Sorry, but this shouldn't be a black drive.
Make up some other colour if it doesn't fit in the green, blue, red, purple, gold or whatever colour they want to use, but it ain't black.

what..wait...wtf.....

Why on earth would you buy a Gen 4 drive, only to be stuck at the same speeds as Gen 3 already has, and probably at a higher cost ???

Also WD, whazzuppwit this naming scheme.... the Gen 3 drives I have in my rigs are already called SN 750 BLACK's.....adding an "SE" at the end is only gonna cause confusion for the end users....

Uh, the S50 Lite is Gen4 with a 4-channel controller (SM2267) which also doesn't make a lot of sense. Just look at it as a glorified Gen3 drive.

This one seems to be using a Phison E19T but I'm still researching the flash.

TheLostSwedeSorry, but this shouldn't be a black drive.
Make up some other colour if it doesn't fit in the green, blue, red, purple or whatever colour they want to use, but it ain't black.

Agreed.

Just picked up a WD_Black SN850 and it's pushing the PCIe 4.0 theoretical limit for Reads (I think) . :)

WD claims 7000MB/s, I got 6957MB/s, close enough. lol

Only grabbed the 500GB capacity since it was cheap $129.

TheLostSwedeSorry, but this shouldn't be a black drive. Make up some other colour if it doesn't fit in the green, blue, red, purple, gold or whatever colour they want to use, but it ain't black.

Agreed though WD's "colour branding" already lost its meaning ever since they started shovelling SMR "Red" NAS HDD's...

TheLostSwedeSorry, but this shouldn't be a black drive.
Make up some other colour if it doesn't fit in the green, blue, red, purple, gold or whatever colour they want to use, but it ain't black.

they quietly screwed upawhile ago.
its a mess not really any color coding, i read specs now before buying.

looniamthey quietly screwed upawhile ago.
its a mess not really any color coding, i read specs now before buying.

And how many people do that? Not enough I'd say.

lmao if u cant crack 4GB/s stay on 3.0 and stop wasting lanes

TheLostSwedeSorry, but this shouldn't be a black drive.
Make up some other colour if it doesn't fit in the green, blue, red, purple, gold or whatever colour they want to use, but it ain't black.

Western Digital has released a new line called "noire" so there shouldn't be too much confusion /s

TheLostSwedeAnd how many people do that? Not enough I'd say.

i'm w/you and pushing the point that even informed buyers need more caveat emperor. it seems branding is about RGB imaging than reliability too much.

i blame old ravers . . .

PCIe 4 is nothing but marketing bullet point for this, other budget drives like Samsung's 980 and Intel 670p are PCIe 3 and have faster writes.

RaevenlordThe new WD_Black SN750 SE will start at $49.99 for the 250 GB model. Pricing on the 500 GB and 1 TB capacities hasn't been announced at time of writing

This better not mean the 500Gb drive is 100$, otherwise the Samsung 980 and Intel 670p will destroy this drives in value proposition

TheLostSwedeSorry, but this shouldn't be a black drive.
Make up some other colour if it doesn't fit in the green, blue, red, purple, gold or whatever colour they want to use, but it ain't black.

This should have been a new version of the popular Blue SN550

Anandtech list the pricing as $54.99, $74.99, $129.99.

TheLostSwedeAnandtech list the pricing as $54.99, $74.99, $129.99.

Newegg has the WD_Black SN850 PCIe 4.0 500GB on sale for $119. Speed vs capacity is every enthusiast's decision. :)

I like this lady below, she's a talented presenter... SN850 review. My SN850 drive runs benchmarks at 42C- 48C using the massive ROG Apex XIII heatsink, and no thermal throttling - not too shabby. :)

I had 4 gift cards from last year sitting in my desk. I went to BB and grabbed the WD Black SN850 1tb for $199. Perfect for my "almost ready to build" build. After reading a few reviews of this drive I feel good about the purchase.

boidsonlyI had 4 gift cards from last year sitting in my desk. I went to BB and grabbed the WD Black SN850 1tb for $199. Perfect for my "almost ready to build" build. After reading a few reviews of this drive I feel good about the purchase.

Yea but you got one of the REAL Gen 4 ones that actually perform like a Gen 4 drive is supposed to, NOT the gimped ones announced in the OP :)

bonehead123what..wait...wtf.....

Why on earth would you buy a Gen 4 drive, only to be stuck at the same speeds as Gen 3 already has, and probably at a higher cost ???

The drive may have gen3 like sequential speeds, but gen4 sequential speeds are pretty much irrelevant unless you have two drives and spend all day moving *.ISOs between them just to see the numbers.

