The WD Black SN8100 is the new SSD speed king, beating the Samsung 9100 Pro and showing what can be achieved if you push four PCIe 5.0 lanes to their limit. It's not cheap, and it runs hot too, but it's the fastest drive available if you can afford it.
Pros
Fastest SSD ever
Cheaper than Samsung 9100 Pro
Up to 8TB capacity
Cons
Runs comparatively hot
Still very expensive
Some specs aren't nailed down
The big guns are finally coming out to the PCIe 5.0 SSD party, first with the Samsung 9100 Pro, and now with the new WD Black SN8100, and both drives are aiming their banks of high-speed flash memory squarely at the 'fastest ever gaming SSD' title. In fact, in most of our tests, the WD Black SN8100 has the new Samsung drive squarely beaten, which is no mean feat.
It's not cheap, of course, but if you want the very WD brand, has also undercut the price of the Samsung 9100 Pro across the board, by just enough to make it look like a no-brainer. So what makes this new drive tick? Let's take a look inside.
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Specs
WD Black SN8100 specs
Interface
4x PCIe 5.0
Capacities
1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB (later)
Controller
Custom 8-channel Silicon Motion SM2508
Form factor
M.2 2280
Heatsink
Optional
Max read speed
14,900MB/s (2TB, 4TB)
Max write speed
14,000MB/s (2TB, 4TB)
NAND
Kioxia BiCs8 TLC 3D CBA NAND
Endurance rating (TBW)
600 (1TB), 1,200 (2TB), 2,400 (4TB)
The new WD Black SN8100 is available in a range of capacities, starting with 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB drives, with the promise that 8TB drives will be arriving in Fall 2025. Sandisk will also be releasing heatsink-equipped versions of the drives later this year, and while it hasn't revealed a release date for them yet, the company did tell me to expect them to arrive sooner rather than later this year, so there hopefully won't be too long to wait.
Sandisk has shown us the new heatsink design, though, which, like the Samsung 9100 Pro, is much shorter and sleeker than some of the bizarre contraptions we've seen strapped to PCIe 5.0 SSDs lately. It has a single RGB LED on it, and is made from anodized aluminum with double thermal interface material (TIM) pads.
The design has also been tweaked, so the airflow channels are cut horizontally, rather than vertically, into the heatsink, so it's better optimized for the usual best PC case designs, which have front-to-back airflow configurations. In the meantime, though, only the standard heatsink-less versions are available, and the drive gets hot, so you're going to need to fit it to the chunkiest heatsink available on your motherboard.
Meanwhile, the controller used in the WD Black SN8100 is based on the super-fast new Silicon Motion SM2508, and Sandisk says the chip on the SN8100 has also been specifically customized to optimize the performance and power efficiency of the drive.
The type of cache used in the drive has been kept under wraps, though, and we have to hope that this secretive approach to specs isn't down to Sandisk potentially wanting the freedom to swap out some of the parts for others at a later date, potentially changing the performance of the drive while keeping the same brand.
Where Sandisk has been more forthcoming is with the type of flash memory used in the drive, with the drive making use of Kioxia BiCs8 TLC 3D CBA NAND. Sandisk is making some bold claims about this hardware combo too, saying its 2TB and 4TB SN8100 drives can read at up to 14,900MB/s and write at 14,000MB/s at peak sequential performance, beating the Samsung 9100 Pro (14,800MB/s and 13,400MB/s respectively) on both counts.
Finally, as with most SSDs these days, the endurance rating, measured in terabytes written (TBW), scales as you add more capacity to the drive. The WD Black SN8100 matches the Samsung 9100 Pro with its endurance figures of 600TBW for the 1TB drive, 1,200TBW for the 2TB model, and 2,400TBW for the 4TB drive.
Software
The WD software package has had a bit of an overhaul lately, with the WD Dashboard suite being abandoned, and the WD Kitfox suite only being for hard drives. However, the Sandisk Dashboard now covers all the essentials, giving you an easy way to monitor your drive's performance and temperature, and also to disable features such as TRIM and the write cache if you want (though I don't recommend it).
Unlike Samsung's comprehensive Magician software package, there's no way to easily clone one drive to another using Sandisk Dashboard, but you can a free five-year license to a WD edition of Acronis True Image, which does the same job and considerably more besides.
I tried it out by cloning the Windows install from our WD Black SN850X to the new SN8100, and it worked fine, while also being easy to use. All the essentials are accessible with this SSD in one form or another, and Sandisk has also now confirmed that Game Mode has been added to the Dashboard software.
