The future is fast

As Sandisk's first PCIe Gen 5.0 consumer drive, it promises speeds that make its predecessors look positively pedestrian.

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Early Gen 5 drives were notorious for high power consumption and the thermal characteristics of a small furnace, but the SN8100 appears to have addressed these teething issues. The real question, however, isn't whether it's fast, the numbers confirm it is, but who, in 2025, genuinely needs this much speed?!

On paper, the specifications for the 2TB model are impressive. It's a standard M.2 2280 single-sided drive built with Sandisk BICS8 TLC 3D CBA NAND technology. The performance metrics according to the spec sheet are 14,900MB/s Sequential Read and 14,000MB/s Sequential Write. Sandisk also says the Random Read IOPS is 2.3 million and the Random Write IOPS is 2.4 million. Meanwhile, the endurance is rated for 1,200 Terabytes Written (TBW).