The WD_Black AN1500 is simply one of the best SSDs in the market you can get right now, and certainly the finest SSDs we’ve ever used. It offers the fastest transfer speeds, without the need of an M.2 connector, which old motherboards lack. Being an Add-in Card, the WD_Black AN1500 is a truly unique offering. Match that with sleek RGB lighting and a 5-year warranty, and we have a winner in our hands. Well done, Western Digital!
What’s iLL
+ Class leading performance
+ Unique AIC form-factor
+ No M.2 slot needed
+ Gen4 performance even on Gen3 and Gen2 systems
+ High quality internal components
+ Stunning RGB lights
+ 5-year warranty
What’s Not
– Price
– Availability
Welcome to the WD_Black AN1500 NVME SSD review. Let us throw a little bit of background and then proceed to tell you what this beast of a product is all about.
From HDD to SSD to NVME – A Massive Generational Leap
It is truly amazing how storage technology has progressed in the past decade. Just a few years back we were using SATA HDDs, and now we’ve already transcended even the SSD generation, leaving behind those SSD HDDs which are still perceived as fairly new, to NVMe M.2 SSDs which offer even faster data transfer rates. Through the past decade, data transfer speeds were the only bottleneck towards performance in applications, gaming, boot times, load times, etc., As we approached 2019, the data transfer bottlenecks were removed, thanks to fast NVMe SSDs that fit in the M.2 slot of the motherboard. Now it’s 2021 and we have gone beyond storage devices being bottlenecks, to storage devices actually setting the benchmark for other components. How the tables have turned!
Western Digital recently launched a sleuth of new generation hard-drives, from External storage devices for use with consoles to refreshing their SN750 series of NVMe SSDs.
Another point to make is, that PC users have historically always enjoyed more storage options and much, much better performance in drive speeds than their console counterparts. The PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X however, changed the game in terms of data performance. The PlayStation 5’s NVMe drive can hit 5.5GB/s and the Xbox Series X’s proprietary drive peaks at 3.75GB/s. This put the new generation consoles leaps ahead of most home PCs. So much for #pcmasterrace eh? Well, not really. The WD AN1500 Add-In Card NVMe SSD is the reason for this blasphemous undoing.
The WD_Black AN1500 – In A League Of Its Own
The WD AN1500 is also a perfect case study to make the point that storage devices are now setting the benchmark for other components. It offers insane data transfer speeds (claimed) that we’ve never seen or heard of before in consumer-grade storage solutions.
Add-In Card SSD Benefits Over M.2 Port
Before we analyse this drive, erm, card, let us talk a little about the consumer storage space in today’s perspective. We have the mechanical spinning SATA drives, which offer up to 14TB of space, and can theoretically deliver maximum speeds of 150MBps and a latency of 3.5ms to read the first byte. The real-life usable speed is much lower. These SATA HDDs have been in usage for the majority of the millennial era. Then came the SATA SSDs, around the dawn of the 2000s, which are non-mechanical in nature, and deliver transfer speeds up to 550MBps at a 0.2ms latency. A significant upgrade from mechanical SATA drives indeed.
Now, we have NVMe drives, which stand for non-volatile memory express, and comes commonly in M.2 form factor, with the exception of drives like WD AN1500, which is an add-in card, like a sound card, if you may. NVMe drives changed the game entirely, offering data speeds of 3GB/s with PCIe 3.0 and around 5GB/s (read) and 4.4GB/s (write) with PCIe 4.0 support. That means NVMe’s performance is almost a 1000% leap from SATA SSDs; a massive generational leap indeed. Sure, PCIe 4.0 is yet to make it to the mainstream, especially for Intel users, but we should see viable PCIe 4.0 motherboard options in the market soon.
Gen4 Speeds on a Gen3 System Is Possible
Now, where does the Western Digital AN1500 drive fit in within this framework? WD_Black AN1500 advertises read speeds of 6GB/s, that too without requiring PCIe 4.0 support. That means gamers who want Gen4 performance but don’t want to upgrade their motherboard and CPU (and effectively, a new PC) to get Gen4 support, can use the WD_Black AN1500 to get Gen4 speeds via PCIe interface. There’s a catch, however, which we found out from our tests. More on that later. This claim of 6000MB/s read speeds puts the WD_Black AN1500 in a league of its own, unmatched by none.
The WD_Black AN1500 comes in three capacities, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. Western Digital is giving a warranty of 5 years with the AN1500 add-in cards, which is really impressive. Yet, unlike most SSDs, WD has not given any official endurance rating for the WD_Black AN1500. Still, being backed by a 5-year warranty is pretty assuring to gamers and content creators, who will be at peace knowing that WD will replace the drive regardless of the number of writes performed.
Solid Fundamentals
Don’t mistake the WD_Black AN1500 for other similar counterparts from likes of Intel, Kingston etc. The AN1500 is built on a RAID configuration and uses an enterprise RAID controller just like most ultra-expensive PCIe drives. However, the AN1500 can boot your PC and is plug-and-play, unlike its other PCIe counterparts. By RAID configuration we mean that the WD_Black AN1500 contains two M.2 SSDs set on a PCIe 3.0 x8 RAID platform. Yes, this is an x8 (8-line) SSD and that might be a problem, but it is the only option available if you want Gen4 speeds in a Gen3 system, without having to upgrade your entire system.
