ArticleManagerIn order to welcome the advent of the PCIe 4.0 era, Western Digital released the first PCIe 4.0 SSD of the “black disk family” as early as October 2020, the WD_BLACK SN850, ranking the first echelon of flagship PCIe 4.0 SSDs with read and write speeds of 7000MB/s and 5300MB/s.
Subsequently, Western Digital also released the WD_BLACK SN750 SE last year, allowing more consumers on a budget to enjoy the “benefits” of PCIe 4.0. However, WD_BLACK SN750 SE 1TB read and write speed (3600MB/s, 2830MB/s) is not much different from the king of the PCIe 3.0 era, the WD_BLACK SN750.
In other words, there is a huge gap in the market between the WD_BLACK SN750 SE, which targets mainstream players, and the high-performance flagship WD_BLACK SN850.
The good news is that this gap was filled by Western Digital, and we saw the new WD_BLACK SN770 NVMe SSD. It adopts the same cacheless design as the WD_BLACK SN750 SE, but increases the read speed to 5150MB/s level, combined with the recommended price of 499 yuan (250GB) ~ 2099 yuan (2TB) for e-commerce, and the WD_BLACK SN750 SE and WD_BLACK SN850 form a complete PCIe 4.0 SSD product matrix, further enriching the choice of gamers.
So, how does the WD_BLACK SN770 actually perform?
Single-sided cacheless design
The WD_BLACK SN770 is packed in the same style as its predecessors and highlights its maximum read speed of 5150MB/s.
WD_BLACK SN770’s PCB motherboard is still black, and the sticker in the middle is printed with serial number and parameter information, from which it can be seen that the SN770 operating voltage is 3.3V/1.8A, which is more energy-saving than the 3.3V/2.8A of WD_BLACK SN750 and WD_BLACK SN850.
WD_BLACK SN770 is available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB versions, and are all single-sided designs, the model reviewed in this article is a 1TB version, there is only 1 flash memory and 1 main control chip on the PCB motherboard, and the durability is 600TBW. The single-sided design means that the WD_BLACK SN770 is compatible with all notebooks that support 2280 SSDs, and its performance in heat dissipation is also outstanding.
For SSDs, technical autonomy is often an important guarantee for stable performance. This WD_BLACK SN770 adopts Western Digital’s self-developed main control and NAND flash memory particles, which can achieve unified tuning from hardware to firmware, which can naturally make the hard disk run more stable and durable for a long time.
WD_BLACK SN770 adopts the fourth-generation DRAM-less SSD cacheless technology, supports HMB function, coupled with PCIe 4.0 bandwidth support, can reach 5150MB/s speed. Officials said that its efficacy has increased by about 20% compared with the previous generation of products, bringing more powerful battery life.
Measured performance analysis
First of all, let’s take a look at the official performance parameters of Western Digital, WD_BLACK The speed index of the 1TB capacity version of the SN770 is the strongest in the family, with sequential read and write speeds of 5150MB/s and 4900MB/s respectively, and random reads and writes are 740K and 800K. So, can the measured data of the WD_BLACK SN770 meet these indicators?
The answer, naturally, is no problem.
In tests of the CrystalDiskMark 8 software, the sequential read and write speeds of the WD_BLACK SN770 1TB version were 5176MB/s and 4938MB/s, respectively.
The random read and write speeds in the CrystalDiskMark 8 test were 747K and 829K, respectively, and both exceeded the official nominal figures.
In the Txbench software test, the sequential read and write speed of the WD_BLACK SN770 can also reach the level of 5134MB/s and 4854MB/s.
When writing a 100GB file with HD Tune Pro, the WD_BLACK SN770 has no drop in speed, is stable at 4600MB/s, and the average read speed is about 4818MB/s.
During the test, the temperature of the hard drive was about 61 degrees Celsius, which is still a good performance for a PCIe 4.0 SSD. The reason is that WD_BLACK SN770 achieves a good heat dissipation effect through a simpler PCB layout and reducing the use of more electrical components. For desktop users, heat generation can be further reduced by adding a heat sink, and notebook users can consider using thermal grease to conduct the temperature of the drive to the bottom cover on the D side.
By the way, WD_BLACK SN770 can also manage the hard disk through the free download of Western Digital featured dashboard tools, including real-time display of key data (capacity temperature, etc.) during SSD operation, can enter the one-click blackout game mode, and also provides a very convenient SSD firmware upgrade function.
brief summary
As the latest member of the Western Digital WD_BLACK family, the WD_BLACK SN770 continues the cacheless design of the WD_BLACK SN750 SE, and achieves a high-speed read speed of 5000MB/s+ through self-developed main control, flash memory and firmware, as well as PCIe 4.0 bandwidth, and also takes into account the cost, which is expected to further promote the popularization of performance-level PCIe 4.0 SSDs.
With an optional capacity of up to 2TB, the drive is designed on one side to be compatible with more hardware platforms, meeting the needs of gamers installing more large triple-A games at the same time. The most important thing is that the official price of the WD_BLACK SN770 is basically the same as that of the WD_BLACK SN750, which belongs to the model of “increasing the amount without increasing the price”.