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Western Digital Black 3D NVMe SSDs for PC gamers launched

by Mark Tyson on 10 April 2018, 11:12

Tags: WD (NYSE:WDC)

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Western Digital (WD) has launched a new range of NVMe SSDs for PC gamers. The new WD Black 3D NVMe SSDs offer read speeds of up to 3,400MB/s is available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities. WD reckons this product line will appeal to 'no compromise' gamers thanks to its leading-edge performance, lower power consumption and extended durability.

It is true that modern PC gaming requires the shifting of huge amounts of data between storage and RAM, as quickly and slickly as possible. Modern AAA gaming experiences are stuffed with high resolution images, video, audio in high definition file formats, and with hefty bit rates. A drive such as the Western Digital Black 3D NVMe SSD can help prevent your fixed storage being the bottleneck that lets your system down under pressure.

WD furnishes us with some more technical reasons to buy the new range of M.2 2280 form factor NVMe SSDs, other than just for 'gaming'. Starting with the interface, WD says that all the drives use a NVMe PCIe Gen3 8Gb/s, up to 4 lanes connection. A new architecture controller is said to be employed, though any details about this are scarce, even in the downloadable spec sheet. The controller is said to be optimised for Western Digital 3D NAND. Elsewhere we hear about the drive range's performance, power consumption, and reliability - backed up with figures, as in the table below, thankfully.

As usual, the larger capacity drives outperform, with the 1TB version boasting an impressive 500,000 random-read IOPs. This top end model is "ideal for multi-threaded applications and data-intensive multitasking environments," notes Western Digital.

All the drives will become available later in April, direct from WD and via retailers, e-tailers, resellers, system integrators and distributors globally. For pricing indications, WD says that in the US you can expect the following; capacities of 250GB ($119.99 USD), 500GB ($229.99 USD) and 1TB ($449.99 USD).



HEXUS Forums :: 6 Comments

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Oh c'mon. They've just added gaming on there to widen their product range and probably add a little more to the price tag. This won't do anything for your frame rate unless you're coming from an exceptionally slow HDD and playing a game that loads parts of a giant map on the fly and your storage can't keep up. This is an insult to the intelligence of PC gamers. Any decent SSD will load levels faster than a HDD and you don't need one tuned for gaming.

This is akin to having a “gaming” CD drive back in the day when levels were loaded off the CD. You just need a faster one, not one supposedly better for gaming.
philehidiot
Oh c'mon. They've just added gaming on there …

If they called it “big price tag edition” it wouldn't sell as well, but tbh I can't think of anyone who *needs* that level of performance but at least gamers might *want* it and some have the money.
No RGB LEDs ?¿ What were they thinking!
Samsung is still king. I'll still only buy Samsung NVMe drives due to the _actual_ no-compromise on speed and endurance. I still don't fully trust WD, even though I have a couple of their spinning drives.

Hard to shed the reputation of having 1 out of every 3-4 drives on the shelf statistically guaranteed to fail (WD; mid-90s to about 2005).
DaMoot
Samsung is still king. I'll still only buy Samsung NVMe drives due to the _actual_ no-compromise on speed and endurance. I still don't fully trust WD, even though I have a couple of their spinning drives.

Hard to shed the reputation of having 1 out of every 3-4 drives on the shelf statistically guaranteed to fail (WD; mid-90s to about 2005).

How bout the reputation of the 840 evo? That's a lot more recent, and relevant.