Sandisk unveils WD Black SN8100, the world’s fastest PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD | Technology News

Sandisk today launched the WD Black SN8100, which it says is the world’s fastest PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD. Designed for gamers, content creators and AI workloads, the latest from the popular storage maker offers speeds up to 14,900 MB/s and is available in capacities up to 8TB.
Compared to Sandisk’s high-performance PCIe Gen 4 SSD, the new generation storage solution offers 100 per cent more power efficiency and features advanced Sandisk BiCS8 TLC CBA NAND memory alongside some optimisations to thermal performance without having to invest in dedicated cooling solutions.
Sandisk says the WD Black SN8100 2TB and 4TB models have read and write speeds of up to 14,900 MB/s and 14,000MB/s respectively, offer 2,300,000 IOPS of random performance, meaning it beats the best SSDs from the likes of Samsung, Kingston and Crucial if we go by the first party tests. However, the 1TB version may be a bit slower than their more expensive counterparts. Another thing to note is that the random write speeds aren’t as fast as Samsung’s 9100 Pro, which features the company’s proprietary Presto controller.
The 1TB variant has slower read and write speeds. (Image Source: Sandisk)
The company is also offering an optional WD Black SN8100 NVMe with PCIe Gen 5.0 SSD with an integrated heatsink, which has a low-profile passive cooling designed with anodized aluminium and a customisable RGB LED that caters to gamers.
In case you are wondering, PCIe Gen 5.0 offers double the performance compared to its predecessor. The Sandisk WD Black SN8100 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD starts from Rs 17,499 and is available in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB options. You can buy them from all leading IT resellers and e-commerce platforms like Amazon.
However, the heatsink version of the WD Black SN8100 may be available this fall and will cost Rs 1,000 more compared to their non-heatsink variants. The 8TB WD Black SN8100 is expected to go on sale sometime later this year, but Sandisk hasn’t clarified when.
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