Just as we thought we’d seen the last of the WD brand in the SSD world, a brand new WD Black SN8100 gaming SSD has now reared its head in a number of places. According to the sources, the new drive uses the 4x PCIe 5.0 interface, which would be a first for a WD SSD, enabling the drive to properly compete with the likes of the new Samsung 9100 Pro.
Despite launching all the way back in 2022, the WD Black SN850X is still the best gaming SSD for most people’s needs right now, thanks to its superb bang per buck in terms of both capacity and performance for the price. This WD drive is cheaper than the Samsung 990 Pro, but nearly as fast, and although it only uses the PCIe 4.0 interface, it’s still plenty fast enough for gaming.
Could WD be about to cause the same disruption to the PCIe 5.0 SSD market that it achieved with the SN850X? The rumors certainly point that way. You can easily find the drive simply by searching on the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) website, which clearly shows the WD Black SN8100, also called the PC SN8050S, listed under the Sandisk brand and using four PCIe 5.0 lanes.
WD recently spun off its solid state storage division into a separate firm under the Sandisk brand, so we weren’t expecting to see a WD-branded SSD again, but it looks as though Sandisk still thinks there’s some mileage in using the WD name to sell a cutting-edge SSD.
Earlier in April, regular tech leaker momomo_us also linked to an Amazon listing that’s now been deleted, but which reportedly stated that the WD Black SN8100 4TB could read at up to 14900MB/s and included a heatsink, making it even faster than the Samsung 9100 Pro, which maxes out at a claimed 14,800MB/s for the drive 4TB drive, and I had running at 14,725MB/s in my Samsung 9100 Pro review.
If the WD Black SN8100 can genuinely read at 14,900MB/s then that would make it the fastest gaming SSD ever, on a par with the claimed speed of the Kingston Fury Renegade G5, at least in terms of sequential reads – in my experience, the real-world performance of SSDs rarely reaches these heights in most scenarios.
You can find other references to the drive online too, including a 2TB WD Black SN8100 listed as being available in 1-2 weeks on Dutch store Max ICT, where the drive is listed as featuring a Silicon Motion SM2508 controller, which is also used in the aforementioned Kingston drive.
We’ll have to wait and see whether this drive eventually appears, and whether it uses the WD Black SN8100 name or the Sandisk moniker, but I’d definitely welcome some high-speed, keenly-priced competition for the Samsung 9100 Pro.
In the meantime, check out our guide on how to install an SSD if you’re looking to upgrade your drive now, and read our best gaming motherboard guide to find a board that can handle a 4x PCIe 5.0 SSD if you’re looking for the fastest speeds.
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