How we test
To assess SSD performance, I run a mix of synthetic tests using CrystalDiskMark and AS-SSD, to gauge peak sequential and random performance. I also run the PCMark 10 full system drive benchmark to get an idea of real-world performance as a system drive, and run the 3DMark storage benchmark to assess gaming performance, which is the priority for our reviews as a gaming site.
The latter runs traces from real games, including Battlefield V, The Outer Worlds, and Overwatch, to measure performance for game installs, saves, and loading times. All the SSDs in the graphs below were tested on the same test rig, which has the specifications listed below. All tests are conducted in a full PC build inside a Cooler Master MasterCase H500P case with two 200mm front intake fans and one 140mm exhaust fan, with the glass side attached, to get a realistic idea of thermal performance and throttling.
U: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
U cooler: Corsair H100X Elite
Motherboard: MSI X870E Carbon WiFi
RAM: G.Skill TridentZ RGB 6,000MT/s, CL28
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080
SSD (system drive): WD Black SN850X heatsink 2TB
Benchmarks
With its powerful SSD hardware, the WD Black SN8100 is an absolute speed demon in our benchmarks, particularly when it comes to peak sequential performance. The flagship figure is that 14,900MB/s read claim, and amazingly, the WD Black SN8100 very nearly hits it at 14,897MB/s – the difference is negligible. Comparatively, the Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB is 252MB/s off the pace, and even the 4TB 9100 Pro (the fastest model) is 172MB/s behind.
That's a solid enough lead in itself, but where the WD Black SN8100 really makes a statement here is when it comes to sequential write speed. In fact, in our tests the WD Black SN8100 even sured SanDisk's 14,000 claim by 88MB/s in the CrystalDiskMark sequential write speed test, making it 638MB/s quicker than the fastest result from the Samsung 9100 Pro.
Bear in mind that, unless you genuinely plan to run large-scale file transfers between fast drives on a regular basis, these peak sequential results are more about bragging rights than real-world performance, where differences between drives are typically much smaller. However, the WD Black SN8100 has still made a statement here – there's no faster desktop SSD when it comes to peak read and write speeds.
Thankfully, the WD Black SN8100 also beats the competition in pretty much every other arena too. One notable result was in the CrystalDiskMark random 4K test, where PCIe 4.0 drives are often quicker than their PCIe 5.0 counterparts, but the WD Black SN8100 beats its predecessor, the SN850X, here when it comes to random reads, and its random write speed is also well ahead of other PCIe 5.0 drives we've tested.
Moving to the AS-SSD random 4K test, measured in IOPS, again saw the WD Black SN8100 pummel the competition. The random read speed of 1,168,126 IOPS is massively in front of the 976,640 from the next quickest drive, the Samsung 9100 Pro, and the random write speed of 1,189,511 is also faster than every other drive we've tested.
Moving to the real-world performance tests also showed the WD Black SN8100 being a formidable force. The PCMark 10 full system drive test, which measures how an SSD performs as your general Windows drive while performing a number of storage-intensive tasks, showed the WD Black SN8100 averaging 650MB/s. That's 13MB/s in front of the already-impressive Samsung 9100 Pro's result, and well in front of the other drives we've tested recently.
Access times are also strong in this test, with the WD Black SN8100's 38µs access time being the quickest we've recorded – it only just beats the Samsung 9100 Pro here, but it's significantly quicker than the 64µs from the WD Black SN850X, showing a benefit of the faster drive in Windows.
Meanwhile, the 3DMark storage benchmarks show more of a mixed picture, but one where the WD Black SN8100X is always strong. Its game load speed for Battlefield V, for example, at 1,591MB/s is again the fastest result we've recorded, beating the Samsung 9100 Pro, and being a good 620MB/s quicker than the PCIe 4.0 WD Black SN850X.
In the Overwatch game load time test, the Samsung 9100 Pro pulled ahead by 10MB/s, but the WD Black SN8100 is still faster than the other PCIe 5.0 drives we've recently tested here, and it's really not far off the Samsung drive either.
Likewise, the game install time for The Outer Worlds saw the WD Black SN8100 fall behind the top result (from the Crucial T705), but only by 3MB/s. Comparatively, the Samsung 9100 Pro is 54MB/s behind the WD Black SN8100 in this test.
In fact, the only test where the WD Black SN8100 didn't come either first or second in our tests was in the save game time for The Outer Worlds, where both the Corsair MP700 and Crucial T705 have the upper hand, showing that peak sequential speeds don't always translate into fast speeds everywhere. Again, though, the WD Black SN8100 is ahead of the Samsung 9100 Pro here.
