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Western Digital Quietly Launches the SN5000 Budget NVMe SSD

TheLostSwede

TheLostSwede

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Western Digital has released a new budget friendly SSD that got a serious jump in model number, since the company decided to call it the SN5000. Its predecessor is the SN580 launched just under a year ago and price wise, it's the better option of the two. The new SN5000 uses the same BiCS 5 TLC NAND as the SN580 on the 500 GB to the 2 TB SKU, but according to Anandtech, the 4 TB uses BiCS 6 QLC NAND. The SN5000 is still a PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe drive, but the overall performance has been significantly improved. If we use the 1 TB SKU for comparison, then the sequential read speeds have gone up by 1 GB/s from 4150 MB/s to 5150 MB/s. The sequential write speed is up 750 MB/s from 4150 MB/s to 4900 MB/s.

As for random performance, the read IOPS are up from 600K IOPS to 730K IOPS and the write IOPS are up slightly from 750K to 770K. The 4 TB QLC SKU is said to deliver even better performance with the exception of the random read IOPS. The 1 TB SKU is said to have a write endurance of 600 TBW, but the 4 TB SKU only offers 1200 TBW. That's 0.33 drive writes per day (DWPD) for the 1 TB SKU vs. 0.16 DWPD for the 4 TB SKU, showing the weakness of the QLC NAND. A new feature for the SN5000 series compared to previous WD Blue NVMe drives is support for TGC Pyrite 2.01 encryption. The WD SN5000-series starts at US$70 for the 500 GB model, going up to US$80 for 1 TB, US$140 for 2 TB and topping out at US$280 for the 4 TB model. WD only seems to have the 500 GB model in stock, with all the others being available in 3-4 weeks time. All SKUs come with a five year warranty.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
 
I wonder if they're going to refresh the WD Green SN350 with an SN3000, perhaps by using BiCS 6 QLC on all capacities instead.
 
I was about to shit my pants in excitement till i saw that WD had switched to using QLC. I thought they had always used TLC/MLC NAND for the blue.

:EDIT::

Yes im blind.
 
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Oooh, that would make an awesome, relatively cheap, 4TB expansion for my new ROG Ally X coming next month.

Enough space to dual boot Windows & Steam OS.
 
FreedomEclipse said:
I was about to shit my pants in excitement till i saw that WD had switched to using QLC. I thought they had always used TLC/MLC NAND for the blue.
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That only applies to the 4 TB SKU.
 
Yep i'd fancy a 4TB secondary storage install too. Was hoping for more 4TB budget releases but at a lower and more appealing cost. I'm still considering pulling the trigger on a 4TB Silicon Power UD90 or Crucial P3 Plus for ~£200. If these budget WDs arrive at a similar price in the UK and offer something better over the previous 2, i might just fancy it.
 
how is a SSD "budget" when it costs the same or even more than the competition that brands itself as premium?
 
GerKNG said:
how is a SSD "budget" when it costs the same or even more than the competition that brands itself as premium?
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You'll have to ask WD that, but their Blue range is their budget consumer drives, although their most basic drives are in the Green range.
Normally retail pricing is much lower than MSRP though.
SSD pricing doesn't make a whole heap of sense in general.
 
There's been surprisingly little news about new SSDs at Computex and after it, and all of the news are deeply unexciting.
 
Wirko said:
There's been surprisingly little news about new SSDs at Computex and after it, and all of the news are deeply unexciting.
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True, but SSDs basically became a commodity item now, the technology is stable and there aren’t any significant advances made except for increasing linear speeds, which isn’t particularly useful for many consumers and definitely isn’t exciting. Capacity is slowly increasing and the prices are somewhat going down, depending on the season, so that’s nice, I suppose. I don’t expect any real major shakeups unless NAND flash tech makes some sort of evolutionary leap, really.
 
Onasi said:
except for increasing linear speeds, which isn’t particularly useful for many consumers and definitely isn’t exciting.
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But watching windows install in 2 minutes is comical. No?
 
The Quim Reaper said:
Oooh, that would make an awesome, relatively cheap, 4TB expansion for my new ROG Ally X coming next month.

Enough space to dual boot Windows & Steam OS.
Click to expand...
I'm struggling to fill the 2TB I have on my Ally. 4TB is overkill lol.

Which distro are you using for SteamOS?
 
This is dead on arrival. A bunch of cheaper 4TB NVMe drives using TLC Flash (usually YMTC with a chinese controller) exist.
 
freeagent said:
But watching windows install in 2 minutes is comical. No?
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Amusing though that is, I wouldn’t in good conscience recommend anyone spending more on, say, a Gen5 drive and deal with the heat issues just to shave off some time on OS installs. It is ONE way to show that some sort of progress is made, I grant you that.
 
4tb using QLC at 280 dollar's is tone-deaf if I want slower than spinning rust performance while trying to fill the 4tb I'll buy one of the no name 4tb nvme flooding the market for 100 dollar's less. More rubbish from WD .
 
What do you mean by "quietly launches?"
 
SSGBryan said:
Yep. I can't see this selling if people actually look at what is available.
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Oh it will sell just fine. The SN580 did, and so did the SN350.

I'm actually interested in a Green SN3000 - I've a couple of 480 gig SN350s here and for what they cost, they are just fine, and don't need any better for video games.
 
Dr. Dro said:
Oh it will sell just fine. The SN580 did, and so did the SN350.

I'm actually interested in a Green SN3000 - I've a couple of 480 gig SN350s here and for what they cost, they are just fine, and don't need any better for video games.
Click to expand...

Yeah, even the old intel SSD makes the game tips go passed to fast, very annoying with a new game haha.
 
Easy Rhino said:
What do you mean by "quietly launches?"
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No official announcement of any kind.
Most companies announce new products and WD put out press materials for the SN580, as per the link in the article.
 
The 1-2 TB versions seem superior to the SN770, and the QLC 4 TB version absolutely is superior to the SN770, which doesn't exist. All in all, not bad. Let's wait and see what the SN8000 brings to the table.
 
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