WD Black SN850 SSD Review - Speed ​​Monster

Last year, Sony bragged about its custom PS5 SSD, talking about its unprecedented speed and how it will positively impact future games. But the nextgen turned out to be not so long-playing, because already now several models of solid-state drives are available on the PC, showing high read / write speeds.

One such solution is the Western Digital Black SN850 SSD 1TB.

In short, for those who do not like to read, now the WD Black SN850 is a powerful option that is suitable not only for professionals at work but also for hardcore gamers for their libraries.

WD Black SN850 specifications:

	Black SN850 500GB	Black SN850 1TB	Black SN850 2TB
The cost	$ 149.99	$ 229.99	$ 449.99
Capacity	500GB / 512GB	1000GB / 1024GB	2000GB / 2048GB
Slot	M.2 2280	M.2 2280	M.2 2280
Interface / protocol	PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4	PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4	PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4
Controller	WD_BLACK G2	WD_BLACK G2	WD_BLACK G2
DRAM	DDR4	DDR4	DDR4
Memory	BiCS4 96L TLC	BiCS4 96L TLC	BiCS4 96L TLC
Sequential reading	7,000 MBps	7,000 MBps	7,000 MBps
Sequential write	4,100 MBps	5,300 MBps	5,100 MBps
Random reading	800,000 IOPS	1,000,000 IOPS	1,000,000 IOPS
Random recording	570,000 IOPS	720,000 IOPS	710,000 IOPS
Endurance (TBW)	300 TB	600 TB	1,200 TB
room	WDS500G1X0E	WDS100T1X0E	WDS200T1X0E
Warranty	5 years	5 years	5 years

The version that was sent to me for review is not equipped with a heatsink, however, a heatsink was included with the motherboard, so I use it. However, if you decide to buy the SN850, I recommend watching the version with a radiator, since the temperature can rise significantly during load. The price difference is roughly $ 20, but it's definitely worth it.

What's important to understand first is the fact that the WD Black SN850 isn't designed for casual use. It actually loads games faster than my regular SSD from the same Western Digital, but the difference is only a few seconds. The reason is that modern games are not yet designed for such opportunities. However, as developers embrace the PS5 and Xbox Series, we will definitely see more games harnessing the potential of SSDs. Nowadays, the main advantage appears during work. And, in my opinion, SN850 is perfect for those who work with video or other data sets.

Also, keep in mind that to get all the benefits, you need a motherboard that supports PCIe 4. Earlier, I wrote about updating a working assembly, just to test the SN850's capabilities, read here . The moral is that if your motherboard does not support the new generation of PCIe, then you will not be able to see the benefits of high-speed SSDs.

Test results

The CrystalDisk Mark benchmark showed results that generally correspond to the declared characteristics, there are variations of 100-200 MB. Over 7000 MB / s while reading and over 5000 MB / s while writing. At the same time, the temperature averaged 48-53 degrees Celsius. Without active use, the temperature does not exceed 38 degrees.

Benchmark parameters:

• SEQ1M Q8T1 - sequential read / write test, 1 MB blocks, 8 queue depth, 1 thread
• SEQ1M Q1T1 - sequential read / write test, 1 MB blocks, 1 queue depth, 1 thread
• RND4K Q32T1 - random read / write test, 4 KB blocks, 32 queue depth, 16 threads
• RND4K Q1T1 - random read / write test, 4 KB blocks, 1 queue depth, 1 thread

PCIe Gen 4 connectivity

PCIe Gen 2 connectivity

But how does the SN850 perform in real life? For this test, I prepared several files of different sizes and compositions. Among them are individual videos, assemblies from dozens of videos, several games of different sizes, heavy Adobe files, and backups.

It took the SN 850 16 seconds to transfer 30 GB of video files. In comparison, the same files when transferred to an SSD connected via SATA took 92 seconds. The difference is almost 6 times.

It took 1 minute and 16 seconds to transfer 7150 60GB files to the SN850. The bottleneck effect was created by a lot of small files, although heavy ones are transferred almost instantly. The same process on a SATA connection took almost 9 minutes. 

In terms of launching games, everything is fine too - most titles take 5 to 15 seconds from the moment you click to the menu screen. But here it is important to consider not only the SSD but also the features of a particular system. Hitman 3 boots in 12 seconds. The WD dashboard has an option to activate the game mode, but I did not find any difference with or without it. Apparently, in my case, the speed is limited by the processor and RAM.

Interestingly, under normal video conditions, where files are 5 to 15 GB, the WD Black SN850 is only a fraction of a second faster than a SATA-connected SSD. But when there are a lot of these files, the new drive copes with loading faster and without slight slowdowns during rewinding.

In terms of power consumption, third-party tests have shown that the SN850 consumes about 3.8 watts during file transfer and peaks at 6.8 watts. When idle, the SSD consumes about 1.5 watts, which is quite a lot. I use a 700 Watt Be Quiet Pure Power 11 PSU, which is still enough for the entire build, including the RTX 3070 FE. Moreover, the main file storage is on a separate media server, so now only the Samsung SSD 860 EVO with 500 GB, the WD Blue hard drive with 2 TB, and now the SSD WD Black SN850 with 1 TB.

Third party tests:

The gallery contains several third-party tests from professional hardware reviewers like Tom's Hardware and TweakTown. As you can see, WS Black SN850 shows results at the top level.

Final thoughts

The WD Black SN850 is definitely one of the best SSDs available on the market today. This model is suitable for professionals who are critically important for speed, including for private servers, such as a personal media library. 

In terms of games, the SSD shows a very good result, but it is obvious that now there are simply no projects where the SN850 could be fully deployed. At a minimum, the drive can already be used to store heavy and frequently played games, such as Call of Duty, GTA 5, Cyberpunk 2077, and the like. And DirectStorage technology will allow you to maximize access speed to future games.

If you work with large amounts of data, edit video, do rendering, build your own high-performance server, or want to pre-assemble a top-end system for gaming in the coming years, then the WD Black SN850 is an excellent solution.

For additional questions regarding SN850, write in the comments, I will try to answer everything.