Iometer
Finally, in order to also mimic heavy, heavy usage, we run Iometer with 4K random transfers split 50/50 over reads and writes. The difference is that we increase the queue depth (number of users) as we go down the graphs.
The WD Black NVMe isn't so hot with just one user, but the parallelism built into the controller scales well to a queue of 16. This is highly unlikely in a consumer environment, however, but it's good to know the drive has legs to spare. One would imagine it would be quite handy as an entry-level SQL server drive, too.
We also ran the drive on a 30-minute sequential test to see if there was any drop-off due to thermal throttling. It was installed without having a motherboard heatsink in place. Starting at 3,400MB/s read and 2,800MB/s write, the drive dropped a little, to 3,310MB/s and 2,650MB/s, respectively, although it still remained quick and responsive.