The WD_Black AN1500 is built like a premium product. It feels solid on the palms, well painted, and well finished. The main circuitry is present inside a two-block aluminium casing, which acts as a heat sink. The switch used inside is a Marvel 88NR2241 Intelligent NVMe switch, which is actually a RAID controller intended for server use, and two Western Digital SN730 NVMe SSDs. All internal components are of top-notch build and quality.
Testing the WD_Black AN1500
So, let us put Western Digital’s exorbitant claims to the test.
A disclaimer before you test the WD_Black AN1500: make sure you use the right PCIe port, because if you don’t, you will get half of the advertised speed. You might have to move some cards up and down, and that’s alright. If you don’t have a free x16 PCIe slot, buying the AN1500 is as good as pointless. Sure, the AN 1500 will work, but not to its full potential. Basic motherboards have one x16 PCIe slot for the graphics card, “gaming” and enthusiast motherboards have multiple.
Test System
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CrystalDiskMark
WOW! The claims were true, the WD_Black AN1500 does indeed offer 6.2GB/s and 4.2GB/s read and write speeds. The claims made by WD are 6.5GB/s but we suspect the drop in performance due to our old motherboard platform. To put things into perspective, Western Digital’s previous-gen NVMe drive, the SN750, which is an enthusiast-class drive in its own right, offers around 3.2GB/s and 2.8GB/s read and write speeds. In 1MB sequential read and write tests, the AN1500 performs even better. Only the SN850, Western Digital’s latest NVMe M.2 drive, is faster than the AN1500, delivering about 7GB/s and 4.5GB/s read and write speeds in CrystalDiskMark.
PCMark 8
PCMark 8’s Storage Test is a really good tool to test drive speeds as it puts the drive in various real-world scenarios such as using Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, and a handful of popular games. It tests the drive through various light and heavy workloads, unlike synthetic tests like CrystalDiskMark, which don’t really say much about a drive performance in actual usage scenarios. A PCMark Storage 2.0 score of 5055 puts the WD_Black AN1500 among the top echelon of NVME SSDs.
Power consumption of the WD_Black AN1500 is 8.5W on idle and 15.7W during read/write scenarios. Normal NVMe drives use 7W on idle, around 20% less than the AN1500. This could be due to the AN1500’s RGB lighting and dual SSD controllers.
Software and RGB LEDs
Western Digital recommends installing the WD Dashboard application to go with the WD_Black AN1500 drive. The app can be download via WD’s website. The application itself is robust and easy to understand and use. It tells you the capacity, min and max temperatures, life remaining, and the interface speed. You can also benchmark the drive via WD Dashboard and update the firmware.
The WD_Black AN1500 supports the full spectrum of RGB LED lights in a strip that runs across the length of the drive. It looks pretty sexy and supports a wide range of effects like Rainbow, Strobe, Breathing. We particularly liked the Comet effect as it is something we haven’t seen in many RGB supporting peripherals.
All the RGB effects can be fully customised for effect and colour via the WD Dashboard application. A pretty cool feature we liked was that you could connect the app to other RGB software and coordinate the RGB lighting. The supported apps so far are Razer Chrome RGB, ASUS Aura Sync, GIGABYTE RGB Fusion 2.0, and MSI Mystic Light SYNC.
Conclusion – A True Enthusiastic Offering
We won’t deny that we just can’t hate this card. Firstly, it is a unique item since it’s been a while since we really saw any SDD in the Add-In Card form factor. That might really appeal to a specific crowd who are solely looking for a PCIe SSD. Secondly, the WD_Black AN1500 can give you true Gen 4 performance without upgrading your entire computer (the CPU, motherboard, RAM, etc.), since it can simply be fit into a PCIe slot and is plug-and-play. Third, the unbelievable claim of 6.5GB/s write speeds is actually matched, no strings attached (that’s if you consider a PCIe x8 slot a string). Fourth, a 5-year warranty makes the AN1500 a commendable offering. This is expensive gear, so Western Digital hits home by offering this level of support. Last, but not least, and certainly one factor that will always be a novelty, is the fully programmable RGB lighting.
Who is the WD_Black AN1500 for? People looking for pure performance: gamers, media professionals, enthusiasts, or people who have money to splurge on nothing but the best. Also, it is worthy to say that while the AN1500 is an expensive offering, it does have its own unique value proposition: if you’re on an older platform and are looking for an upgrade to faster speeds, you can simply do so by slotting in the AN1500, without having to upgrade your whole PC, which might cost 5-6x the price of the add-in card SSD.
Just for being great enthusiast’s drive and offering a no-fuss plug-and-play performance, without hesitation, the WD_Black AN1500 gets our Editor’s Choice award!
(The review unit was provided to us by the local-PR arm of Western Digital free-of-cost. This is not a sponsored review, just like all reviews on iLLGaming.)
