WD Blue SN5000 – The Biggest Storage With Smallest Price

Western Digital has a long history in the storage market. The brand is a global powerhouse in this space and has been ever-present in the South African market for decades. Offering a wide array of options for your performance and budget requirements, it covers almost the entire physical storage landscape to provide consumers and businesses with the perfect solution for their needs. The past six months have been busy for WD, seeing plenty of new products released, along with updates to existing ranges. For the latter, the brand expanded its WD Blue NVMe range, with the WD Blue SN5000 being one of the key products from the range.

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There are four variants for the new WD Blue SN5000 NVMe, which include 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB options. WD has dropped its 250GB offering and replaced it with a much higher 4TB option. Specifications for the range are as follows:

The upgraded WD Blue SN500 NVMe drives come in an M.2-2280 form factor. These are also based on WD’s in-house 4-channel controller, which has a DRAMless design. The latter has become the standard for budget and mid-range SSDs in recent years. Interestingly, the drives have a single-sided chip design covered with a thin graphene heatspreader for heat dissipation. One of the stand-out features of the SN500 is the support for a PCIe 4.0 x4 connection. This means that, while considered mid-range, the devices are still fast enough, supported by the additional bandwidth across the PCIe 4.0 framework.

There are two different types of NAND in use on the drive. There’s the 112-layer BiCS 5 TLC NAND (Triple-Level Cell) offered on the 500GB, 1TB and 2TB options, with the 4TB option featuring the BiCS 6 QLC NAND (Quad-Level Cell). There are advantages to both NAND technologies, depending on the requirements. For the lower capacity devices, TLC NAND offers a better performance in read and write speeds. However, QLC offers higher storage capacity support while keeping the costs down. However, the step up from BiCS 5 to BiCS 6 on the 4TB unit brings with it an improved performance across the 162 layers (as opposed to 112) with 70% more capacity per chip.

The performance increase is roughly estimated to be twice as fast on BiCS 6, which means that, even while offering QLC NAND, it still offers a marked bump in overall performance. With the QLC NAND, the 4TB option offers an impressive 1,200TB endurance rating. Each device in the range carries a 5-year warranty, giving users peace of mind that their purchase is secure.

As a result, each model within the range offers between 5,000 and 5,500 MB/s sequential read speeds. Compared to the previous iteration of the WD SN500 series, this is an improvement from 4,000 MB/s to an impressive 5,000 MB/s. We’ll look at this in more detail in the coming weeks, testing the overall performance of the 1TB variant.

The WD Blue SN5000 series was designed to improve workflow for creatives and boost productivity during the day. It specialises in multitasking capabilities, allowing users to switch between projects easily, thanks to the high-end NVMe technology. This means that even the most heavy-duty projects can be tackled with performance endurance, utilising WD’s PCIe Gen 4 and WD nCache 4.0, which is ideal for drafting, editing, and finalising those projects.

With four storage options to choose from to meet your budget and capacity requirements, the WD Blue SN5000 series has you covered. It delivers an improved performance and reliability over the previous iteration. Recommended pricing for the WD Blue SN5000 range is as follows:

• 500GB – R699
• 1TB – R1,299
• 2TB – R2,699
• 4TB – R4,999

The WD Blue SN5000 range is available online at Evetech and Wootware.