Thursday, January 5th 2017
Western Digital Announces the WD Black PCIe SSD
Western Digital has announced the WD Black PCIe SSD, their first PCIe SSD for the consumer market. This particular SSD is aimed at the cheaper half of the M.2 PCIe SSD market rather than competing for the highest performance: it will be available in 256GB and 512GB capacities for $109 and $199.99 respectively, making it cheaper than any currently available M.2 PCIe SSD except the Intel 600p.
The WD Black makes use of the PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe interface, and offers sequential read speeds of 2050 MB/s for both 256 GB and 512 GB capacities, with the smaller capacity drive offering sequential write speeds of 700 MB/s and its bigger sibling upping that to 800 MB/s. The drives' random read (4 KB) is rated at 170K IOPS, whereas the random write (4 KB) is rated at 130k IOPS on the 256 GB drive and 134K on the 512 GB one. Both drives sport peak power consumption of 8.25W, and idle of just 5.5 mW. Write endurance ratings are 80 TB and 160 TB for the 256GB and 512GB models respectively, with Western Digital throwing in a 5-year warranty and 1.75M hour MTTF rating for good measure.
Western Digital says its firmware includes advanced power and thermal management algorithms that supposedly allow for consistent performance and low power consumption. The WD Black is rated for operating temperatures up to 70°C, so it may engage thermal throttling at a lower temperature than some other PCIe SSD.
The WD Black PCIe SSD will be available in the first half of 2017.
Western Digital says its firmware includes advanced power and thermal management algorithms that supposedly allow for consistent performance and low power consumption. The WD Black is rated for operating temperatures up to 70°C, so it may engage thermal throttling at a lower temperature than some other PCIe SSD.
The WD Black PCIe SSD will be available in the first half of 2017.
16 Comments on Western Digital Announces the WD Black PCIe SSD
Btw, I really hope this is way faster than those shitty pieces of junk called Intel 600p, slower than SATA drives.
And yet they still put a big fat sticker on the chips, some one need to make a thermal sticker so a heat sink would work better when applied.
Also, that write endurance is atrocious. only 160TB on a 512GB drive?
ark.intel.com/products/94926/Intel-SSD-600p-Series-1_0TB-M_2-80mm-PCIe-3_0-x4-3D1-TLC
ocz.com/us/ssd/rd400-ssd
www.skhynix.com/eng/product/ssdClient.jsp
Lite on currently uses the SK Hynix product rebranded.
We know it may throttle but we make it worse by sticking a sticker on it HAHA, Meh and people buy them still. OMG shit hit the fan if AMD or nvidia did that to memory chips on the back of the card.
But apparently these company's get away with this BS>
I still have a fresh imprint in my memory of buying a 2.5" Sandisk X400 for $135 and being super-happy because normally in my country it would cost almost twice than it was @ newegg upon release (something like ~$149.99 originally).
And not much further than 3-4 years ago I paid almost $190 for my very first 240GB SATA-III SSD. Don't even want to remember how much I paid for my 128GB XP941... :banghead:
Not really mainstream? Who cares. It's same size same price, twice the speed in half the package! :rockout::rockout::rockout:
With this rate of price drops on NVMe drives I could probably afford a 1TB upgrade by this same time next year. Maybe even throw away my bottom-mounted HDD rack in favor of CPU watercooling.
The reason SSD's are not popular/mainstream - is habit.
Just like buying a TV: an enthusiast looks at specs/features, and a normal person looks at screen size and how cool it's gonna look in his/her living room.
Which is a very good thing tbh.