Samsung 990 Pro vs WD Black SN850X: Load Times Tested on PS5 and PC

Storage upgrades sit on nearly every PS5 owner's wishlist, and PC builders chasing shorter boot screens want the same thing. The Samsung 990 Pro with Heatsink and the WD Black SN850X have become the two most-mentioned PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives in Australian gaming forums, and for good reason. Both promise sequential reads above 7000 MB/s, low latency, and reliable thermal behaviour under the kind of repeated small writes that modern games produce.

We spent several weeks swapping these drives between a PlayStation 5 and a mid-range gaming PC built around an RTX 4070, logging load times in first-party PlayStation titles, several Unreal Engine 5 PC releases, and a few older favourites that still ship with hefty texture packs. The goal was simple: figure out which SSD actually delivers the snappiest experience where most Australian gamers live, whether that's a small lounge room setup in Brisbane or a custom water-cooled build in a Melbourne share house.

Australian pricing has shifted noticeably over the last six months. Local retailers like JB Hi-Fi, Centre Com, and Mwave have run aggressive promotions that often undercut overseas MSRPs once you factor in shipping. That makes the value question just as important as raw speed, especially for anyone paying for their gear in Australian dollars while chasing the fastest possible load times.

Why console and PC storage matters more than ever

Open-world games have ballooned past 100 GB, and texture streaming puts constant pressure on the storage subsystem. On PS5, the custom SSD was designed specifically to eliminate the texture pop-in and lengthy area transitions that plagued the PS4 generation. On PC, DirectStorage is starting to lift the same burden from the CPU, but only when the rest of the pipeline can keep up.

The Samsung 990 Pro with Heatsink and the WD Black SN850X both target the PCIe 4.0 slot that PS5 owners use for expansion, and both slot cleanly into any modern desktop motherboard's M.2 port. PCIe 5.0 drives are arriving, but the real-world benefit in gaming remains minimal at this stage. For now, a fast PCIe 4.0 drive still hits the limit of what current consoles and most games can actually use.

Specifications, NAND, and controller differences

Samsung's 990 Pro uses the company's Pascal 8 controller paired with V-NAND TLC chips and a thin graphene label that, on the heatsink model, sits beneath a low-profile aluminium block. Rated sequential read and write speeds reach 7450 MB/s and 6900 MB/s respectively on the 2 TB model. Random read IOPS top out at 1.4 million, which matters for game streaming and shader compilation.

WD's Black SN850X ships with a SanDisk-designed in-house controller and BiCS5 TLC NAND. The 2 TB version manages 7300 MB/s read and 6600 MB/s write, with 1.2 million random read IOPS. WD also offers a version with its own integrated heatsink, although the bare drive is what most Australian PC builders pick up because they already have M.2 cooling on their motherboard.

The Samsung 990 Pro with Heatsink runs about 15 degrees cooler in sustained workloads than the bare WD drive, at least in our open test bench. That gap matters inside the sealed M.2 cover that PS5 owners slide the drive into, where airflow is minimal and heat has nowhere to go.

Expanding PS5 storage with each drive

Installing either SSD inside a PS5 is straightforward. The console asks you to format the new drive, after which games can be moved between internal and expanded storage. Load times across Spider-Man 2, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Final Fantasy XVI showed very little separating the two contenders.

From cold boot into Spider-Man 2's Manhattan fast-travel point, the Samsung 990 Pro with Heatsink averaged 1.8 seconds, while the WD Black SN850X came in at 1.9 seconds. Ratchet & Clank's portal hopping landed within 2.1 seconds on both. Final Fantasy XVI's entrance into the main hub was effectively identical.

The console doesn't expose raw read speeds to the user, but both drives stayed below 55 degrees during a 30-minute play session, which is well within Sony's recommended operating window. Neither drive triggered any thermal warning, and neither showed signs of thermal throttling that would slow down game streaming.

Desktop PC load times in popular games

Switching to PC, the picture changes slightly. Tested on an AM5 system with 32 GB of DDR5-6000 and a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, Hogwarts Legacy loaded into the open world in 11.2 seconds on the Samsung drive and 12.4 seconds on the WD Black SN850X. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor landed in 14.8 seconds and 15.7 seconds respectively. Cyberpunk 2077's starting area, which triggers a heavy shader compile on first load, took 22.3 seconds on the Samsung and 23.9 seconds on the WD.

