WD Black SN7100 2 TB

[phxrider]

Not sure why everyone is bagging on these being DRAM-less, do any of them actually own a DRAM-less drive for comparison, or are they just speculating? I have a few Silicon Power US75s (which use the same Maxio 1602 DRAM-less controller as the Lexar 790) and you absolutely cannot tell the difference between that drive and the 990 Pro in ANY real world desktop use. None whatsoever. I could lie to you about which drive you were using, and you would never be one iota the wiser. Therefore, I will be buying those for every system I build, at $115 for 2TB.

This WD looks like a great drive, just needs to come down in price a bit. Even though there's no real world difference, DRAM-less SSDs should be cheaper than ones with DRAM, like the Maxio controller drives are.

 

[_roman_]

Not sure why everyone is bagging on these being DRAM-less, do any of them actually own a DRAM-less drive for comparison, or are they just speculating?

I'm very happy to have sold my DRAM Less drive which was in my external USB-NVME bridge case. Something like WD Blue SN-570 1TB. That drive hopefully does it job in the hp laptop i repaired.

I put in my previous motherboard drive Crucial P5 Plus 1TB which has dedicated DRAM.
My mixed backup decreased by one minute for a 6 minute backup job. The files and backup size are similar. The difference is big and noticeable.

I have long term values so I can judge very well for myself if DRAM-less is junk.

You would expect that a 10gbps USB NVME bridge case would be the limiting factor. The bottleneck is the WD DRAM Less drive. I used before different SATA SSDs with usb 5gps usb-sata bridge case. I have very long term comparision values.

That was one point.

Second point: Theorectically you have more bus transfer because of no dram. Which is worse for my platform with X670 amd mainboard.

Third point: The design is trash.

Fourth point: Why should i buy a worse product when I get for similar money the better product from a well known brand. Which is reliable and where I know the long term impact.

My excuse for the WD Blue drive. The prices for the nvme were much higher. The intended purpose was as a backup storage.

and you absolutely cannot tell the difference between that drive and the 990 Pro in ANY real world desktop use.

Real world desktop use is another use case scenario. Mostly never utilised drive. You may also use SATA drives when i read your comments, which are far worse in performance.

 

[phxrider]

I'm very happy to have sold my DRAM Less drive which was in my external USB-NVME bridge case. