Western digital black 500gb review: WD Black SN750 Review: A Not so Fresh Refresh — Tom’s Hardware

Ultimately, eight SSDs took part in the test, information about them is given in the table.

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Drive	SKU	Interface	Controller	DRAM buffer	Flash memory 257
Crucial P5 Plus 1000GB	CT1000P5PSSD8	PCIe 4.0 x4	Micron DM02A1	Yes	TLC 3D NAND, Micron	P7CR402
Patriot P400 1024GB	P400P1TBM28H	PCIe 4.0 x4	Innogrit IG5220	No	TLC 3D NAND, Micron	V1.1A
Samsung 980 1000GB	MZ-V8V1T0BW	Samsung Pablo	No	TLC 3D NAND, Samsung	2B4QFXO7
Samsung 980 PRO 1000GB	MZ-V8P1T0BW	PCIe 4. 0 x4	Samsung Elpis	Yes	TLC 3D NAND, Samsung	4B2QGXA7
Transcend SSD MTE240S 1000GB	TS1TMTE240S	PCIe 4.0 x4	SMI SM2267	No	TLC 3D NAND, Micron	82A7U6NB
WD Black SN750 SE 1000GB	WDS100T1B0E	PCIe 4.0 x4	Phison PS5019-E19T	No	TLC 3D NAND, SanDisk	711250WD
WD Black SN770 1000GB	WDS100T3X0E	PCIe 4.0 x4	SanDisk 10034	No	TLC 3D NAND, SanDisk	731030WD
WD Black SN850 1000GB	PCIe 4.0 x4	SanDisk 10081	Yes	TLC 3D NAND, SanDisk	613200WD

The test system configuration was as follows:

• GHz, 25 MB L3).
• CPU cooler: Noctua NH-D15.
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix Z690-F Gaming WiFi (LGA1700, Intel Z690). nine0409
• Memory: 2 x 16 GB DDR5-4800 SDRAM, 38-38-38-70 (Kingston Fury Beast KF548C38BBK2-32).

Testing was performed on Microsoft Windows 11 Pro (21h3) Build 22000.282.0 operating system with KB5008353 installed, which fixes SSD performance during random write operations. The system used the Microsoft Standard NVMe Express Controller 10.0.18362.1 driver.

The test drives were installed in the M.2 slot, to which the PCI Express lines are connected directly from the processor. nine0003

⇡#SLC caching: writing, reading and deleting files

SLC caching is the most important algorithm that is responsible for speeding up write operations in modern drives. Its essence lies in the fact that information on an SSD with TLC or QLC memory is first written in a fast single-bit mode, and its compaction occurs later, during idle moments of the drive. This means that modern drives can demonstrate high speeds only on limited amounts of data, the size of which depends on the specific implementation of the SLC caching algorithm. nine0003

To find out how it works in practice and what are the speeds of a flash memory array of specific drives when operating in various modes, we conduct a test to continuously write files to an SSD until its capacity is completely exhausted while simultaneously measuring performance. This test uses standard Windows single-threaded file copy operations to the SSD being tested (from a RAM disk), and the test is carried out in three passes: for a completely blank SSD; for an SSD half full of data; and for the SSD, which is initially three-quarters full. nine0003

Write caching works dynamically in WD Black SN770. With a maximum speed of about 3.6 GB / s, it is possible to write about 130 GB non-stop to a terabyte SSD, then the performance decreases in steps, eventually falling to 440 MB / s. Also, the SLC cache can speed up writing even if the drive is partially occupied with data. When the SSD capacity is half filled, the cache size is about 55 GB, and if three-quarters of the space is occupied on the drive, then it is able to accept 48 GB of information at high speed. All this can be described as a fairly effective work of accelerating writes — the SLC cache does not play a nominal role, it really noticeably speeds up the SSD even when it already stores significant amounts of files. nine0003

At the same time, in terms of maximum write speed, which is achieved in the case of an empty SLC cache, WD Black SN770 looks no worse than flagship PCIe 4.0 drives, which means that when copying files to it, ordinary users will not be able to notice the difference with expensive Samsung 980 PRO or WD Black SN850.

