Western Digital Unveils WD Blue SN550 M.2 NVMe SSD

[erek]

Slow

"All three variants take advantage of the increased PCIe bandwidth to offer sequential read speeds of up to 2,400 MB/s (the SN500 capped out at 1,700 MB/s reads due to PCIe 3.0 x2). Write speeds vary, with the 250 GB variant offering up to 950 MB/s, the 500 GB variant up to 1750 MB/s, and the 1 TB variant up to 1,950 MB/s. Endurance figures (TBW) of the three variants are rated at 150 TB for the 250 GB variant, 300 TB for the 500 GB variant, and 600 TB for the 1 TB variant. An interesting design choice with these drives is pushing the NAND flash chip and the controller as far apart on the PCB as possible, for less concentration of heat. All three models are backed by 5-year warranties."

https://www.techpowerup.com/262050/western-digital-unveils-wd-blue-sn550-m-2-nvme-ssd

 

[motqalden]

I have a couple of SN500's i use on some of my rigs. They are decent but not earth shattering by any means. They were super cheap however. I couldn't find the SN550 yet at any of the retailers i checked. I would be interested in the 1TB version if the price is right which it should be.

 

[Marees]

Bumping this thread with a glowing review from Tom's Hardware

( My point of interest is the cheap price. If MS allows WD as a vendor for the series X, that could make add-on cards very affordable )

Today, we pit the WD Blue SN550 up against a variety of worthy competitors as well as a few alternatives to better reveal value. Let's take a look at where the WD Blue SN550 lands in this diverse group of drives:

1. From WD, we threw in the Black SN750, the company’s high-end NVMe SSD, and a 6TB WD Black 7200RPM HDD.
2. From Crucial, we've included the P1, a QLC based NVMe SSD and the MX500, a very popular SATA SSD.
3. Also, we dropped in the Kingston A2000, Intel SSD 665p, and Team Group's MP33 as alternative value options.
4. Finally, we added in one of our favorite SSDs, the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro,
5. and one of the fastest SSDs PCIe 4.0 SSDs available, the Corsair Force MP600.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd-blue-sn550-m2-nvme-ssd-review-best-dramless-ssd-yet/3

WD’s Blue SN550 is one of the most consistent performing low-cost NVMe SSDs available. Even though it has a small SLC write cache, when you hammer it with heavy writes, its slowest performance will still remain acceptable. In our testing, it even manages to respond faster to applications and most consumer workloads than the WD Black SN750, including loading up your favorite games.

Working against the WD Blue, Intel’s SSD 665p and Crucial’s P1 are both very competitive when it comes to light workloads and respond quickly to applications. But with their QLC NAND, the performance of those drives can sometimes lag behind other options. The same goes for the DRAMless Team Group MP33. With larger dynamic write caches, these drives can keep up with most other NVMe SSDs on a day to day basis, but once they are pushed beyond their cache, performance suffers greatly. And that is where WD’s Blue SN550 dominates these alternatives.

If you’re looking for a quick boot drive or just a speedy but cheap SSD to store your data, you don’t have to look any further. WD’s new Blue knocks it out of the park on performance and price.
...
With a 5-year warranty and plenty of endurance, the Blue SN550 is well worth considering, even if low cost isn't your main priority.

 

[whateverer]

Yeah, it's definitely my recommened 500gb drive. (still waiting to buy my first, but havn't runn out of storage yet.)

The new 1TB drive is also nicely priced.