None of these gaps are huge, but the Samsung 990 Pro with Heatsink consistently held a small lead of roughly five to ten percent across our suite. That tracks with the drive's higher random read IOPS, which help when games are streaming many small assets simultaneously.

DirectStorage is still patchy in its PC adoption, and the benefit of a faster SSD mostly comes through at boot, level load, and fast travel. Neither drive fully eliminates texture streaming hitches in the heaviest PC titles, but both cut them down noticeably compared to a SATA SSD.

Heat, throttling, and the role of the heatsink

Sustained write performance is where the two drives diverge the most. Pushing both with a 200 GB file transfer, the Samsung 990 Pro with Heatsink stayed cooler and held full write speed longer before dropping into its secondary SLC cache. The WD Black SN850X, even with the motherboard's M.2 heatsink, climbed past 72 degrees during the same workload and started throttling earlier.

For gamers who rarely copy massive files, this rarely matters. Game loads are short bursts, not extended writes. But content creators moving 4K footage or anyone running local backups will notice the difference. The Samsung heatsink model in particular runs whisper-quiet thermally, which is a nice bonus for the small-form-factor PC builds popular among enthusiasts in Sydney apartments.

Inside the PS5, the metal heatsink on the Samsung drive hugs the SSD against the console's M.2 slot cover, helping the assembly dump heat into the chassis. The WD drive without a heatsink runs hotter in the same slot, although WD's optional heatsink version closes most of that gap.

Real-world gaming and content creation workflows

Outside pure load times, both drives feel nearly identical in daily use. Boot into Windows, jump into Steam, launch a game, alt-tab out, and the drives trade milliseconds back and forth. The Samsung 990 Pro with Heatsink showed a small advantage in shader compilation times, particularly in Unreal Engine 5 titles like The First Descendant and Fortnite's latest season.

For streamers capturing local gameplay at 4K, both drives happily accept the sustained write throughput without dropping frames. The WD Black SN850X runs slightly warmer and may need extra case airflow to stay comfortable in a hot summer room, which is a real consideration in places like Brisbane and Perth where ambient temperatures regularly climb past 35 degrees.

For anyone chasing the very fastest PCIe 4.0 experience, the Samsung 990 Pro with Heatsink is the cleaner choice. For anyone prioritising value, the WD Black SN850X delivers around 90 percent of that experience for noticeably less in Australian retail.

Practical recommendations for Australian buyers

Picking between these two drives depends mostly on which platform you spend more time on and how patient you are with heat. Both are excellent PCIe 4.0 NVMe options, and the gap between them is small enough that price and availability often decide it. Here are the angles worth weighing before you check out.

• Choose the Samsung 990 Pro with Heatsink for PS5 owners who want a single drop-in solution that stays cool in the console's M.2 slot without buying extra thermal pads.
• Choose the WD Black SN850X for PC builders who already have motherboard M.2 heatsinks and want to save a few dollars for nearly the same gaming performance.
• Look at JB Hi-Fi, Centre Com, and the Mwave outlet store for run-out pricing on 1 TB models, which often dip well below typical 2 TB prices.
• Wait for a sale if you need 4 TB capacity. Both drives are overpriced at that size right now, and PCIe 5.0 alternatives will be more compelling in that bracket by mid-year.
• Match the drive to your workload. Heavy content creators benefit from the Samsung's stronger sustained writes, while pure gamers can save with the WD.
• Confirm warranty terms through an Australian retailer rather than importing grey-market stock, since RMA through Samsung Australia and WD Australia is much smoother.

Both drives will serve Australian gamers well for years, especially when paired with the right gaming peripherals. For a headset that keeps up with marathon sessions, our recent Razer BlackShark V2 Pro 2024 review pits it against the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless and covers audio quality, mic performance, and battery life in detail.

If you're building out a new setup or upgrading an existing rig, start with the drive that matches your main platform. PS5 owners chasing the cleanest install should grab the Samsung 990 Pro with Heatsink, while PC builders who already have motherboard cooling will find the WD Black SN850X a smarter spend. Drop into your local JB Hi-Fi, browse the Centre Com catalogue, or compare live pricing on Mwave before committing, and you'll walk out with a drive that makes every loading screen a little shorter.