But the minimum write speed observed in the WD Black SN770 does not inspire the same optimism. Still, we are talking about a bufferless drive, and therefore, under prolonged loads, for example, when continuously writing large amounts of data, the speed of this SSD can drop to very low values. However, long operations are a very specific case: it is unlikely that in real life someone will need to copy a terabyte of data to an SSD in one fell swoop. nine0003

The fact that the WD Black SN770 is far from the flagships can be seen if you look at the average speed of copying a terabyte of data to drives. In this case, its performance differs little from the speed of other bufferless SSDs with quad-channel flash memory arrays. Thus, a terabyte Black SN770 can be loaded with files to capacity in about half an hour, and, therefore, in this case, the high speed of BiCS5 memory does not help at all.

But when copying files from the WD Black SN770, the performance is very good. The SSD is capable of delivering data to the operating system at a rate of 2.5 GB/s, which is faster than most other flash drives in the test. Copy files faster only from the most expensive PCIe 4.0 SSD — Samsung 980 PRO or WD Black SN850.

Another type of operation where you can clearly see the budget essence of the WD Black SN770 is file deletion. Unbeknownst to the user, this drive is not able to carry out such operations. If you erase several large files from it (we deleted eight 8 GB files in the experiment), the SSD falls into a stupor for several seconds to process the TRIM command and the garbage collection procedure in the flash memory. The graph below clearly shows that the duration of such a freeze, when the SSD goes into itself and almost completely stops responding to external influences, reaches three seconds. nine0003

Summarizing the results presented in this section, we can outline the WD Black SN770 formula in general terms: in it, a powerful bufferless controller is adjacent to an array of fast flash memory, the performance of which is somewhat constrained by a four-channel architecture. It seems that new generation bufferless SSDs will be based on this construction principle, and it really transforms them, in some cases raising the performance by several steps.

⇡#Performance of complex file operations

When it comes to file operations inside the WD Black SN770 drive, it performs very well. The lack of complexities in handling multidirectional data streams and a large SLC cache allows this SSD to occupy the top positions in the charts. In fact, the Black SN770 does not lag behind even the flagships of the Samsung 980 PRO and WD Black SN850 level — the new BiCS5 memory, controlled by a powerful controller, allowed Western Digital to make an inexpensive drive that brilliantly plays the role of file storage.

⇡#Application performance

The WD Black SN770 gets a very high score in the SPECworkstation test, which simulates the behavior of the drive in resource-intensive workloads typical of productive work systems. For drives used in professional activities, the most important thing is the speed of small block reads and linear writes. Both of these operations do not cause any difficulties for the Black SN770. That is why in SPECworkstation it turns out to be even faster than SSDs built on full-fledged eight-channel controllers, which are not so well optimized for such operations. For example, the Black SN770 outperforms the higher-end Black SN850 in this test, which is no coincidence, but a natural result of the newer drive’s lower latency flash. nine0003

Characteristically, the high score of the WD Black SN770 can be seen in all scenarios included in SPECworkstation. In other words, we have a drive that can easily become the main SSD in a PC assembled for professional work.

SPECworkstation 3.1

⇡#Gaming performance

Western Digital’s Black series drives are primarily positioned as gaming solutions. And the WD Black SN770 fits perfectly into this concept — in the 3DMark Storage test, which simulates gaming scenarios of load on SSDs, it shares the first or second place with the Black SN850. nine0003

The WD Black SN770 has no problems with various game scenarios. He drops out of the group of leaders only in one case — when saving in-game.

