By The newest NVMe SSD from the business, targeted at gamers, is the WD Black SN7100. Thus, the “Black” in the name.
The main argument is that since games have gotten so massive, you need a bigger SSD. I do not disagree, but WD might have done a better job of emphasizing the outstanding performance.
After reading more about this incredible drive, compare it to our list of the top PCIe 4.0 SSDs.
What are the WD Black SN7100’s features?
The Black SN7100 is a single-sided, 2280 (22 mm wide, 80 mm long) PCIe 4.0, NVMe SSD with the newest multilayer BiCS8 NAND and Sandisk (a division of WD) A101-000172-A1 controller.
Because it has a host memory buffer (DRAM-less) design, the principal caching functions are carried out by your device’s system memory. For secondary cache duties, a specific quantity of NAND will be written as a single-layer cell (1-bit).
The SN7100 has a five-year warranty and an average TBW rating (the number of guaranteed terabytes that can be written) of 600 per TB of capacity for a low-cost TLC SSD. The worst-case scenario is that the drive will merely enter read-only mode, however users are unlikely to reach that TBW. No data will be lost.
What is the price of the WD Black SN7100?
The WD Black SN7100 is currently available on Amazon for $60 for a 500GB capacity, $80 for a 1TB capacity, and $160 for a tested 2TB capacity. Although it is not the most affordable SSD available, it is competitive.
What is the WD Black SN7100’s speed?
The 2TB Black SN7100 was the fastest PCIe 4.0 host memory buffer (HMB) design SSD we have tested so far, according to synthetic benchmarks. It is not by much, but it is noticeable, as the CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential transfer figures below show.
Is the WD Black SN7100 a good purchase?
The SN7100 is the best in the PCIe 4.0/HMB class, in my opinion. Wonderful for daily use.
Our testing methodology
Currently, drive testing uses Windows 11, 64-bit, along with an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard, an i5-12400 CPU, and two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (for a total of 64GB of memory). The back panel incorporates Thunderbolt 4 and 20Gbps USB, and it uses Intel CPU/GPU graphics. An ImDisk RAM drive that uses up 58GB of the 64GB of available memory is used for the 48GB transfer tests. The OS is also installed on a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro, from which the 450GB file is moved.
To get the best results, every test is run on a freshly NTFS-formatted and TRIM-ed drive. Note that in normal use, as a drive fills up, performance may decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, as well as other factors. With today’s SSDs featuring much quicker late-generation NAND, this may not be as much of an issue.
Note: The performance figures displayed are only applicable to the drive that was supplied to us and the capacity that was tested. SSD performance can and will vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching. Vendors also occasionally swap components. If there is ever a significant difference between the performance you see and what we report.
