
Samsung launched its new, precise accelerated 9100 Pro PCIe Gen 5 SSD past week, and the prices are beauteous high, starting astatine $199.99 for the 1TB exemplary without a heatsink pre-installed. This had maine looking astatine prices for its predecessor, the still-very-fast 990 Pro, and I was blessed to spot that its 4TB exemplary is presently selling for $279.99 astatine Walmart and astatine Amazon arsenic portion of its Big Spring Sale — much oregon little fractional disconnected the terms of the 9100 Pro’s 4 TB mentation ($549.99).
Why bargain the 990 Pro implicit the 9100 Pro? Well, the 9100 Pro requires PCIe Gen 5-ready hardware to instrumentality vantage of its speeds, and that tech is acold from being affordable oregon mainstream astatine the moment.
As we wrote erstwhile the 990 Pro launched successful 2022, that SSD came adjacent to PCIe Gen 4’s theoretical velocity limit, making it among the quicker options retired determination for PC (its faster velocity is wasted connected the PS5, though it’ll enactment good successful one). It’s inactive a large worth today, particularly arsenic prices for each retention configurations person dropped considerably. Considering that a 2TB mentation of the 990 Pro is $170 and doubling the retention costs conscionable astir $100 more, we deliberation that the 4TB is the 1 to get close now. As crippled instal sizes proceed to increase, it’ll beryllium a large summation to immoderate PS5, oregon successful immoderate desktop oregon laptop that supports PCIe Gen 4 speeds.
Given that the 990 Pro we’re recommending doesn’t person a heatsink (one’s suggested for usage successful the PS5, and it’s ne'er a atrocious thought connected PC), it’s cheaper to bargain and instal your ain instead of paying Samsung a $20 premium for the heatsink variation of the 990 Pro.