What really matters is the other speeds /iops as this is what dictates real world performance. Hence why gen3 drives with only 2GBs top ends were still big sellers/value, If these drives offer decent gen4 performance at reduced cost they should be onto a winner.

Ugh, too small.

If you need a PCIe 4.0 drive, you're buying one because you need to read/write at more than 3.5GB/s

If your drive is only 500GB in size, what's the point of that speed? You'll hit a capacity/cache size/garbage-collection problem within seconds.

TheLostSwedeSorry, but this shouldn't be a black drive.
Make up some other colour if it doesn't fit in the green, blue, red, purple, gold or whatever colour they want to use, but it ain't black.

Agreed, it's a blue.
Black is their flagship line and by adding a low-budget, low-capacity model that barely scrapes past the PCIe 3.0 bandwidth limits to their black lineup just dilutes that branding.

some still respectable 3600 MB/s, Sequential Write, and 2830 MB/s Sequential Read speeds (WD isn't quoting the random read/write speeds just yet).

For the record, random read/write speeds, endurance (in the data sheet) and prices of the various models are available now on the official shop page.

Why is this not a blue?

MaxxThis one seems to be using a Phison E19T but I'm still researching the flash.

Verdict?

Chrispy_Verdict?

It's not BiCS6 since that's not ready yet. It was asked during WD's presentation what flash this used and the question was ignored, further they ignored when asked if it were BiCS5 (which is a generation WD is basically skipping). So there's a good chance this is the flash in the SN730/AN1500 or SN530/SN550 - BiCS4/96L. The question would be, 256Gb/die (former) or 512Gb/die (latter)? 1000 MB/s writes at 250GB implies the former - 256/32 = 8 dies, 2 planes/die, 16-way interleaving, ~200µs tPROG (SLC mode) is in the vicinity of 1000-1200 MB/s.

The E19T is confirmed. WD has worked with Phison in the past and while companies are generally pushing for vertical integration, hence in-house controllers, component shortages in the industry has caused many to outsource (even Samsung has been looking into it).

TheLostSwedeAnd how many people do that? Not enough I'd say.

That’s what WD’s marketing team is banking on...

I don’t understand the half- (or quarter-)assed PCIe 4.0 drives (respectively ~4500-5000mbps like the early ones and 3500mbps like this). Either do it properly (SN850, 980 Pro, Sabrent Rocket 4.0 Plus, etc) or not do it at all ad use the good ‘ol PCIe 3.0

fb020997I don’t understand the half- (or quarter-)assed PCIe 4.0 drives (respectively ~4500-5000mbps like the early ones and 3500mbps like this). Either do it properly (SN850, 980 Pro, Sabrent Rocket 4.0 Plus, etc) or not do it at all ad use the good ‘ol PCIe 3.0

The controller dictates whether it's a PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 drive. @Maxx confirms that WD are using a Phison E19T controller rather than their usual Marvell controller, possibly due to supply issues with the Marvell ones.

The pricing seems to be in line with similar-performing PCIe 3.0 drives, and a PCIe 4.0 drive can work in a PCIe 3.0 slot without any problems so why worry about it - 3600MB/s reads are very slightly higher than the ~3500MB/s reads that PCIe 3.0 tops out at. It's not much of an increase, but why reject free performance increases if they don't have any other downsides?

Chrispy_The controller dictates whether it's a PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 drive. @Maxx confirms that WD are using a Phison E19T controller rather than their usual Marvell controller, possibly due to supply issues with the Marvell ones.

The pricing seems to be in line with similar-performing PCIe 3.0 drives, and a PCIe 4.0 drive can work in a PCIe 3.0 slot without any problems so why worry about it - 3600MB/s reads are very slightly higher than the ~3500MB/s reads that PCIe 3.0 tops out at. It's not much of an increase, but why reject free performance increases if they don't have any other downsides?

The main thing is: why going with all the “troubles” (mainly controller and PCB routing for signal integrity) for making a PCIe 4.0 drive with the performance of a 3.0 one?
Also, is it me or this SSD “smells” like it has a 4.0 x2 link, which means that in a 3.0 mobo it’s capped at about ~1700mb/s (not very slow, especially compared to SATA drives)? Of course, from an user POV, it doesn’t matter in 99% of cases, and I can confirm that because I switched from a PCIe 3.0 platform (2700x, X470, 8200 pro 1tb) to a 4.0 one (5600x, B550, SN850 1tb) and it didn’t speed up any game level loading where the hugely better ST score of my new CPU isn’t helpful at all.
Also, I didn’t need to upgrade to a 4.0 drive, but I sold it for a great price along with the rest of my parts as the beginning of a 2-phase modernization of my rig, since newer games will benefit from a super speedy drive (DirectStorage), even if they’ll work just fine with a 3.0 one.