The file sizes in games keep getting bigger because no one seems to care about optimization anymore, so you must keep your devices stocked with the most extensive amounts of storage you can afford. While I’ve previously written reviews for hard drives based on experiences with the PlayStation 5, this one is a Gen 5 M.2 drive, so the PlayStation is out because it caps out with a Gen 4 slot.
Not to mention, I ceremoniously gave up on PlayStation a year or so ago when they raised the price of PlayStation Plus yet again for no reason other than greed, so I wouldn’t be able to test this drive in a SoyStation 5 even if I wanted to. Anyway, onto the review!
Samsung 4TB 9100 Pro SSD with Heatsink
Manufacturer: Samsung
Platforms: PlayStation 5, PC
Price: $569.99 USD
First things first, let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way. This drive is expensive. It’s $569.99. That’s more than the cost of a console, even the extremely overpriced Nintendo Switch 2.
Samsung’s 9100 Pro SSD is blisteringly fast when it comes to normal operation. I was able to throw things onto this drive faster than pretty much every other drive I’ve ever tested. 16gb of video from a flash drive? This thing gobbled it right up and laughed while it waited for more.
I also noticed a considerable amount of speed during start up – this drive boots up so fast that it starts logging into Windows before the splash screen fades on my monitor. I also noticed greatly improved times when remuxing mkv files to mp4 after recording video in OBS Studio.
This also means there was improved performance when using other applications that access the drive frequently, like Adobe products. Seemed like projects were rendering faster in Premiere and Handbrake, and I could post a bunch of graphs and stats here from CrystalDisk and 3DMark, but that isn’t what we do here. Our reviews are written to consumers who only care about one thing: Is this thing worth my money?
The answer to that is, it depends. If you’re a content creator, this drive would probably be incredible in your rendering and streaming rig. This goes double if you’re actively using AI projects locally that feed back to your livestream as it’ll run circles around similar sized drives.
I did love how much thinner the new heatsink is, as it’s even smaller and lower profile than the Kingston Fury, but the drive also runs a little bit warm for my liking considering it sits right under my 7900 XTX in my gaming rig. Knowing what I know now, I would have opted for the heatsink free model since the heatsink that came with my ASRock Phantom Gaming board is not only more efficient but has a little fan built in for even better cooling.
Yeah, I know, it’s a little dusty but this is a mini-ITX build and I ran out of air duster before I took photos; I should probably invest in one of those rechargeable air blowers. After all, I’m just a normal gamer just like the rest of you, so I’m doing pretty good to keep the Cheeto dust out of it.
The biggest downside to this drive is that the drive seemed to struggle a bit when playing games at 4K. I noticed degraded performance when playing games installed on this drive versus the ones installed on my other drive which is a Gen 4 Samsung 990 Pro, which I reviewed a while back.
I seemed to get small hitches and hiccups when playing games that have impressive visuals like Monster Hunter Wilds, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and Cyberpunk 2077 with the Ultra Texture Packs installed. Flipping the camera around too quickly would cause some noticable visual lag as the drive struggled to keep up – and I confirmed this by throwing the games back over to my Steam drive which eliminated the issue.
This was a pretty big bummer cause it seems like this drive would have been a slam dunk for content creators who do everything from the same machine and are looking for a killer upgrade for their main hard drive. If you don’t mind a little bit of a performance hit, you still can run this drive as primary and enjoy the ridiculously fast performance that can be found elsewhere, but for a gamer, this might not be the best choice – especially if you’re planning to put it in a PS5. If that’s the case, save yourself a nice chunk of change and get the Samsung 990 Pro 4TB w/ Heatsink instead.
The Samsung 9100 Pro M.2 SSD is available at Amazon, Newegg, and other retailers in 1, 2, 4, and 8TB variations. The 4TB version used in our review was provided by Samsung. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here.
