Today Western Digital is announcing a major expansion of their WD Black family gaming-oriented storage products. Later today at the digital event on Twitch, Western Digital will unveil their first PCI Gen 4 SSD, a new high-end PCI Gen 3 SSD and their first Thunderbolt dock.
WD Black SN850 PCI Gen 4 SSD
The new WD Black SN850 is Western Digital’s first PCI 4 SSD and the successor to their WD Black SN750. The SN850 features Western Digital’s second-generation in-house NVM SSD controller and can hit speeds of 7GB / s (sequential) and 1M IOPS (random). SN 850 initially standard m. The 2 NVM will be available as an SSD, suitable for PC gaming and is expected to work in the upcoming Sony PS5. Western Digital is also working on a version of the WD Black SN850 that will add heatsink and RGB lighting. The plain M2 version will later expand from 500GB to 2TB this fall, while the RGB + Heatsink version will not be ready until next year.
| WD Black SN850 Specifications | |||||
| Capacity | 500 GB | 1 TB | 2 TB | ||
| Form factor | M.22 2280 unilateral Optional heatsink |
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| Interface | PCI 4 x 4 NVM | ||||
| Controller | Western Digital In-House, Second Pay Generation | ||||
| Nand Flash | Sandisk 3D TLC | ||||
| Read the sequence | 7000 MB / s | ||||
| Write sequentially | 4100 MB / s | 5300 MB / s | 5100 MB / s | ||
| Warranty | 5 years | ||||
| Write endurance | 300 TB 0.3 DWPD |
600 TB 0.3 DWPD |
1200 TB 0.3 DWPD |
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| MSRP (No heatsink) |
9 149.99 | 9 229.99 | 9 449.99 | ||
WD Black AN 1500 SSD: PCI Gen 4 Speed for Gene 3 Systems
For gamers on desktop ops that only support PCI Gen 3 speeds, Western Digital is introducing a new high-end SSD option. The WD Black AN1500 PCI 3X8-D-in card SSD puts their two SN730 SSDs (OEM equivalent of SN750) into the RAID-0 configuration for greater performance and capability. The AN1500 uses the Marvel 88NR2241 NVM RAID chip, which we reported earlier this week as part of HPE’s new RAID1 card for server boot drives. Thanks to that hardware RAID capability, the AN1500 works as a single drive with a PCI 3.0 x 8 uplink, which can write at 6.5GB / s at read speeds and 4.1GB / s at write speeds. The AN1500 internally uses a pair of SN30 / SN750 M2 SSDs, so the capabilities of the AN1500 are doubled: the smallest model is 1TB and the largest option is 4TB. The card is equipped with a notable aluminum heatsink and backplate that matches the latest WD_BLACK design language, including custom RGB lighting around the edges.
Single-chip NVM SSD controllers that support the PCI 3X8 interface do not exist, but are only used in high-end enterprise SSDs. That means the WD Black AN1500 is the first consumer NVM SSD capable of using an 8-lane interface, without the hassle of software software raids used by NVM Raid Solutions. The AN1500 does not require PCI port-by-partition support from the host system, and is also useful in PCI slots (with low performance) that only provide four lanes of PCI.
| WD Black AN 1500 Specifications | |||||
| Capacity | 1 TB | 2 TB | 4 TB | ||
| Form factor | PCIe add-in card | ||||
| Interface | PCI 3 x 8 | ||||
| Controller | 2x WD in-house NVM + Marvel 88NR2241 RAID-0 | ||||
| Nand Flash | Sandisk 3D TLC | ||||
| Read the sequence | 6500 MB / s | ||||
| Write sequentially | 4100 MB / s | ||||
| Read 4kB random IOPS | 760K | 780 k | 780 k | ||
| 4 KB Random Type IOPS | 690 k | 700 k | 710K | ||
| Power | To read | 15.7 w | |||
| Write | 12.8 w | ||||
| Inactive | 8.5 W | ||||
| Warranty | 5 years | ||||
| MSRP | 9 299.99 | 9 549.99 | 9 999.99 | ||
WD Black D50 Thunderbolt 3 Game Dock
The WD Black family of products for external storage is also getting a new member. The current lineup includes the P10 portable hard drive, the P50 portable SSD and the D10 desktop desktop P35 “external hard drive. Rather than simply providing Thunderbolt-attached NVM storage, the D50 is a full Thunderbolt 3 dock that provides a variety of port extensions. In storage only in version.None of the three models intended to allow the user to upgrade storage.Customized RGB lighting is of course present.
The natural competition of the WD Black D50 will be the same Firekuda gaming dock as Seagate. Seagate’s Dock comes with a 4TB hard drive and a simple M2 PCI slot and a few more ports for the user to install the SSD of their choice. The WD Black D50 Game Dock is small overall, provides power to the connected laptop, and is intended to be used in vertical orientation – its weight base to help keep it upright.
The MSRP of the WD Black D50 without built-in storage is $ 319.99, the 1TB model is $ 499.99, and the 2TB model is $ 679.99.
As Western Digital moves their WD Black brand to focus exclusively on gaming, products have inevitably transitioned from RGB lighting. Western Digital’s own WD_BLACK dashboard software for Windows can handle these lighting elements, but Western Digital is also working to integrate with other RGB control systems. They currently have support for Gigabyte RGB Fusion 2.0, MSI Mystic Lite Sync and ASUSura, and support for the Razor Chroma RGB will be ready soon.