3DMark Storage

⇡#Synthetic tests: linear operations

Synthetics, in contrast to the simulation of real scenarios, loads the SSD more intensively. Therefore, in this subgroup of tests, the WD Black SN770 is no longer at the top of the charts. But since this drive has a powerful controller at its disposal, it continues to produce decent results. In linear operations, the Black SN770 is second only to those drives that have a DRAM buffer and interact with the TLC 3D NADN array via eight channels. nine0003

⇡#Synthetic tests: small-block operations

Small-block operations are the main weak point of any SSD without a dedicated DRAM buffer. If during operation the controller has to provide access to a large amount of disparate data and constantly access the address translation table, the absence of this table at a minimum distance from the controller can cause noticeable negative consequences. This is exactly what is observed in the random read test — due to the need to constantly get into the PC’s memory via the PCIe bus using HMB technology, the WD Black SN770 in question shows a low result. Moreover, in this case, due to some nuances of the HMB implementation, it loses even to the obviously slower Black SN750 SE. nine0003

However, during random writes or mixed operations, where the load on the address translation table is lower, the WD Black SN770 restores the status quo and regains its position in the middle of the charts.

⇡#Temperature

WD Black SN770 does not have any cooling as standard, and unlike Black SN850 it does not have any optional cooling radiators. It looks like Western Digital is banking on the relative simplicity of the controller and hoping the quad-channel bufferless SSD won’t run hot. nine0003

However, a practical test showed that the calculation for this was made recklessly and during intensive work the temperature of the WD Black SN770 can reach the limit value. According to the specification, it is 85 degrees, but in fact, the temperature throttling of this SSD is activated when the controller reaches a slightly higher temperature — 88 degrees.

During an experiment in which we loaded the drive with continuous read-dominated mixed linear operations, it warmed up to 88 degrees in a couple of minutes. But since in reality such long loads are rare in consumer PCs, you can not really worry about the Black SN770’s temperature regime. nine0003

Separately, it must be emphasized that Western Digital’s S.M.A.R.T. monitoring of the drive returns the true temperature of the controller without any distortion, and can be completely trusted. This is what the thermal image shows.

In general, we have to admit that modern bufferless SSDs have become quite hot, and the use of heatsinks with them will obviously not be superfluous. But this did not happen on its own, but along with a significant increase in productivity. In other words, the rule of thumb relating SSD heat to speed holds true here as well. High performance always entails an increase in heat dissipation. nine0003

⇡#Conclusions

The WD Black SN770 is yet another representative of a fundamentally new generation of fast bufferless NVMe drives, which we first encountered during the recent tests of the Patriot P400. Moreover, Western Digital’s solution turned out to be even more successful. By combining a proprietary controller with high-speed BiCS5 memory of its own production in a vertically integrated product, the company was able to achieve two important milestones at once. First, she managed to get linear speeds in a four-channel SSD that really require the bandwidth of the PCIe 4. 0 x4 interface. And secondly, such an SSD turned out to be devoid of the main generic drawback of bufferless models — low performance under mixed loads. nine0003

As a result, the performance of the WD Black SN770 in the usual consumer workloads turned out to be surprisingly good: such an SSD, which at first glance looks like an inexpensive compromise device, performs almost on an equal footing with the flagship PCIe 4.0 SSDs. In gaming and work scenarios, it is not only dramatically faster than the bufferless Samsung 980-class SSDs, but also bypasses, for example, the Crucial P5 Plus, a full-fledged drive with an eight-channel flash memory array. In other words, the WD Black SN770 does not require discounts for bufferless and four-channel capability — it deserves to be included among the best options for mass configurations without any reservations. nine0003

At the same time, the design of the WD Black SN770 allowed Western Digital to price it very aggressively — about 25% cheaper than the Samsung 980 PRO and WD Black SN850. This means that the performance-to-price ratio of the Black SN770 looks simply fantastic: it is an inexpensive and at the same time a very fast model.

