Jump to content

Is it "safe" to buy wd blue or black NVME?

Anubis0804

Hey, this is my first "post" in a forum, i dont really know what to call it but doesnt matter. A few months ago it was confirmed that WD was intentionally reducing 50% of the potential of some blue and black nvme ssd. Im thinking of buying one for my first build because of the bang for the buck, but if it doesnt deliver on 100% of what im paying I would take another route. Does anyone know if they are "safe" to buy already?

Thanks for reading at least :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

I bought a WD Black SN750 in July and it performs as advertised. The reports I can find about this issue relate to the WD Blue SN550, which does not have a DRAM cache, relating to the performance when the SLC cache is exhausted. That is not a common thing for most people, but I can understand the concern. In any case, for a system drive, I'd recommend getting an SSD that does have a DRAM cache, like the SN750.

Are there other drives you are considering?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Anubis0804 said:

Hey, this is my first "post" in a forum, i dont really know what to call it but doesnt matter. A few months ago it was confirmed that WD was intentionally reducing 50% of the potential of some blue and black nvme ssd. Im thinking of buying one for my first build because of the bang for the buck, but if it doesnt deliver on 100% of what im paying I would take another route. Does anyone know if they are "safe" to buy already?

Thanks for reading at least 馃槃

The chip shortage had forced some manufacturer to put lower quality module on some RAM but I believe that this particular shortage is over.

I personally use WD drives extensively and they are a great value.

Spoiler

CPU Ryzen 5900X - Motherboard Asus ROG STRIX X570-E - RAM 16GB of G.SKILL NEON 3600 -
GPU EVGA RTX 3080 XC3聽-聽Case Mastercase H500p mesh - PSU Seasonic Focus Gx-850 -
Corsair MP600 NVME 1 Tb,聽Samsung 960 PRO 500 Gb & 2 Seagate Baracuda 7200 RPM 2TB in stripe -
Display two VG27AQ 2K monitor - Cooling Corsair H150 Pro -聽

Keyboard G-910 W/ Romer G tactile - Mouse G 502 Hero (wired) -
Sound Logitech X-530 and Razer Tiamat headphones

Operating System Windows 10

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Quickstrike said:

The chip shortage had forced some manufacturer to put lower quality module on some RAM but I believe that this particular shortage is over.

I personally use WD drives extensively and they are a great value.

Yes but if it changes the specs of the device it should have a different model number a "B" variant or whatever.

I couldn't find them doing anything like that with the Black drives though just articles on the blue drives.

This is not the first time WD has done something like this though. Adata is pretty bad for this too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

1TB SN750 Black, using it for games and some data load,

sn750.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Kean01 said:

1TB SN750 Black, using it for games and some data load,

sn750.png

That drive is over 80% full, which means that you are going to see a performance decrease in tests like that, which write large amounts of data to the drive.

19 minutes ago, Zomeguy said:

This is not the first time WD has done something like this though. Adata is pretty bad for this too.

Which thing are you referring to? The time they quietly changed some WD Red drives to SMR or the time they were forced to admit that some of their 5400 RPM drives were actually 7200 RPM?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

I work in tech and WD drives are what I buy for everything non-server related here. Never had any issues. We have a bunch of SSDs and NVMEs out in production. Still have some spinning disks out there too - also no issues.

In one of my personal computers I have a WD Blue SSD and it's been great.聽

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Just now, dimforest said:

I work in tech and WD drives are what I buy for everything non-server related here. Never had any issues. We have a bunch of SSDs and NVMEs out in production. Still have some spinning disks out there too - also no issues.

In one of my personal computers I have a WD Blue SSD and it's been great.聽

The issue with the SN550 isn't going to be noticeable in most use cases. It's a problem with the speed of the drive after the SLC cache is exhausted. So if you are transferring a large amount of data to the drive, it'll be half the speed of the original, but otherwise the performance is mostly unchanged. This change should still have been noted in some fashion, ideally by giving it a new model number, at the very least by having a revision number, but it isn't catastrophic for most people. It is, however, a poor look for WD.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Also, WD made some changes like moving from 64 layer TLC chips to 96 layer TLC chips.聽 Basically, the 96 layer TLC chips are produced in higher volume and they're cheaper in big capacities, so it makes the drives a bit more profitable.聽

The downside is that the 96 layer TLC chips are a bit slower at writing compared to previous 64 layer TLC chips, so once the SLC cache is filled, with the newer revision of the drives you notice the drive being a bit slower at writing.

It's the same with a lot of drives... it's just more noticeable with SN550 because it has a smaller SLC cache.

I recently bought the new Samsung 980 SSD ... the specs claim 3100 MB/s read, 2600 MB/s write,聽 and they're true as long as the SLC cache is not filled.

See review here : https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-980-m2-nvme-ssd-review/2

The SN550 can do 2 GB/s writes as long until those 12GB of SLC cache and then the speed drops to around 500 MB/s until it gets the chance to empty the cache

The 980 can do 2.5 GB/s writes for longer time because it has up to 100 GB of SLC cache (as long as there's empty space on SSD) but then write speeds drop to around 350 MB/s

In day to day usage, both will be very fast, because rarely applications and games write more than a few MB at a time, so those pretty much always hit the SLC cache and are written fast.

You would only notice slowdowns when you're installing games, maybe, or if you're downloading big files... but you'd be installing a game at 500 MB/s so a 50 GB game would take you around 1 and a half minutes to install...聽聽

image.png.a1c14349d173bec27db04cfd0590791d.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now