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amazon WD Black SN850 NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSD 1TB reviews
Since taking full ownership of Toshiba’s NAND Flash division, Western Digital has made tremendous strides in the market for SSD-based storage devices. And at the stage where PCIe Gen4 started, WD also launched a series of high-performance storage products based on this latest generation interface. In particular, WD_Black storage devices emerge as a powerhouse of high-performance storage among gamers and technology enthusiasts. This article will learn about the WB_Black SN850 storage drive, an NVMe SSD drive based on the PCIe Gen4 interface.
We review today’s product that does not have a heatsink for memory chips with a 1TB storage capacity. The SN850 is built around WD’s second-generation homegrown controller, marketed as “In-House Gen2”, along with high-performance components such as 96 NAND Flash memory layer and is, of course, based on the PCIe Gen4.0 interface. According to WD, the WD_Black SN850 storage drive has sequential read/write speeds of up to 7000MB/s and 5000MB/s while random write performance reaches 1,000,000 IOPS. In terms of durability, the 1TB SN850 is WD rated at 600TBW. Included with this product is the WD Dashboard utility software used to monitor and customize the product’s performance.
The SN850 retains design as the SN750 with an all-black PCB on top, cover the entire controller and NAND flash. The image design in this sticker is also simple, with only the Western Digital brand name and the WD_Black SN850 product line.
Because it is a product based on the new generation PCIe Gen4 interface, to take full advantage of this generation’s high-speed bandwidth, users need to use the latest hardware platforms such as AMD X570 and Intel Core I 11th generation. In this review, we will use the Intel Core Rocket Lake platform to experience this system. In addition, we also compared the speed of the WD_Black SN850 1TB on the PCIe 3.0 x4 platform. The rating system configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-11700K
Mainboard: Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Tachyon
Memory: Kingston HyperX 3200 DDR4 16GB (2x 8GB)
VGA: GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3060 Eagle
SSD: Western Digital WD_Black SN850 1TB.
PSU: EVGA G2 1000
CrystalDisk Mark 8
In the test with CrystalDisk Mark, sequential read performance reached a speed close to WD’s announcement. Of course, this score depends on the usage status of the system and is related to other factors such as firmware, tweaks in the motherboard’s bios, drivers, and when the drive is empty or contains some numbers file amount. With sequential write performance, the SN850 is faster than announced at 4K Q1T1 random write performance; the SN850 hit 328MB/s.
With Random 4K performance, this drive achieves the manufacturer’s rated speed of over 1 million IOPS in reading performance and over 700K IOPS write performance alone.
AS SSD Benchmark
In the AS SSD Benchmark, due to the difference in the program’s measurement algorithm, the measured performance will always have a difference in the performance of the storage devices.
PCMark 08 – Storage Benchmark
PCMark 08 is the complete system overall performance evaluation application available today with specialized use cases such as personal, content development, etc. In the storage test, the SN850 received a score of 5108 points with bandwidth achieved is 989 MB/s
ATTO Disk Benchmark
With ATTO Disk Benchmark, the read speed scored 6480 MB/s while the write speed reached 5020 MB/s.
Epilogue
Overall, in the NVMe PCIe Gen4-based storage segment, the WD_Black SN850 is an all-around storage product. Not only does it provide a high-speed storage solution for gamers, but it can also be used in content editing systems.
WD_Black SN850 is currently on the market with two versions with one built-in heatsink on top and one without an integrated heatsink. The heatsink vers is suitable for installing high-performance storage server systems or installed on add-in cardboards.
The non-thermal version will have a slightly lower price, suitable for gaming systems with motherboards with heatsink covers for NVMe slots.