Of course, the WD Black SN770 can be found flaws due to its design. Due to the lack of its own DRAM buffer, it gives in to protracted and large-scale loads. Its controller does not know how to process file deletion operations imperceptibly for the user. It does not provide hardware data encryption. And HMB technology requires support from the operating system, so the WD Black SN770 will not be able to perform as well as on a PC on the PlayStation 5. However, all such shortcomings are quite rare, and most users will most likely simply ignore them. nine0003

We therefore ultimately have every reason to give the WD Black SN770 Best Buy status, but with one important caveat. The acquisition of this drive in Russia is a rather difficult task. But if Western Digital solutions still reach our country through parallel imports and their prices are similar to those recommended, keep in mind: WD Black SN770 is super.

Test and review: Western Digital WD_Black SN770 — the new mid-range 9 drive0001

Western Digital has expanded its range with the WD_Black SN770 drive, which is not aimed at competing with the flagship SN850, but is a kind of bridge between the top Black line and the budget Blue one. Let’s see how the WD_Black SN770 performs in practice.

To distribute products to different markets, manufacturers come up with lines and choose beautiful names for them. Western Digital has decided to differentiate its drive lineup by color: red, purple, gold, blue and black. The last family has been producing flagship products for many years, at least for ordinary users and enthusiasts. Here we can note such SSDs as the popular WD_Black SN750 line, AN1500 in PCIe expansion card format and the new flagship WD_Black SN850. The latter with a PCIe4 interface still performs well in application tests, despite the past year and a half. nine0003

Below the Black line is the Blue family, which also made it to our test lab: first the SN500 and then the SN550. The drives were based on modern components, that is, Western Digital did not use outdated chips for budget families, unlike many other manufacturers. However, Blue drives still have to make do with fewer PCIe lanes or no DRAM cache, for example. Unfortunately, this is the fate of the Western Digital sample being tested today. nine0003

Before we get into the WD_Black SN770 drive, let’s first look at the manufacturer’s specifications. Western Digital is launching four SN770 models on the market, ranging in capacity from 250 GB to 2 TB. As is the case with almost all modern SSDs, options with different capacities differ in performance. Our 1TB sample is the fastest version of the WD_Black SN770 with a read throughput of 5.150MB/s and a write throughput of 4.900 MB/s.

The lack of a DRAM cache is rather suspicious as we didn’t expect such a move from a drive in the WD_Black line. But Western Digital here relies on a buffer in the memory of the host system, perhaps a small capacity of 64 MB. But the new SSD received the latest BiCS5 memory, which consists of 112 TLC layers. The density of the chips has increased significantly compared to the popular predecessor, which is good.

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500 GB WDS500G3X0E
1TB WDS100T3X0E
2 TB WDS200T3X0E Serial read/write Up to 5.150 MB/s read (1 TB)
Until 4.900 MB/s recording (1 TB) Functions: Total Bytes Written (TBW) 250 GB: 200 TB
500 GB: 300 TB
1 TB: 600 TB: 600 TB: 600 TB: 600 TB: 600 TB: 600 TB: 600 TB: 600 TB: 600 TB: 600 TB: 600 TB: 600 TB TB: 1.2 PB MTBF 1.75 million hours Guarantee Five Years Price 135 euros (1 TB)

Western WD_BLACK SN770 in details, recently visited our test lab, the WD_Black SN770 does not use third party components such as Phison or SiliconMotion.

The reason is that Western Digital is not only a supplier, but also a designer and manufacturer of drives. The company independently developed the controller «SanDisk 20-82-10081-A1» in this SSD (SanDisk has been 100% owned by WD for many years), but there is very little specific information. The controller works with four channels of flash memory, it is optimized for TLC NAND without additional DRAM. The heating of the controller is negligible, since the PCB is not covered by a heatsink or a heat-conducting graphite/copper sticker. There are very few components on the PCB. nine0003

This Western Digital concept has worked well in practice, as you can see from the graph. Although the SSD got very hot (and we started the test already warmed up on which we first ran some benchmarks), we got only a very slight decrease in write throughput even after the 80°C bar. Compared to Phison E18 drives, which are very hot, this SSD can be installed in the most cramped systems without proper cooling. nine0003

