Review: WD Blue SN550 NVMe PCIe SSD (1TB)

by Tarinder Sandhu on 23 July 2020, 14:01

Tags: WD (NYSE:WDC)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaem4j

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Test Setup

HEXUS 2020 Test Platform

Component Product Page
Processor AMD Ryzen 9 3950X amd.com
Motherboard Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Formula asus.com
CPU Cooler Corsair Hydro Series H150i Pro RGB corsair.com
Graphics Card Sapphire Nitro+ RX 5700 XT 8G GDDR6 SE sapphiretech.com
Memory G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4-3200 (2x16GB) gskill.com
Storage 2TB Corsair MP600 corsair.com
Power Supply be quiet! Straight Power 11 Platinum 1,000W bequiet.com
Network Card Asus XG-C100C 10GBase-T PCIe Adapter asus.com
Chassis Fractal Design Define 7 Clear Tempered Glass fractal-design.com
Monitor Philips Momentum 436M6VBPAB philips.co.uk
Keyboard Corsair K70 RGB MK.2 Low Profile Rapidfire corsair.com
Mouse Corsair Ironclaw RGB corsair.com
Operating System Microsoft Windows 10 Pro microsoft.com

Comparison Drive Configurations

Model Capacity Form Factor Controller Firmware Protocol / Interface Reviewed
Price
HEXUS Review
Corsair Force Series MP600 1TB M.2 2280 Phison E16 EGFM11.3 NVMe / PCIe 4.0 x4 £195 N/A
WD Blue SN550 1TB M.2 2280 WD In-House 211070WD NVMe / PCIe 3.0 x4 £110 Link
Kioxia Exceria 1TB M.2 2280 Toshiba TC58NC1202GST 12.7 NVMe / PCIe 3.0 x4 £105 Link
Crucial MX300 1TB 2.5in Marvell 88SS1074 M0CR070 AHCI / SATA 3.0 NA N/A

Benchmarks

CrystalDiskMark 7 CrystalDiskMark provides various storage benchmarks, but we're interested in the sequential and and 4K numbers.
Custom Torture Test Copying a 93.8GB, 20,704-file folder back on to the drive.
Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers An alternative storage benchmark used to gauge game load time.
PCMark 10 Storage PCMark 10's full system drive test is a demanding workload with a heavy, continuous load.
SPECworkstation 3.0.4 Hammering the drive by running the intensive SPEC workstation storage trace program and recording raw results.

Notes

We've added an older SATA-based drive in the form of the Crucial MX300 into these benchmarks. The purpose is to show the supposed benefits of moving from traditional SSD storage to M.2 NVMe drives offering faster performance everywhere it matters. Consider the MX300 as defining the baseline storage performance for a system in 2020.

We also test the drives without the heatsink provided by the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Formula motherboard. The reason for doing so rests with ensuring the drives function as advertised in normal conditions.