Packaging and Contents

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which means it is 22 mm wide and 80 mm long.


Like most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the WD Black uses a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface.


You will find the SSD controller, one DRAM chip, and two flash chips on the PCB. The other side of the PCB is empty.


The 8-channel flash controller is made by SanDisk (which is now owned by WD). It's their latest-generation model with support for 3D TLC and PCI-Express 3.0 x4.


The two TLC flash chips are made by SanDisk in collaboration with Toshiba. They are built using 64-layers on a 15 nanometer 3D NAND production process.


One SK Hynix 512 MB DDR4-2400 chip provides fast DRAM storage for the controller to store the mapping tables in.