Introduction
As a user of WD Blacks for pretty much 80% of my gaming library, I’m very happy with the performance even almost 5 years later. Those are the fastest hard drives on the planet and have went uncontested until SSDs started becoming the norm. Right now for the majority of mainstream to high-end gamers, I usually recommend going straight to SSDs unless they like to archive or play a lot of games, then I’d thrown in recommending a hard drive. For the most part, many gaming PC configuration right now with single SSD or dual-storage systems but at the end of the day, for gaming usage, SSDs now take the crown for storage.
WD’s performance flagship now comes in either hard drive or SSD form with the debut of the WD Black SN750 last year bringing with the then-newly acquired Sandisk technology into their high-performance line-up. WD Black is an enthusiast product line and this remains true for the new SSD addition to their portfolio. The WD Black SN750 (stylized WD_Black) is aimed at gamers and content creators that want fast loading times or recording times so tasks are snappier and more responsive.
In this review, we’ll review the WD Black SN750 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD and pit it against other SSDs’ particularly in the 1TB class range to see what it brings to the table for gamers and enthusiasts alike.
Specification and Features – WD Black SN750
Form factor | M.2 2280 | |||
Interface | PCIe Gen3 8 Gb/s, up to 4 lanes | |||
Capacity | 250GB | 500GB | 1TB | 2TB |
Performance | ||||
Sequential Read up to (MB/s) (Q=32, T=1) | 3,100 | 3,470 | 3,470 | 3,400 |
Sequential Write up to (MB/s) (Q=32, T=1) | 1,600 | 2,600 | 3,000 | 2,900 |
Rand Read 4KB IOPS up to (Q=32, T=1) | 220K | 420K | 515K | 480K |
Rand Write 4KB IOPS up to (Q=32, T=8) | 180K | 380K | 560K | 550K |
Endurance (TBW) | 200 | 300 | 600 | 1,200 |
Power | ||||
Peak Power (10us) | 2.8A | 2.8A | 2.8A | 2.8A |
PS3 (low power) | 70mW | 70mW | 100mW | 100mW |
Sleep (PS4) (low power) | 2.5mW | 2.5mW | 2.5mW | 2.5mW |
MTTF | 1.75 million hours | |||
Environmental | ||||
Operating Temperatures | 32°F to 158°F (0°C to 70°C) | |||
Non-operating Temperatures | -67°F to 185°F (-55°C to 85°C) | |||
Limited Warranty | 5-year |
About the WD Black SN750
The WD Black SN750 is an M.2 form factory PCIe Gen3 SSD running on NVMe 1.3 has read and write rating up to 3400MB/s and 3000MB/s respectively. The drive is also rated to up to around 500K IOPs of 4K random read/write. The WD Black SN750 comes in at 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. In this review we’ll be looking at the 1TB class variant.
The WD Black SN750 is an M.2 2280 sized SSD and fits in any modern M.2 slot. Take note though that this drive comes in 2 variants: one WITH a heatsink and another one WITHOUT a heatsink. Our sample for this review is the non-heatsink version, and will be used on a motherboard with a slot cover acting as the heatsink for performance testing.
The top PCB of the WD Black M.2 is covered by sticker label but we can make out the controller and NAND chips underneath. The backside of the PSB is clean for the 1TB model and could possible be reserved for the NAND chips of the 2TB model. For single sided drives, this is good because it allows whichever thermal solution you choose, whether the pre-installed heatspreader or the one on your motherboard, the heat is dispersed on one side for maximum thermal dissipation.
The non-heatsink version sits perfectly flush in any M.2 slot. Take note that some motherboard have individual sizes for their M.2 retention screw standoffs.
Performance Testing -WD Black SN750
Test Setup
Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
Motherboard: ROG Crosshair VIII Formula
Memory: G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3600 16GB
Storage: WD Blue SSD 1TB SATA (OS), WD Black SN750 1TB
PSU: Seasonic Platinum 1050w
Cooling: Corsair H150i 360mm AIO
Monitor: Viewsonic VX2475smhl-4K
VGA: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE
Potential Performance (ATTO Disk Benchmark)
ATTO Disk Benchmark benchmarks a drive’s read and write speeds with increasing file sizes and graphs them.
Anvil Storage Utilities
Anvil Storage Utilities is a disk benchmarking utility designed to offers a simpler method of scoring a storage device’s performance for both read and write as well as overall. The scores are presented in scores from the benchmark window.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD benchmarks SSDs and provides a score. In our charts, we’ll show you the performance results instead. AS SSD uses synthetic read/write tests with selectable test size.
Crystal Disk Mark v6
Crystal Disk Mark is storage benchmarking software was developed by “hiyohiyo” of Japan, and is available for free. This benchmark measures sequential, and random read/write speeds of storage devices.
ez IOmeter
ezIOmeter is a user-friendly port of the popular IOmeter benchmark. IOmeter is a professional load testing tool for measuring storage performance for enterprise solutions.
WD SSD Dashboard
WD’s SSD Dashboard is arguably one of the most polished SSD utility that I have seen. The interface is well-organized and everything is in its place making it easy and intuitive even for first-time users. Aside from the typical firmware update and deletion tool, the WD SSD Dashboard also has a performance chart and a gaming mode switch. When gaming mode is activated, it keeps the WD Black SN750 in an active state and prevents sleep states which allows the drive to wake up faster. Desktop users who don’t put their systems on standby may not often benefit from this but laptop users may find their system on standby frequently. Gaming mode is aimed to provide a snappier response which is useful for players that keep their games on but allow the system to go to sleep.
The performance chart is a nice little tool to analyze your drive’s performance or an application’s usage behavior to provide insight into how it behaves or to spot a problem.
Overall, while its not mandatory I highly advise keeping the tool installed to monitor drive usage and lifespan as well.
Conclusion
The WD Black SN750 comes at a time where the evolution of SSD performance is exponentially growing and right now they have to compete with not only Seagate, but also Samsung, Kingston, Crucial, Adata, and a lot of other companies that are going neck-to-neck in the SSD space. The WD Black offers competitive performance for the price, and the 1TB variant we reviewed today is particularly attractive option. Still, there’s a lot of other drives that offer the same level of performance. As you can see in our charts, it goes neck to neck with our other Gen3 1TB drives and with prices easily butting heads, one of the primary reasons I would recommend the WD Black is purely based on the ease of getting support. I’ve used WD Blacks for the good part of the last decade and I have only failed one drive and with a warranty spanning 5 years, it was the easiest experience in getting a product replacement.
With the WD Black SN750 also having the same 5-year warranty, in-between the competing products which offer the same speeds and almost same performance, for gamers that don’t particularly care about the numbers but care about customer support and over quality, WD has never failed me yet.
In closing, the WD Black SN750 SSD is a mainstream SSD and performance is evident. If you’re a power user or gamer than want that tried-and-tested performance and quality or someone who trusts WD, there is nothing to dislike about the WD Black SN750.
WD backs the SN750 with a 5-year warranty. We give it our B2G Gold Award!