(Image source: Western Digital)
In just a short span of a couple of months, Western Digital has just announced a new high-end SSD.
The new SSD is called the WD Black NVMe SSD - not to be confused with last year's WD Black PCIe SSD. Confusingly, last year's WD Black PCIe SSD also supports NVMe.
At any rate, the new WD Black NVMe SSD is notably because it uses Western Digital's own in-house controller. It is also outfitted with SanDisk's newest 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. Last year's model uses a Marvell SSD controller.
The WD Black NVMe SSD will support the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and will be available in the M.2 2280 form factor.
As for performance, expect sequential read and write speeds of up to 3,400MB/s and 2,800MB/s respectively, and random read and write performance of up to 500,000 IOPS and 400,000 IOPS respectively. These figures relate to the 1TB model. The lower capacities models will have varying performance.
The WD Black NVMe SSD will be available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities. They are priced at S$179, S$329, and S$639 respectively.
All models of the WD Black NVMe SSD will come with 5-year long warranties. They will also come bundled with WD SSD Dashboard for drive maintenance and Acronis True Image WD Edition for easy cloning and backup.
Here's a table summarizing the new drives.
Capacity | 250GB | 500GB | 1TB |
Sequential read | Up to 3,000MB/s | Up to 3,400MB/s | Up to 3,400MB/s |
Sequential write | Up to 1,600MB/s | Up to 2,500MB/s | Up to 2,800MB/s |
Random read (4k, 32QD) | 220,000 IOPS | 410,000 IOPS | 500,000 IOPS |
Random write (4k, 32QD) | 170,000 IOPS | 330,000 IOPS | 400,000 IOPS |
Endurance | 200TBW | 300TBW | 600TBW |
Warranty | 5 years | 5 years | 5 years |
Price | S$179 | S$329 | S$639 |
More importantly, these drives look like good competition for Samsung's new 970 Evo SSD, which was only just announced late last month.
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