Tom's Hardware
Samsung's fastest SSD is back to Prime Day pricing — only $30 difference between the much faster Gen 5 9100 Pro and Gen 4 990 31 July 2026 at 12:00

Samsung's fastest SSD is back to Prime Day pricing — only $30 difference between the much faster Gen 5 9100 Pro and Gen 4 990

31 July 2026 at 12:00

SSD prices in general remain considerably higher than a year ago. Still, this discount on Samsung's 9100 Pro 2TB SSD is a welcome sight, as Samsung's fastest PCIe Gen 5.0 drive returns to the lower pricing that we witnessed during the most recent Amazon Prime Day sales event at the end of last month. You can currently grab the 2TB Samsung 9100 Pro for $399.99 at Amazon, a discount of 41% compared to its list price. That's only $10 more than Samsung's excellent 2TB 990 Pro SSD at $389.99, and $30 more than Samsung's recently released 2TB 990 at $369.99, which are both previous-generation PCIe 4.0 SSDs with half of the available bandwidth speeds.

● Check out this Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB SSD deal at Amazon
● Check out this Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD deal at Amazon
● Check out this Samsung 990 2TB SSD deal at Amazon

Samsung's 9100 Pro SSD boasts sequential read speeds of up to 14,700MB/s and write speeds of 13,400MB/s thanks to the available PCIe 5.0 bandwidth, making it one of the fastest drives on the market, perfect for heavy professional application workloads, and of course top-end gaming PCs.

By contrast, the 990 Pro offers about half the read and write speeds of this drive at around 7,450/6,900MB/s, with the recently released Samsung 990 offering up to 7,250/6,450 MB/s, but switching from TLC to QLC NAND. These drives pretty much max out the PCIe Gen 4 bandwidth, with the new Samsung 990 being marketed as a budget-oriented SSD, but in reality and most importantly, in terms of pricing, the difference between the Samsung 990 and the much faster 9100 Pro is just $30.

The 2TB 9100 Pro comes with a 236-Layer Samsung TLC (V8) flash memory and is rated for sequential read and write speeds of 14,700 MB/s and 13,400 MB/s, respectively. One of the fastest PCIe Gen 5 drives available. View Deal

We've reviewed Samsung's 9100 Pro and found this impressive Gen 5 drive to be one of the fastest SSDs available to buy. During benchmark testing, the Samsung drive placed near the very top of the charts. In our PCMark 10 Storage tests. the 9100 scored higher than any other drive we've tested.

However, if your motherboard doesn't support PCIe Gen 5, or you only have a single Gen 5 M.2 slot on your mobo and need to populate any other spare M.2 slots with PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, then the Samsung 990 Pro is the best shout.

Upgrade the storage in your PC, laptop, or PS5 with this wicked-fast 2TB Samsung 990 Pro PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD. The 990 Pro sports read and write speeds of around 7,450/6,900MB/s respectively. View Deal

Or save a further $20 and opt for Samsung's latest SSD, the 2TB 990. This PCIe Gen 4 drive opts for QLC NAND, but still has fast access speeds. The drive can reach 7,250/6,450MB/s for sequential reads and writes and up to 850K/1,200K random read and write IOPS.

The 2TB 990 is a PCIe Gen 4 SSD able to reach 7,250/6,450MB/s for sequential reads and writes and up to 850K/1,200K random read and write IOPS.View Deal

RAM and SSDs are some of the toughest PC components to get your hands on at the moment at prices that won't give your bank account an aneurysm, so we take any discounts we can. Especially if it helps us build or upgrade our beloved PCs for slightly less. There's currently no end in sight for memory and NAND prices to return to more normalized values until manufacturers can ramp up production, and AI hyperscalers stop sweeping up all the demand. So definitely give these Samsung SSD deals a look if you're on the hunt for an SSD upgrade.

Macworld
OWC Express 4M2 Ultra review: Fast and handsome 80Gbps NVMe RAID 31 July 2026 at 09:32

OWC Express 4M2 Ultra review: Fast and handsome 80Gbps NVMe RAID

Macworld

31 July 2026 at 09:32

Macworld

At a glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Fast 80Gbps performance
Four NVMe slots
RAID 0, 1, 4, 5, and 10
Built solid as a tank

Cons

RAID is software only
Only 20Gbps performance for individual drives
Minor fan noise

Our Verdict

Run in RAID 0, the 4M2 Ultra is capable of over 7GBps reads. Good stuff for this handsome, 4-bay 80Gbps NVMe enclosure..

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OWC’s 80Gbps 4M2 Ultra is a four-slot RAID enclosure that lets you build your own high-capacity, super-fast external storage using NVMe SSDs.

Depending on the RAID mode you use, you can saturate the 80Gbps Thunderbolt 5/USB4 bus to the tune of 7GBps sequential transfers. You can also safeguard your data with mirroring or parity, which a single external SSD enclosure won’t allow.

What are the OWC 4M2 Ultra’s features?

The 4M2 Ultra is a black, mostly aluminum box measuring around 4.75-inches tall, 4.5.inches deep, by 2.35-inches wide. Unlike the 40Gbps 4M2, the sides are finned to create more heat-shedding surface area. Nice. On the back are two Thunderbolt 5 ports (one marked as the computer port), a Kensington lock port, and the AC adapter jack…

You didn’t think you could run four SSDs on bus power alone, did you? Well, being curious and considering that Thunderbolt 5 is required to deliver 140 watts (240 watts optionally) I pulled the power jack with the 4M2 Ultra attached to my M4 Max Studio. No blue power light. Sigh.

