Western Digital’s New Line Up
NVMe options, retaining WD’s classic Green, Blue, Black naming
Western Digital has launched an entire new range of SSD drives. Commonly referred to as “WD” in this age of smileys, WD is a household name when it comes to consumer grade storage solutions, offering a plethora of products be it internal storage, external storage or networking storage. Being a primarily non-flash storage company, WD even acquired Sandisk, a leader in the flash storage segment to leverage its technologies in flash storage. Come mid-2019, WD looks to head into the future with their fastest ever hard drives.
First in the series is the WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSD drives. They come in capacities from 250GB to 2TB, in SATA 2.5” and M.2 interfaces. This series offers read and write speeds of 560MB/s and 530MB/s.We like that they have stuck to their age-old naming pattern i.e. WD Green, WD Blue and WD Black.
Next up is the WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD series. They come in only 2 capacities, 250GB and 500GB. They offer Read and Write transfer speeds of 1700MB/s and 1300MB/s. That makes them roughly 3 times faster than the NANA SATA series.
Finally, we have the WD Black series. WD has been using the “Black” suffix on its fastest drives since God knows when, and they have continued the trend here. They didn’t go for a new format of naming and we think that is a good decision. Most technologically conscious consumers are aware with the WD naming, so they will know where they stand with WD’s new series. The same cannot be said for Intel and Samsung SSDs, whose naming still confuses not only potential buyers, but even us.
WD_BLACK
NVMe goodness with upto 3500MB/s transfer speeds
“Fuelled by Darkness”, as Western Digital likes to call it, the WD Black series is the fastest across the board of new SSD drives by WD. These drives exclusively use the M.2 interface, which is quickly becoming the standard, since they offer a broader bandwidth (4x more than your typical SATA).
The significance of the M.2 interface? Let us explain. It use PCIe x4 controller, which allows for more data to simultaneously transfer from the hard drive. We live in times where we are using multi-core processors, with memory bandwidths upto GDDR5 (GDDR6 memory is also making its way). Historically, data storage bandwidths have always been a bottleneck between the CPU, GPU and memory. Using the M.2. PCIe x4 interface, the reduces the bottleneck to some extent. To visualise how this helps, imagine a single lane highway leading into a city. The city has plush 4 lane roads. Now, there is no point of a 4 lane road in the city as the incoming road is only one lane. So the incoming road becomes a bottleneck. That issue has been addressed by NVMe drives using the M.2 interface. In our benchmarks, we will see how this translates to real world performance.
The WD_Black SN750 NVMe SSD 1TB with Heatsink
Called the WD Black SN750 NVMe SSD, this series offers storage from 250GB to 2TB, unlike the SN500, which offers only 250GB and 500GB capacities. The SN750 series further expands to models with EKWB heatsinks and without them. This series offers massive Read and Write speeds of around 3500MB/s and 3000MB/s. That means they are almost two times faster than the SN500 series. Not just that, within the SN750 there is a variation of speeds offered, the 250GB being the slowest and 1TB model being the fastest. The difference between the 1TB and 2TB model is only miniscule, but the 1TB edges out slightly faster. Also, the 250GB model is not available with a heatsink.
This review primarily focuses on the WD Black SN750 1TB model with Heatsink.
Specifications
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The vital specifications don’t reveal much. That goes without saying that the entire series uses the same WD in-house controller, combined with Sandisk 64-layer 3D NAND, connected to the system using the ultra-fast PCIe 3.0 x4 interface.
Design
The EKWB heatsink sure looks the part, and there is a definite cohesion with the WD Black branding. It is black in colour with silver trims and feels well put together. Western Digital haven’t just slapped on a good-looking metal slab on the drive, the design is actually very functional and well thought out. 21 fins of varying lengths increase the cooling surface area on the top, six small screws hold the heat sink in place, and the bottom has a thin aluminium plate that curves to meet the top.
Size wise, the heatsink model is about 4 times the height of the non-heatsink model, and about 10% wider. Still, you will have no issue fitting it into the stand 2280 form factor. The difference in weight between the two types if huge, 7.5g compared to 33g. That should hardly make a difference though, as 20g is still very low when looking at it in absolute terms.
WD is pushing for SN750 users to install its proprietary software, Western Digital SSD Dashboard. This app allows you to activate its Gaming Mode, which removes low-power states for reduced latency. If you’re going for the heat-sink model then using the Gaming Mode makes much more sense.
WD’s software overall is pretty nifty and neat. It is easy on the eye, gives you information intuitively and is super simple to use. We would recommend it to WD SSD users. When we received the SN750 for review, we immediately used WD’s software to clone out boot drive, and in a matter of minutes, we were booting Windows from our new WD SN750 drive. Not bad!
Test Methodology
Here is our Test Bench:
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WD Black SN750 1TB NVMe Benchmarks
ATTO Disk Benchmark
Freeware software ATTO is a widely accepted storage benchmark across the industry. Drive manufacturers use ATTO while building their drives.
The WD Black SN750 with Heatstink’s performance is almost at par with the Samsung 970 EVO Plus in most tests, except the ones dealing in kilobytes. The Samsung 970 is the clear winner in kilobytes sized file transfers. Still, the SN750 is giving the Samsung a good run for its money.
Crystal Disk Mark 6.0
Crystal Disk Mark might just be the most widely used and famous disk benchmark software. Developed by Japanese coder Hiyohiyo, Crystal Disk Mark measure sequential read/write speeds, random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) read/write speeds and select test data.
The same narrative continues with Crystal Disk Mark, with the WD Black SN750’s performance being almost identical to the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. The difference doesn’t warrant any real-world performance gains. Only in the Sequential Write test is the WD Black falling slightly behind.
Software
Western Digital accompanied the launch of the Black SN750 is a new Dashboard software. The software is compatible with drives using Sandisk’s controller. When it detects a WD Black drive, is makes the “Game Mode” option available.
The Game Mode feature disables the lower power states of the Black SN750. This reduces latency, thereby increasing transfer speeds. This translates into faster user experience i.e. faster loading times. What “Game Mode” does is, out of all the power states in a flash drive, is simply disable the low power states. The difference is only of split seconds that will only be noticeable during gaming.
We like the Dashboard software. It provides you vital information about your drive (temperature, life, storage) in a concise and coherent format.
Conclusion
Western Digital is entering the NVMe segment a little late to the party. Credit that to the acquisition of Sandisk. This is their first innings in the super fast NVMe drive segment, have they succeeded? We would say that they have done a good job. The WD Black SN750 has a gorgeous EKWB heatsink. Well, once it goes into your cabinet you won’t be able to appreciate its beauty anymore. But, the heatsink is still functional and will keep your drive healthy in the long run. Performance wise, the WD SN750 hits high, almost neck-to-neck with the Samsung EVO 970 Plus. This level of performance belongs to the “enthusiast class”, so you will be getting top-notch performance in games, system startup and application loading.
We installed the drive on a Gigabyte Z270 Gaming motherboard. This motherboard is a spacey one, meant for gamers. One of the M.2 slots was unusable for the WD Black SN750 due to the size of the heatsink. So, size might be an issue for some.
