Western Digital expanded its WD Blue NVMe household of funds SSDs this week with the introduction of the the WD Blue SN5000 collection, an up to date lineup of SSDs that, amongst different issues, provides a Four TB mannequin. Being funds drives, the SN5000 collection shouldn’t be going to be a efficiency monster, however their mixture of capability, reliability, and comparatively low value may make them fashionable each amongst informal patrons and amongst fanatics on the lookout for comparatively low cost bulk solid-state storage.
Western Digital’s WD Blue SN500 NVMe drives are available in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are primarily based round an in-house WD controller (the corporate not often discloses their codenames as of late). WD’s controller is a Four channel, DRAMless design, which is what we sometimes see for funds and mainstream SSDs. Externally, the controller helps a PCIe 4.Zero x4 connection, and per WD’s specs, even this funds drive must be quick sufficient to place the extra bandwidth of PCIe 4.Zero to good use. All of the drives are single-sided, and are lined with a skinny graphene heatspreader for warmth dissipation.
More stunning right here is WD’s alternative of NAND. According to the corporate, they’re utilizing a mixture of completely different generations and several types of NAND, relying on the mannequin. The 500GB/1TB/2TB fashions are utilizing WD/Kioxia’s older 112 layer BiCS 5 TLC NAND. Meanwhile the brand new 4TB capability is being enabled with the corporate’s newer BiCS 6 NAND – however the QLC selection. All drive capacities are being backed by the identical controller, so there’s a thread of commonality between them, however at a excessive stage WD appears to be utilizing the upper efficiency of BiCS 6 to offset the swap from TLC to QLC.
| WD Blue SN5000 SSD Specifications | |||||
| Capacity | 500 GB | 1 TB | 2 TB | Four TB | |
| Controller | WD In-House: 4 Channel, DRAMless | ||||
| NAND Flash | WD BiCS 5 TLC | WD BiCS 6 QLC | |||
| Form-Factor, Interface | Single-Sided M.2-2280, PCIe 4.Zero x4, NVMe | ||||
| Sequential Read | 5000 MB/s | 5150 MB/s | 5150 MB/s | 5500 MB/s | |
| Sequential Write | 4000 MB/s | 4900 MB/s | 4850 MB/s | 5000 MB/s | |
| Random Read IOPS | 460Okay | 730Okay | 650Okay | 690Okay | |
| Random Write IOPS | 770Okay | 800Okay | |||
| Peak Power | 6.3W? | ||||
| SLC Caching | Yes | ||||
| TCG Pyrite Encryption | 2.01 | ||||
| Warranty | 5 Years | ||||
| Write Endurance | 300 TBW 0.33 DWPD |
600 TBW 0.33 DWPD |
900 TBW 0.24 DWPD |
1200 TBW 0.16 DWPD |
|
| MSRP | $70 | $80 | $140 | $280 | |
When it involves efficiency, the WD Blue SN5000 collection drives are rated for learn speeds between 5000 MB/sec and 5500 MB/sec relying on the capability, whereas write speeds vary from 4000 MB/sec to 5000 MB/sec. As for random efficiency, we’re as much as 690Okay 4K IOPS random learn speeds in addition to as much as 900Okay 4K IOPS random write speeds for the best capability mannequin, whereas the lower-end 500 GB mannequin is rated for 460Okay/770Okay 4K random learn/write IOPS.
Overall, even with the 4TB mannequin utilizing QLC NAND, WD is touting it at providing higher efficiency than any of the decrease capability fashions. We’re accustomed to seeing QLC drives are available in behind TLC drives on this respect, in order that newer technology of NAND is doing loads of heavy lifting to place it forward of the opposite fashions.
This goes for write endurance as effectively; the 4TB QLC mannequin has the best endurance score, at 1200 TB written, adopted by 900, 600, and 300 TBW for the decrease capability fashions respectively. Depending on the particular drive mannequin, this works out to between 300 to 600 drive writes in whole, or round 0.164 drive writes per day, which is typical for drives on this class.
Overall, the brand new drive household supplants WD’s earlier technology of Blue drives, final 12 months’s SN580 collection. Comparatively, the SN5000 drives are rated to supply higher sequential and random drive…
