WD Black SN7100 1 TB Review

It’s absolutely wild how quickly NAND prices have fallen over the past few years. This is one of the few areas in the space for PCs, in which technology development and costs seem to constantly improve year -on -year. Interestingly, it is Arena PCIe 4.0, which gains the most love and attention, despite 5.0 SSDs, which manage sequential performance. In fact, some of the best SSDs for games are now 4.0 disks. They are cheaper, cooler and work as well as their quick sequential counterparts.

The latest WD Black SN7100 West West Digital is a good example of this exact ethos. There is a uncomplicated drive on the surface. It is PCIE 4.0, has Koxia 218-Wayer BICS8 TLC NAND and Sandisk Polaris 3 A101 controller (the same in WD Blue SN5000, which I reviewed at the end of last year). After up-to-date trends, WD also dropped the dedicated Dram cache (honestly, you really don’t need it anymore) and went for a one -man drive project, thanks to which it is much more compatible with laptops, motherboards, consoles and smaller forms.

Nothing here, only a well -known manufacturer quietly releases a solid storage solution that occurs after market trends. Well, not quite, and the confusion is how this thing is placed in the WD arsenal.

The SN7100 is available from 500 GB up to 2 TB configurations, all of which are seamless. There are several martments of 4 TB configurations, but it is not yet available. They are also aggressively valued, from 60 to 140 USD. The problem, however, arises when you look at a wider pile of WD products, namely the SN850X line.

Now, there are some sedate differences here. The SN850X starts with a capacity of 1 TB and goes up to 8 TB (with 8 TB SN850X is another project with a denser 162-layer BICS6 TLC NAND compared to the first generation), but the point is that the valuation for versions not related to fever is almost identical. This is also a substantial problem, because the differences in performance between them are, well, quite irrelevant.

These are also two wild different SSDs. SN850X is not a one -sided project; It has a much less dense TLC NAND, has a drama cache and Triton MP16+ B2 controller to exploit it. He also has three years in the form of other than 8 TB.

So we have two SSDs, from the same company that on the surface are available at similar capacities, at identical prices that work almost exactly the same, prohibit some distant test results here and there. But the gap of time lasts three years. Normal.

Before I get to why this is so, let’s get to the performance figurines. The great news is that the SN7100 shines seriously, and Koxia 218-layer does not refrain. Especially in productivity.

In my tests, this provided some of the highest quality in Crystaldiskmark, it was an average result of 7116 Mb/SW reading and 6,820 Mb/SW record. In the case of contrast, SN850X (admittedly its 8 TB variant) obtained 7 100 Mb/SI 6590 Mb/SW record, only a bit behind these.

Random 4K performance for SN7100 was also a bit intriguing. He absolutely undressed every disk that I tested on the read front, winning a crazy 101 Mb/s. In the context, the second fastest disk I had during the test, PCIe Crucial 5.0 2 TB T700, managed only 81 Mb/s. However, it does not fall on part of the record of this reference point, landing only 276 Mb/s. Even with SN850X also overcoming him for a well margin 22 Mb/s.

Pc gamer test bench
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | ARIES: 64 GB (2x32GB) Team group T-Create Expert DDR5 @ 6000 C34 | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super | Motherboard: Asus Rog Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFi | CUP COOLER: Asus Rog Rejujin III 360 Argb Extreme | Dog: 1200W NZXT C1200 (2024) 80+ Gold | Chassis: Geometric future model 5

Similarly, the results in 3DMark memory tests also created mundane numbers. Although again closely related to the SN850X. Final Fantasy also landed in glossy 7.841 seconds, which makes it faster than 990 Evo plus Samsung, but barely. It also seems that these games prefer to have access to cache drama to load these scenarios, although the probability of actually noticing the difference between 7.8 and 7.3 seconds of the total number of loads within five separate scenes in real life is admittedly.

The great win was at a temperature. Under my branching of the motherboard, ASUS ROG Strix X870E-E SN7100 crowned an impressive low 48 ° C during a comparative course. This is again one of the best temperatures I’ve seen for some time, with the only pursuit that probably exceeds it when it comes to “wow, it’s impressive”, being the SSD MP700 PCIE 5.0 SSD, with its stunning 55 ° C (although interestingly, they exploit the same 218-layer judge).

So, considering the SN850X and he has been doing it for three years, why, on Earth, have released SN7100? In addition to a unilateral project. Well, admittedly, this is only speculation on my part, but I would bet that everything is about costs. But not for the consumer.

Removing the DDR4 DRAM cache, simplifying the design, so that its one -sided, and using a dense NAND (which allows you to reduce the number of chiplet on the SSD itself), WD effectively causes that this pursuit is much cheaper for production from a purely business perspective. This is quite fair; This is how technology develops. But I am annoyed by the fact that the consumer is not cheaper. As mentioned, the SN7100 is the same cost as the SN850X aging when it should actually be cheaper. Not by many people, but at least something is not. Probably at this moment SN850X is no longer in production, and this magazine is all that is left. With a ponderous withdrawal in favor of SN7100, and this nickname reserved the upcoming PCIe 5.0 or 6.0. Still, it would be nice to see the price drop.

Look, SN7100 provides two key, key areas. Random reading efficiency (the signature we exploit to determine the time of charging the game) and temperature, which in the world of brindle, hungry power, RTX 50990 and processors are not bad.

If you are looking for a solid and reliable SSD PCIe 4.0, which will not break the bank, the SN7100 is a good place to start.