The rear of the 4M2 Ultra with the upstream and downstream Thunderbolt 5 ports, the Kensington lock port and the AC adapter jack.

I was a bit surprised to see the 4M2 Ultra open like a flower when I removed the screw-down backplate. The backplate holds the two side plates (keyed for reattachment) in place, so both fell to the side, revealing two 2280/2242 M.2 slots under each.

Thermal strips are pre-attached to the side plates, which is thoughtful, though mine didn’t have any protection on them. Before I realized that, I’d minimally damaged one by stacking one side plate on the other. Easily repairable, so no big deal.

The 4M2 Ultra’s dual PC board, chips and fan are sandwiched between the two dual-drive bays. The front of the 4M2 Ultra is perforated to allow air flow through the unit to the vents on back.

You can hear the fan when it kicks in. It’s not loud, but if such things bug you, you’ve been informed. I find the sound reassuring in that the 4M2 Ultra isn’t allowing your SSDs to fry.

All four major pieces of the 4M2 Ultra: two sides, the main body and the backplate.

The Intel JHL9480 (Barlow Ridge) controller allocates each of the 4M2 Ultra’s M.2 slots a single PCIe 4.0 lane, which amounts to around 2GBps of bandwidth per slot. Hence, while you could run the four SSDs singly, you’ll only get 80Gbps (or 40Gbps) performance with all four drives combined in RAID 0 (fastest) or RAID 10 (next fastest).

To operate the Express 4M2 Ultra in RAID, you need software. OWC provides a license for its handy cross-platform SoftRAID, though the inlcuded Pro license expires three years from the date of purchase. However, the core functions (operation and rebuilding arrays) remain eternally functional.

If expiring software makes you nervous, there’s always macOS RAID or Windows Storage Spaces. Sadly, Windows Storage Spaces is pathetically slow, but macOS RAID 0 was competitive with SoftRAID

The 4M2 Ultra is warrantied for two years, however, given the quality of the construction it should last well beyond that.

How fast is the 4M2 Ultra?

When running four SSDs in RAID 0, the 80Gbps 4M2 Ultra is a very fast reader, up to 7GBps (Windows). It’s a considerably slower writing at a little over 2GBps according to most of our tests.

The 4M2 Ultra is also significantly faster in every RAID mode than the older 40Gbps 4M2 — hardly surprising given twice the older unit’s 40Gbps bandwidth. Note that all RAID tests were done while using OWC’s SoftRAID in RAID 0.

AmorphousDiskMark had the 4M2 Ultra at 6.35GBps reading, and 2.35GBps writing.

Disk Speed Test from Blackmagicdesign wasn’t quite as giddy as AmorphousDiskMark, and for some reason, likely a much smaller data set, showed 5GBps writing and only 2GBps reading.

For some reason Disk Speed Test wasn’t in alignment with either AmorphousDiskMark or ATTO when it came to write speeds.

I also ran the 4M2 Ultra through PCWorld’s battery of tests for comparison purposes. However, the other drives shown: the Satechi DotDisk, TerraMaster D1 SSD Pro, and OWC’s own 1M2 are 80Gbps single drive enclosures, which makes these comparisons a tad unfair. But the charts do show what you stand to gain or lose by going the RAID route.

The 4M2 Ultra did well in some CrystalDiskMark 8 (the code base for AmorphousDiskMark) tests, while in others, not so much. And with four SSDs to stripe writes across, the 4M2 Ultra’s write performance is a tad disappointing.

Though it’s very fast overall, with four SSDs to stripe writes across, we were expecting better write numbers from the 4M2 Ultra..

The 4M2 Ultra lagged a bit in CrystalDiskMark 8’s 4K tests, but it’s still fast in the grand scheme of external storage.

In PCWorld’s real life 48GB transfers, the 4M2 Ultra was quite close to the competition, and even tied for first in one test.

PCWorld’s 450GB write test proved the 4M2 Ultra to be a very fast solution when transferring very large files using Windows Explorer, but didn’t perk up, as is usually the case, with the fantastic FastCopy utility.

All told, the 4M2 Ultra is fast, and a great improvement over the older 40Gbps 4M2. However, it’s not as fast as single enclosures, so its most salient strength is combining smaller SSDs into a single large volume, up to 32TB with 8TB SSDs.

Note that while testing, it was discovered that Phison E26 controllers apparently require more power than my M4 Max Studio can provide under heavy loads at 80Gbps (10Gbps and 40Gbps are fine). Using these in the 4M2 Ultra was a rocky experience–they would disconnect under load. This did not occur with the 4M2 Ultra on PCWorld’s Wintel test beds. If you’re a Wintel user who has E26 SSDs, you’re safe. Have an 80Gbps Mac? Avoid them.

Should I buy the 4M2 Ultra?

If you want fast, super vast external storage, the 80Gbps 4M2 is a great way to create speedy large volumes from smaller SSDs. Just avoid E26-based SSDs.

Electrek
Tesla buys 90% of a 509 MW Arizona solar and storage project 28 July 2026 at 16:32

Tesla buys 90% of a 509 MW Arizona solar and storage project

Electrek

By: Fred Lambert

28 July 2026 at 16:32

Tesla has signed a long-term deal to buy 90% of the output of Project Sterling, a big solar and battery plant going up in Arizona.

The project pairs 509 MW of solar with a 360 MW battery, and it’s being built by ContourGlobal, the power producer owned by private equity firm KKR. It’s expected online in 2028.

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