NVMe

The 9100 PRO was Samsung's first shot at a full-fledged PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD, and to say the company nailed the execution is an understatement. It's theoretically capable of hitting unreal 14,800MB/s read speeds and 13,400MB/s write speeds, and although those numbers may drop a bit in real-world practice, it's still an incredibly fast drive. Our friends at TechRadar reviewed the 9100 PRO when it launched last year, and it was awarded 4.5 stars and a Recommended Award. The TL;DR? It's an exceptional drive for professionals who frequently deal with oversized files and who don't want any hiccups in

The PA40SU is a handsome, mostly metal black rectangle measuring approximately 4.75 inches long, by 1.8 inches wide, by 0.6 inches thick. Weight is around 4.7 ounces with an SSD inside. It’s svelte indeed for a 40Gbps SSD enclosure — witness the large fins and bulk of the competing OWC 1M2 and TerraMaster D1 Plus. The enclosure is slotted on both sides to facilitate air flow, and is actively cooled by a fan at the non-port end. The fan is the reason it’s not as bulky as the aforementioned competition. The NVMe bridge/controller chip is an ASMedia ASM2464PD, and no AC adapter is required — the

While not the fastest 40Gbps NVMe enclosure we’ve tested, the PA40SU was competitive with its OWC 1M2, LaCie Rugged SSD4, and TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus competitors in nearly all respects. In other words, it’s fast, though better on synthetic benchmarks than with real-world transfers. As you can see below, the PA40SU turned in a good CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential throughput performance, though it didn’t top the charts in any particular test. It was the same neck-and-neck story with CrystalDiskMark 8’s 4K tests. The PA40SU’s 48GB transfers fell a bit behind the curve with Windows Explorer, but rebo

I like the looks, I like the performance, and I like how easy it is to install an NVMe SSD in the PA40SU. I’d prefer that it run a bit cooler, but it’s still a worthy product. Go for it, but as always — shop carefully to get the best bang for your buck.