If we look at last year’s WD Black SN850 model, a priori, this new generation of drive is much more surprising because it allows you to choose a model with a factory-installed heatsink, or to opt for the model simple, which is a significant advantage. advantage.
As many know, depending on the type of use you are going to give the drive, you may need to add this component if you want to prevent overheating when the drive is installed in a very demanding computer setup or even a laptop.
That said, it seems that Western Digital has been able to listen to users and, with this new edition, modify the needs demanded by certain groups such as users of advanced PC configurations, among which players.
design and quality
The new SN850X unit maintains the essence that has always characterized WD’s Black family of drives, offering a compact solution in which the chips remain located on a single face of the board to allow easy installation on any motherboard or laptop.
In our case, we received the simple model without heatsink, with dimensions of 20 mm long and 2.38 mm thick. The heatsink is optional, and you can choose one of two models as long as the SSD capacity is 1TB or 2TB.
On the higher capacity 4TB model, the heatsink is unfortunately not an option. These heatsinks are innovative, since they have gruyère-style perforated slots to promote the circulation of air through the plates.
As you’d expect, the SN850X is M.2 2280 form factor with a PCIe 4×4 NVMe slot used by modern computers. NAND is a 112-layer TLC (3-bit tri-level cell), which the company says is a WD-designed controller.
The company has done a good design job of optimizing the units operating temperature (in the case of the heatsink model, it leaves a small hole for an RGB LED that flashes to indicate activity ).
The flashing color can be customized using the WD Dashboard tool, which you’ll definitely want to install on your PC if you have this drive, if only to keep your firmware updated with the latest version.
Finally, WD offers a 5-year warranty, though TBW (terabytes writable) ratings are average for cheaper drives (600 TBW for 1TB of capacity). That’s less than what Seagate offers in its FireCuda 530 line.
Features
One of the major changes from the original SN850 is that the 500GB capacity model has been removed and instead the value has been increased up to 4TB which is quite a significant increase for terabyte hooligans. .
Also, for those of you who don’t know, the 500GB drive didn’t perform as well as the larger capacities, and the mainstream demand for larger sizes is something WD couldn’t. ignore.
As a major benefit, all drive capacities now achieve the same 7300MB/s read speed and only a slightly slower 6300MB/s write performance.
The only significant differences are the drop in read IOPS to just 800,000 on the 1TB drive, whereas you can hit 1,200,000 on the 2TB and 4TB models. 100 KB in all areas.
If we compare the sequential performance of the SN850X with its predecessor, we find that while the increase in read speed of just 300MB/s seems somewhat modest, write performance jumped to 6600MB/s or 6300MB. /s relative to the previous value. maximum of 5300 MB/s which was that offered by the previous discs.
Those speeds translate to an additional 1000MB/s on the 1TB capacity and 1500MB/s on the 2TB, which on the SN850 had lower write performance than the 1TB model.
So the numbers show an impressive almost 30% increase in performance for the 2TB drive over its predecessor. WD Black SSDs have always been known for their very good performance in different environments.
In general, there is an increase in the number of TBW over the past year. If you’re not editing 4K video or working with JWT data, the idea that you’ll exhaust the TBW of the 4TB drive in a few years seems like a long wait.
Based on this, what is special about the WD Black SN850X beyond the technical performance tweaks made by the combination of controller and NAND? Well, to tell the truth, various things we tell you below.
One is a new Game Mode 2.0 gaming capability (supported only for Windows computers) that comes with flexible software control that allows the player to specifically adapt to enhanced playback speeds.
given
The drive that WD provided us for testing is the SN850X model with a capacity of 2 TB, compatible with PCIe ver 4.0 computers. We are using the default mode of the CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4 program to test drive performance.
As can be seen in the image, the new SN850X manages to deliver read speeds of 7377MB/s and write speeds of 6673MB/s compared to 6974MB/s and 5 194 MB/s which we respectively achieved with the previous generation model. .
These figures translate into a 5% increase in reading and a 28% improvement in writing. While for write performance the improvement is only 20% faster in this test, the overall improvement is consistent.
We also ran tests with the WD Dashboard enabling “Game Mode 2.0” on the SN850X. The intention of this mode is to improve load times for the most demanding titles, although the impact on most benchmarks was minimal.
Performance in real-world tests with our 48GB data set was also excellent, with fairly good transfer values that in some cases even hit record highs compared to SSDs we’ve tested before.
If there’s a weakness of the SSD itself, we’d say it’s the fact that it offers somewhat poor performance when it comes to handling random 4K writes, but it’s something that’s not too bad. it shares with most SSDs on the market.
Those who want more random IOPS should consider purchasing the Seagate Firecuda 530. Either way, the SN850X SSD is a marked improvement over the SN850, with a much better design for use in different types of computers.
Price
For anyone who might think that the price of WD SN850X may be exorbitant, we can say that they are wrong. The competition is very numerous and the firm decided to lower the prices shortly after its launch.
According to this, WD is currently offering the drive at a fantastic price of $109.99 for the 1TB model and $190.99 for the 2TB model with a considerable discount from the usual price. These are prices for models without a heatsink.
If you want to know the price of all modelsyou can find them here:
- WD Black SN850X 1TB (Sin Dispeller): $109.99
- WD Black SN850X 2TB (Sin Dispeller): $190.99
- WD Black SN850X 4TB (sin-dispeller): 375.99
- WD Black SN850X 1TB (with heatsink): $121.99
- WD Black SN850X 2TB (with heatsink): $202.99
The price difference from other solutions of the 2TB model is not very big, however, if you plan to improve your PC performance with the 1TB drive, the price of the entry model is really good if its performance is taken into account.
verdict
If I had to pick just one drive to upgrade my rig to, this would definitely be the one. WD Black SN850X. Random performance is what makes operating systems faster than others, and that’s where the WD drive shines.
For those who might be concerned about the TBW warranty or sequential performance, you can find in the model FireCuda 530 a serious alternative, although with worse speed values if we take into account all the tests.
specifications
- 2TB test capacity
- 3D TLC NAND flash technology
- M.2 2280 format
- M.2 connection (2280)
- PCIe Gen4 x4 interface
- 7300 MB/s read performance
- 6300 MB/s write throughput
- No encryption or encryption
- Windows and PlayStation 5 compatibility
- TBW: 600 TB (1 TB), 1200 TB (2 TB) and 2400 TB (4 TB)
- 5 year warranty or TBW
- Weight 7.5 grams (24 grams with heatsink)
- Dimensions 20 x 22 x 2.38mm
Use: We may receive a small commission for each purchase made through the links on our page, but it costs you nothing. It also does not affect our editorial independence. More information.
Table of Contents
