WD Black PCIe 512GB SSD Review

[Guest]

Western Digital enters the PCIe SSD market with a design that meshes new and old technology. NVMe is the latest go-to technology to create high-performance SSDs, but will the choice of planar TLC NAND hold the flagship Black PCIe back?

WD Black PCIe 512GB SSD Review : Read more

 

[lun471k]

I was all hyped up when I saw the article title. Each line I read and graph shown just killed the feeling. Looks like WD's far behind everyone else. I was hoping they'd at least be in the mid range, especially considering the branding of the black series.

 

[sillynilly]

Agree LUN - I was a WD fanboy in the HDD days and wanted to see similar performance from the black lineup. Looks like crap on a cracker instead. Too bad.

 

[velocityg4]

Looking at current pricing. There is nothing remarkable about it. It is priced around the similar performing Intel 600p and MyDigitalSSD BPX. Looking at real world uses. For the average user, gamer, workstation user, &c you won't notice the difference. So get whichever NVMe option is the cheapest.

If you are running a server, multiple VMs or some special workstation functions. Then performance will matter.

 

[ubercake]

Seems like getting SanDisk on board would yield more competitive results. Maybe WD still insists on being the boss even though they are late to the game?

 

[CRamseyer]

This is from the SanDisk team for the most part.

 

[Stevemeister]

"Seems like getting SanDisk on board would yield more competitive results". This reminds me of when Daimler-Benz hitched itself to Chrysler . . . it didn't raise the standards at Chrysler rather it started to sink DB. This looks like another case of a smaller high performance brand being dragged down into mediocrity (or worse) by a much larger but technically obsolete Behemoth.

 

[gasaraki]

I got the MyDigitalSSD BPX and it's really fast in everyday use. Why get this when the BPX is cheaper, faster and has better endurance?

 

[takeshi7]

In the Random Write Performance chart you seem to have switched the MyDigitalSSD BPX with the WD Black. In the first graph it shows the BPX getting around 150K IOPS and the Black ~98K IOPS, but the second graph shows the BPX with ~98K IOPS and the Black with ~150K IOPS.

 

[WhyAreYou]

Nice review!

 

[hpram99]

Looking at the chart, that's about 10ms at 800MB/s that means the cache is 8MB
Really? This is false advertising that the drive is 800MB/s for 0.001% of the drive

 

[DarkSable]

Youch, talk about a scathing review!

Much deserved, but scathing nonetheless. It's honestly somewhat refreshing in this world of reviewers tiptoeing around calling a bad product what it is in order to not offend the money-laden behemoths.

 

[junkeymonkey]

I wondered if WD got there hands in to sandisk if too may fingers are now in that pie ? seemed sandisk had a strong line of ssd and there controllers were a preferred to use ?

wd does have to build a niche in the ssd market but a lot of times these acquisitions / mergers tend to make matters worse or a few years of fumbling around trying

 

[kalmquist]

This has the same problem as the Intel 600p. It's slow enough that it is competing with SATA SSD's. Sure, this will dramatically outperform any SATA SSD if you spend all day doing sequential reads at queue depths greater than one, but for a typical user, SATA SSD's are fast enough, and this isn't likely to be much faster. If you do want faster than SATA, an additional $20 will get you the Plextor M8Pe, which has more than double the mixed sequential read/write performance.

 

[joz]

Always preferred WD for my HDDs, but when it comes to Flash, give me either Mushkin, Curcial or Samsung. Yuck, that really kills the name of Black.

 

[Guest]

WD was always meant to be the branding name for low-grade SSDs.

 

[jaber2]

At first I looked at results and noticed it was on bottom of every test, that made me sad, then I noticed on my games and applications it matched all others, that made me happy, if it came to it I will take one or two

 

[dennphill]

Nice good review. (Good to compare with MyDigitalSSD BPX review last year.) Don't see WD as keeping up with their standards set for their HDDs. Again, what's with the JW Player thinggie that's all over Tom's pages. (You gotta get ridofit!)

 

[CoachAub]

Good review, however I am disappointed in WD. I've always bought their products for the high quality and dependability. The warranty on this device, tells me the opposite, as SSDs can suddenly die, this steers me to other products.

 

[CRamseyer]

"Seems like getting SanDisk on board would yield more competitive results". This reminds me of when Daimler-Benz hitched itself to Chrysler . . . it didn't raise the standards at Chrysler rather it started to sink DB. This looks like another case of a smaller high performance brand being dragged down into mediocrity (or worse) by a much larger but technically obsolete Behemoth.

Don't forget about the Crossfire, Chrysler's two-door two-seater, built on the C320 chassis and with the MB 6-cylinder engine.

More to your point though, In the final hours I removed some of the review to lighten the load. SanDisk has been hellbent on pushing TLC to the masses for a few years now. The last great SSD from the company was the Extreme Pro and that was released in 2014. The product line since has been near sighted with blinders on, as if the rest of the market doesn't exist.

Hopefully in time WD can remove the blinders and come up with a competitive high-performance product. It doesn't seem like the company wants to compete in that realm at this time. Maybe BiCS will change that in the second half of 2017. The first step in that direction is denouncing TLC for high-performance products.

 

[teamninja]

I fine this to be Fine it fits in just right regular consumer will choose this over the 480 BPX just since it has 512gb no seriously people will the intel 512gb not the pcie one of course is a bit worst off but it is price less by a bit the rest are significantly price higher though they are faster but the average consumer will just take the lower speed since it is cheaper but has 32 GB more then the BPX some consumer might choose the Higher speed one but the ones that know more will know they most likely can't tell the difference and will still most likely be cap when loading apps and starting PC it was shown on LTT Yea I can see this having a market.

 

[Bruce427]

@ Chris,

I have a BXP 480GB in one PC and would have to say it's the best value for the money in today's market.

In a notebook, however, I am running a Samsung 512GB 960 PRO. So would you recommend using the native Microsoft NVMe driver -- or -- did the recent Samsung Firmware update resolve the poor battery life performance?

(I was recently told by a Samsung customer support rep. that the battery life problem was fixed with the latest firmware update.)

Thanks.

 

[CRamseyer]

@ Chris,

I have a BXP 480GB in one PC and would have to say it's the best value for the money in today's market.

In a notebook, however, I am running a Samsung 512GB 960 PRO. So would you recommend using the native Microsoft NVMe driver -- or -- did the recent Samsung Firmware update resolve the poor battery life performance?

(I was recently told by a Samsung customer support rep. that the battery life problem was fixed with the latest firmware update.)

Thanks.

The only firmware update I'm aware of for Samsung NVMe products is for the 960 EVO and not the 960 Pro. I've ran the new driver but not the new firmware (it came out later). If you want battery life then the MS driver is better than the Samsung NVMe driver (even 2.1). If you want higher performance use the Samsung driver.

I'll take a look at the new firmware this week and run some tests.

 

[apache_lives]

Smeh. WD still doing too little too late.

 

[ubercake]

"Seems like getting SanDisk on board would yield more competitive results". This reminds me of when Daimler-Benz hitched itself to Chrysler . . . it didn't raise the standards at Chrysler rather it started to sink DB. This looks like another case of a smaller high performance brand being dragged down into mediocrity (or worse) by a much larger but technically obsolete Behemoth.

Exactly what I was thinking. Just because WD was king of the HDD world doesn't mean they should be telling SanDisk what to do. SanDisk always had a great thing going and produces a great product themselves.

You know those higher-ups at WD are flexing their muscles over the SanDisk people now just to satisfy their own egos.