- Virtual CIO
How to Create a Technology Refresh Schedule
7 Aug, 2025
£1054.21 inc. VAT
AI-generated summary
At **£867 ex-VAT for 2TB**, the SanDisk Optimus GX PRO 8100 is priced firmly in “workstation/enterprise NVMe” territory, not “sprinkle-upgrades-and-forget-it” territory. That said, it’s the kind of drive that makes sense when you actually benefit from **hardware encryption** (TCG Opal) and you want something you can roll out confidently across managed systems. If you’ve got fleets of PCs/servers where data-at-rest requirements matter (legal, finance, regulated workloads, client environments), the value is less about raw speed marketing and more about **policy-friendly security** without relying on every OS to be configured perfectly.
Who should buy: **IT teams standardising on encrypted NVMe**, small server/desktop deployments that need consistent performance, and businesses that want **M.2 NVMe with encryption baked in** rather than add-ons. Who should *not* buy: if your environment is purely “general office/data drive” use, or you don’t have a real encryption/compliance need, you’re likely overpaying versus cheaper NVMe options. Also, if you’re expecting it to behave like a super-fast scratch drive under heavy sustained writes, confirm your workload patterns and platform support—encryption features are great, but the win only shows up when your use case actually demands it.

Dell
Dell - Customer Kit - SSD - Mixed Use - 480 GB - 2.5" (in 3.5" carrier) - SATA 6Gb/s

Kingston
Kingston KC600 - SSD - encrypted - 512 GB - internal - mSATA - SATA 6Gb/s - 256-bit AES - TCG Opal Encryption, Self-Encrypting Drive (SED)

Samsung
Samsung 990 PRO MZ-V9P2T0BW - SSD - encrypted - 2 TB - internal - M.2 2280 - PCIe 4.0 x4 (NVMe) - 256-bit AES - TCG Opal Encryption 2.0

Lenovo
Lenovo - SSD - 3.2 TB - hot-swap - 2.5" SFF - SAS 12Gb/s - for ThinkSystem DE2000H Hybrid, DE240S, DE4000F, DE4000H Hybrid, DE6000F, DE6000H Hybrid