it claims, offers sequential write speeds up to 14,900MBps. Sandisk says that its new drive is the fastest PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD in the world. That appears to be the case, but just by a smidge. The Sandisk WD_Black SN8100 just beats out the Samsung 9100 Pro, which offers read speeds of 14,800MBps.
Credit: Sandisk
It will be interesting to see how Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors handle the WD_Black SN8100. As we noted recently, The SSD Review encountered some latency issues when testing 14,000MBps memory with Intel's high-performance CPUs. The SSD Review tried different SSD modules and brands with the same results, suggesting that all SSDs might have reduced read times when paired with those CPUs. More testing will need to be done before that's clear, though.
Beyond the blistering 14,900MBps sequential read speeds, the SN8100 also offers 11,000MBps sequential write speeds and random write speeds of 2.3 million IOPs. (That random write speed is for the 2TB and 4TB versions.) Sandisk offers the SSDs with or without the heatsink for different users and needs, but gamers will want to snag it with the heatsink. The passive WD_Black heatsink has customizable RGB lighting. That's a nice touch for the sizeable chunk of gamers who dig LED lights in their PCs.
It's worth noting that Sandisk is marketing the SSD for high-performance PCs and various AI uses, in addition to gamers.
Sandisk already has models available at 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB, with a whopping 8TB model coming 'later this year.' It'll be tempting to wait for that 8TB version, but with the 4TB module coming in at an MSRP of $569.99, you can expect the larger model to be a budget-buster for many prospective buyers.