The

DRAM in today’s SSDs is not used for data caching in order to provide maximum throughput. The task of DRAM is to store a table (mapping table), which describes the binding of data to memory chips, that is, their location. The advantage of a dedicated DRAM cache on an SSD is that it is much faster than NAND flash, for example. Which has a positive effect on delays. And it ensures that the SSD will not slow down due to a large number of simultaneous requests. nine0003

It’s hard to say whether the availability of dedicated DRAM can be called a critical criterion when choosing one or another modern SSD. This question has been hotly debated in the forums for many years. On the technical side, DRAM really gives TLC NAND-based consumer SSDs an edge over non-dedicated memory solutions. Another question is whether the user will feel it or not. The difference should be visible not only in benchmarks, it should subjectively affect the user’s feelings. The solution through the host-system memory («host memory buffer», HMB) has long been an alternative to dedicated DRAM, and in the case of the WD_Black SN770, this is exactly what is implemented. 64 MB of memory is allocated as a cache for storing the table. nine0003

Western Digital uses SLC cache to speed up write performance on the WD_Black SN770 despite the latest BiCS5 NAND. In our empty SSD stress test, we got the fastest write speed, but after about 80 seconds (after 350 GB!) it plummeted to typical SATA levels. But do not forget that at the end of the SSD was already a third full of data, so the performance is quite decent. nine0003

If we run the same test with an SSD 80% full, the picture changes. The WD_Black SN770 again showed a high write speed for a short time, but after 20 seconds (that is, after writing 85 GB), the performance dropped rapidly. Based on this test, we would not draw far-reaching conclusions about the performance of the new BiCS5 NAND, yet the SN770 is a budget SSD.

nine0002 Western Digital doesn’t show any weaknesses in the five-year warranty period, but the same can’t be said about the maximum TBW write load. Of course, you should not assume that after the exhaustion of TBW, the drive will fail, but the warranty will end. Western Digital continues its tradition, the TBW load is identical to the WD850 on BiCS4 NAND, despite using more modern memory. Yet other manufacturers give more.

Max. write load

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9003 TB

900 TB 900 TB

	—	400 TB	800 TB	1.6 PB	3.2 PB
TeamGroup T -Force Cardea A440	—	700 TB	—
Crucial MX500	100 TB	180 TB	360 TB	700 TB	1 PB
Seagate FireCuda 530	—	640 TB	1.275 TB	2, 55 PB	5.1 PB
Crucial P5 PLUS	—	300 TB	600 TB	1. 2 TB	—
MSI SPATIUM M450	—	1.4 PB	—
Seagate Ironwolf Pro 125 SSD	435 TB	875 TB	1.75 PB	7 PB	—	—	700 TB	1,4 PB	—
Western Digital WD_Black SN850	—	300 TB	600 TB	1,2 PB	—
CORSAIR MP400	—	—	20020 TB	400 TB	800 TB — 1.6 PB
SAMSUNG 9002 90 TB	1,2 PB	—
Crucial P5	150 TB	300 TB	600 TB	1,2 PB	—
TeamGroup T-Force Cardea Zero Z340	380 TB	800 TB	1,66 PB	—	—
Samsung SSD 870 QVO	—	—	370 TB	720 TB	1, 44 — 2. 88 PB
Kioxia Exceria Plus	—	200 TB	400 TB	800 TB	—
Kioxia Exceria	100 TB	200 TB	400 TB	—	—
Intel Optane SSD 905p	—	8.76PB	17.52 PB	27.37 PB	—
Western Digital WD BLACK SN7500020 200 TB	300 TB	600 TB	1,2 PB	—
Samsung SSD 970 EVO PLUS	300 TB	—
Samsung 970 Pro	—	600 TB	1.2 PB	—

We recommend that we familiarize ourselves to the ssd. When choosing an SSD for a computer, you will have to deal with many technical subtleties: the specifications indicate the controller, interface, type of flash memory, reliability characteristics, and much more.