Temperature
One area where the WD Black SN8100 struggles compared to the competition, however, is thermals. The Samsung 9100 Pro showed that you could build a high-speed drive PCIe 5.0 drive that didn't need a huge heatsink to keep it in check, and I was hoping the WD Black SN8100 would achieve the same feat.
However, be warned that the WD drive gets hot. There were no points where it entered warning status and throttled during our tests, but it did hit a peak temperature of 73°C during our stress test, under back-to-back CrystalDiskMark sequential runs.
This was while the drive was sitting under the dual-pad PCIe 5.0 heatsink supplied with our MSI X870E Carbon WiFi motherboard, but it may well run cooler with the optimized WD heatsink on top of it when those drives come out. After all, the Samsung 9100 Pro also runs cooler with its own heatsink than with this MSI cooler. However, the Samsung 9100 Pro also only peaked at 70°C when using the same MSI cooler with our test motherboard, showing that the WD Black SN8100 runs comparatively hot.
It's also faster, of course, especially when it comes to sequential write tests, and unlike many other PCIe 5.0 drives, it doesn't require an oversized heatsink or an active cooling fan that you need to power separately. However, you'll want to make sure a decent amount of airflow is directed over this SSD from your case fans, and use the chunkiest heatsink possible. If your motherboard comes with a specific PCIe 5.0 SSD heatsink, that's the one you'll need to use.
Price
The WD Black SN8100 price is $179.99 / £149.99 for the 1TB drive, which undercuts the equivalent Samsung 9100 Pro by $20 and offers better value for the performance on offer. However, this is still expensive for a 1TB drive, especially when you get 1TB PCIe 4.0 drives that still do the job fine for less than half that amount.
This figure then goes up to $279.99 / £226.99 for the 2TB WD Black SN8100, which is again $20 cheaper than the equivalent model of the Samsung 9100 Pro. Meanwhile, the 4TB WD Black SN8100 price is $549.99 / £415.99 at MSRP, which matches the price of the Samsung 9100 Pro. When the heatsink versions of the WD Black SN8100 arrive later in 2025 they will each add $20 to the MSRP of the equivalent bare drive.
Basically, the WD Black SN8100 is generally a bit cheaper than the equivalent competition from Samsung, but bear in mind that you can still get very fast performance from other PCIe 5.0 drives that are much cheaper. A 1TB Corsair MP700 Elite, for example, has a slower claimed peak speed of 10,000MB/s, but is considerably cheaper at $119.99, and you almost certainly won't notice much of a difference in real-world use.
Alternatives
Samsung 9100 Pro
I'm expecting the Samsung 9100 Pro to regularly trade pricing blows with the WD Black SN8100, and you can already pick up this Samsung drive for the same price as the WD drive, thanks to some pre-emptive price cuts.
The WD Black SN8100 is still the superior drive, particularly when it comes to write performance, but the Samsung runs a bit cooler and isn't far off the pace. If the Samsung 9100 Pro is ever cheaper than the WD Black SN8100, then it's absolutely worth considering.
The new WD performance king might be twice as fast on paper, but in actuality, the WD Black SN850X is still plenty fast enough for most people's needs, and the difference between the two drives diminishes once you get away from peak sequential speeds. Currently going for just $94.99 for the 1TB drive, or $149 for a 2TB drive, you can basically get nearly as much capacity for twice the price if you go for this cheaper drive instead.
We have a new king of the gaming SSD castle, all hail King WD Black SN8100. With phenomenally fast performance claims, which in some cases are even exceeded by our own benchmark results, the WD Black SN8100 has already beaten the Samsung 9100 Pro into submission less than a month after it came out.
In particular, its sequential write performance is well ahead of any of the competition, but real-world performance tests also benefit from this super-fast drive, from Windows system drive tasks to game load times. On the downside, this high-speed drive does run hot, so you'll need to buy either the heatsink-equipped version or the chunky PCIe 5.0 SSD heatsink that's supplied with your motherboard, if it has one – the drive will also need a decent amount of airflow running over it.
However, while the MSRP of the WD Black SN8100 is lower than that of the Samsung 9100 Pro, the latter has already started to come down in price, and the new WD drive is still very expensive for the capacities on offer. Yes, it's fast, but you can get other drives that aren't far off the pace for much less money elsewhere, and you're unlikely to notice the difference in performance in most cases.
If you want the absolute best SSD that money can buy, though, and you can afford the outlay, then there's no doubt about it – you want the WD Black SN8100. Now let's see how the rest of the SSD market responds – hopefully, some cheaper prices will be on the way shortly.
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