This record-breaking SSD is a new favorite for gaming

Price When Reviewed

500GB: $60 I 1TB: $90 I 2TB: $140

Best Prices Today: WD Black SN7100 NVMe SSD

$59.99

$59.99

The WD Black SN7100 is the most recent of the corporate’s NVMe SSDs marketed for the gaming neighborhood. Hence the “Black” within the moniker.

The large pitch is that video games have grown monumental so that you want a bigger SSD. No argument there, however WD would possibly’ve highlighted the superb (principally) efficiency extra saliently.

Read on to study extra about this killer drive, after which see our roundup of the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs for comparability.

What are the WD Black SN7100’s options?

The Black SN7100 is a single-sided, 2280 (22mm huge, 80mm lengthy) PCIe 4.0, NVMe SSD that includes a Sandisk (a subsidiary of WD) A101-000172-A1 controller and layered BiCS8 NAND — the most recent.

It’s a bunch reminiscence buffer (DRAM-less) design, which means it makes use of your system’s system reminiscence for major caching duties. A certain quantity of NAND can be written as single-layer cell (1-bit) for secondary cache responsibility.

The SN7100 is warrantied for 5 years and the TBW ranking (assured terabytes that could be written) is 600 per TB of capability — common for a price range TLC SSD. While customers are unlikely to hit that TBW, the worst that may occur is the drive will merely go into read-only mode. You received’t lose any knowledge.

How a lot is the WD Black SN7100?

At the time of this writing, the WD Black SN7100 is priced on Amazon as follows: 500GB capacity for $60, 1TB for $80, and 2TB (tested) for $160. It’s not the most cost effective SSD round, however actually aggressive in that regard.

How quick is the WD Black SN7100?

In preliminary testing with artificial benchmarks, the 2TB Black SN7100 proved the quickest PCIe 4.0 host reminiscence buffer (HMB) design SSD we’ve put by means of the wringer thus far. Not by an enormous margin, however noticeably, as you’ll be able to see within the CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential switch numbers beneath.

Random efficiency underneath CrystalDiskMark 8 was additionally glorious. Consider the Lexar NM790’s efficiency on this check an aberration because it was in any other case a really quick performer.

While nonetheless quick at our 48GB transfers, the SN7100 was not the quickest. These exams have a margin of error of two or 3 seconds.

The margin of error within the 450GB write can be a number of seconds, however actually not the 20-second hole that the Kingston NV3 pulled on the opposite SSDs. Host reminiscence buffer implementations are much better than they had been at first, however nonetheless differ.

The motive for the Teamgroup MP44’s slower 450GB efficiency was a moderately parsimonious serving to of secondary cache.

Once the official exams had been completed I attempted writing one other, bigger 900GB — one thing I do to shortly fill the drive to check it with restricted free NAND. The write tempo throughout this operation plummeted to round 100MBps (common) in a vogue usually related to QLC. Not one thing I used to be anticipating from trendy layered BiCS8 TLC NAND.

On a number of subsequent 900GB writes, speeds began dropping sooner (after round 100MB) and vacillated wildly between 50MBps and 2GBps — albeit principally nearer to the slower velocity. Note that the PCIe 5.0 Crucial T700 used because the supply drive is able to studying at near 14GBps.

On the opposite hand, a number of subsequent 450GB writes confirmed what I’d anticipate when writing trendy TLC natively — a comparatively secure 500MBps to just about 1GBps. Go determine. Perhaps the drive was intimidated by the uber-large file — or, extra seemingly, the controller caching or HMB logic couldn’t deal with it.

I instantly acquired on the horn to WD, however the firm hadn’t sussed out the problem or relayed any theories as of this writing.

Realistically, most customers spend the overwhelming majority of their gaming time studying knowledge, not writing 900GB chunks of it. As writing a 450GB chunk proceeded usually, my discussing these aberrations is way the tempest in a teapot.

Should you purchase the WD Black SN7100?

Though I’d really feel safer in my evaluation if the WD Black SN7100 hadn’t had points with the 900GB write, that’s far exterior the realm of regular use, so I’m nonetheless calling it considered one of, if not the prime canine within the PCIe 4.0/HMB class. Just a tiny bit shy of greatness, however for on a regular basis use — incredible.

How we check

Drive exams at the moment make the most of Windows 11, 64-bit working on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence complete). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch exams make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking over 58GB of the 64GB of complete reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro which additionally runs the OS.

Each check is carried out on a newly NTFS-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency might lower because of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements. This will be much less of an element with the present crop of SSDs with far sooner late-generation NAND.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can differ by capability because of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND out there for secondary caching. Vendors additionally sometimes swap elements. If you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.