Western Digital’s WD Black line is home to many different and interesting products, but all of them promise high performance, elegance and durability.
You will recall that we had tested the SN750 before and were very satisfied. Also designed in the M2.2280 form factor, the SN850 is a Gen4 SSD drive that can meet even your highest performance expectations.
At this point, we will have to remind you that a new lane has been opened for the SN850. As you know, the PlayStation 5 was extremely fast but came with a Gen4 SSD with only 825GB capacity and 667GB of available space. This led to the fact that after installing five or six AAA games, the disc would become full and we would have to delete some of the installed games in order to install a game. PlayStation 5 has activated the M.2 slot that comes with the device after the recent patch. Of course, in order to use this slot, NVMe drives also need to meet a certain standard (5500mb/s read speed and passive cooler), and the SN850 is a model created for this job.
The SN850 can be purchased with or without a passive cooler. If you are using it on a laptop, you will have to choose the cooler-free model. On PS5 and desktop computers, it is appropriate to choose the model with a very low profile passive cooler with a height of 8.8mm.
So how technically successful is this model? Built with 4-lane (x4) PCI Express 4.0 technology, the SN850 builds on 96 layers of TLC 3D NAND flash memory. The product, which uses the NVMe 1.4 protocol and has 500 GB – 1TB and 2 TB models, has Western Digital’s own G2 controller. The write life (TBW) given for the 1TB model we used in the tests is 600 TB.
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So how fast is this product? Western Digital promises up to 7000 MB/s read performance and up to 5300 MB’s write performance for the 1TB model we tested. In our tests on CrystalDiskMark, we achieved 6944 MB/s read and 5179 MB/s write performance. Of course, it goes without saying that you need a motherboard that uses PCIe 4.0 (x4) technology to reach these speeds.
By the way, there is no way to see the figures on the PS5, if not in terms of reading speed (you will need it when copying games from one disc to another) because it seems that the PS5 limits it to around 1500 MB/s .
The performance of the product’s passive cooler is quite impressive. It should be noted that we do not see 50 degrees even under load with the cooler (Max. 49 degrees). If you remember we had tried the AN1500 before, and despite its huge cooler, it was a product that worked quite hot. The SN850 is quite cool, on the contrary.
Another topic is the WD Dashboard. Thanks to this amazing software, you can access everything from firmware update to backups, and even track the breathing of your drive.
All in all, the WD Black SN850 is a model that is determined to be the best in its class with great performance. Of course, the price is also a little high. At the time of this writing, the price of the 1TB passive cooled model was around 3600 TL . The exchange rate can be considered reasonable with the performance and capabilities it offers.
Kürşat Zaman
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SCORE: 90
+Very high performance. Low profile and effective cooler. Easy control via WD Dashboard. Durable and long-lasting.
-The price is high.
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