Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Tom’s Hardware
Tom’s Hardware
Technology
Stephen Warwick

Sandisk's new WD Black SN8100 claims to be the world's fastest NVMe SSD — 14,900MB/s read speeds and up to 8TB in capacity

Sandisk WD_Black SN8100 NVMe SSD.

Sandisk has just unveiled its brand new WD Black NVMe SSD, which it says is the world's fastest PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD on the market. The Sandisk WD Black SN8100 NVMe SSD promises speeds of up to 14,900MB/s and capacities of up to 8TB for gaming, content creation, and, of course, AI.

The company says the PCIe Gen 5.0 SSD is built for hardcore gamers. Not only is it rapid, but Sandisk says the Gen 5.0 model is 100% more power efficient than its PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD.

The new SN8100 also features Sandisk BiCS8 TLC 3D CBA NAND technology, which brings a lower profile and should improve thermal performance.

The spec listed sequential speeds for read and write are 14,900MB/s and 14,000MB/s, respectively, which would give our current best SSD for speed, the Crucial T705, a run for its money. Sandisk also promises 2,300,000 IOPS of random performance on the 2TB and 4TB models, all while averaging just 7W of power draw.

Name

WD SN8100

Kingston Renegade G5

Samsung 9100 Pro

Crucial T705

Flash Memory

BiCS8 TLC 3D CBA NAND (Likely 218-layer flash from Sandisk/Kioxia)

TLC (Likely 232-Layer NAND flash from Micron)

236-Layer Samsung TLC NAND

232-Layer Micron TLC NAND

Form Factor

M.2 2280

M.2 2280

M.2 2280

M.2 2280

Controller

N/A

SM2508

Samsung Proprietary (Presto)

Phison E26

DRAM

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

TBW (for 4TB variant)

2,400TBW

4,000TB

2,400TB

2,400TB

Sequential Reads

14.9 GB/s

14.8 GB/s

14.8 GB/s

14.5 GB/s

Sequential Writes

14.0 GB/s

14.0 GB/s

13.4 GB/s

12.7 GB/s

Random Reads

2,300K

2,200K

2,200K

1,550K

Random Writes

2,300K

2,200K

2,600K

1,800K

Available from Sandisk.com and the usual suite of retailers and online vendors, the SN8100 comes in 1TB ($179.99 U.S. MSRP), 2TB ($279.99 U.S. MSRP) and 4TB ($549.99 U.S. MSRP) capacities, and it's worth noting the 1TB version only gets you 11,000MB/s write speeds compared to the larger capacities.

Coming later this fall will be a heatsink version for each capacity costing $20 more, and the 8TB versions are expected to be available later this year. The heatsink version offers a new integrated, low-profile passive cooling design built from anodized aluminum and also features customizable RGB LED.

Naturally, whether the SN8100 stacks up to its touted performance figure remains to be seen, but we'll be sure to bring you our performance results in our full review.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.