What Is The Fastest SSD At The Moment? SanDisk/WD Black SN8100 And Here’s Why
Top performer today
The fastest consumer-oriented SSD right now appears to be the SanDisk/WD Black SN8100 (PCIe 5.0 ×4 NVMe) which claims sequential read speeds up to ~14,900 MB/s and sequential writes up to ~14,000 MB/s.
This drive is currently listed as “fastest” in many 2025 round-ups.
To use it at full speed you’ll need a compatible motherboard and cooling, as performance can be thermal-limited.
Runnerups & other very fast options
The Crucial T705 Gen5 is another very high-end PCIe 5.0 drive, claiming up to ~14,500 MB/s read and 12,700 MB/s write.
For workloads beyond consumer item-level (data-centres / enterprise) the Micron 9650, a PCIe 6.0 SSD, has been shown in demos hitting ~28 GB/s (~28,000 MB/s) read.
However, that is not yet a typical consumer M.2 product and requires server‐class hardware.
Key considerations
Interface matters: These fastest drives use PCIe 5.0 ×4 (and in the enterprise case PCIe 6.0) — if your system only supports PCIe 4.0 or lower, you won’t hit the top speeds.
Thermals & cooling: At these speeds thermal throttling is a real concern. Adequate heatsinks/airflow are important for sustained performance.
Real-world impact: Although sequential speeds are impressive, for many everyday tasks (games, OS boot, typical app loads) the difference between e.g. 7,000 MB/s and 14,000 MB/s may not be very noticeable.
Cost & value: These high-end models carry a premium. If your workload doesn’t require “max-possible” speed, a slightly slower but still very fast SSD may be more cost-effective.