Amazon lists the unannounced WD Black SN8100 with 14.9 GB/s reads for $225 (1TB)

Despite not being officially announced by Sandisk, the WD Black SN8100 is available for pre-order at Amazon (Germany), at the equivalent of $225 for the 1TB variant, via momomo_us . With listed reads of 14.9 GB/s, this should be the fastest consumer PCIe 5.0 SSD, at least if we're talking about on-paper specifications. Beyond what the Amazon listing offers, technical details, including the specific controller and NAND flash type, remain unknown.

Western Digital's flash-memory business has been handed over to the now-independent Sandisk, following its spin-off from the company. In theory, this should extend to Western Digital's acclaimed WD Black lineup, though end-users are unlikely to experience any significant changes. The bottom line is that Sandisk will probably be responsible for bringing the SN8100 to market, handling everything from launch to customer support, but it will be marketed with Western Digital's well-known WD label.

The SN8100 is the first PCIe 5.0 SSD under the WD Black product line, and is listed with impressive read speeds of 14.9 GB/s, beating the best from Samsung, Kingston, and Crucial, at least if we're going by first-party tests. The SN8100 is positioned as a successor to the WD Black SN850X, which was among the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs back in its day.

The listing's claim of an average operating power of 7W or less strongly suggests the SN8100 employs Silicon Motion's power-efficient SM2508 controller. That being said, Western Digital did show off a prototype 15 GB/s SSD last year at FMS 2024, which leveraged an in-house controller, with comparable power draw. We'll know for sure when Sandisk provides a complete technical datasheet. The NAND ICs employ a TLC (Triple Level Cell) design with CBA technology, likely sourced from 8th generation (218-layer) NAND jointly developed by Sandisk and Kioxia.

The WD Black SN8100 offers sequential reads and writes of up to 14.9 GB/s and 14.0 GB/s, while its random read and write performance is listed at 2,300K IOPS. According to the leaked numbers, it beats every SSD in sequential tests, but loses to the 9100 Pro in random writes, thanks to Samsung's proprietary Presto controller. The SN8100 is said to launch in 1TB to 4TB capacities, but as of writing, only the 1TB model is listed for pre-order.

In terms of pricing, the 1TB variant is listed at $225 (€199.99), or about 22.5 cents per Gigabyte. This is significantly more expensive than PCIe 4.0 options, which currently average around 6-7 cents per gigabyte; even less during sales. Bearing that in mind, German users can pre-order this SSD at Amazon, with deliveries scheduled to begin on May 30. Hopefully, we will see an official announcement by then.

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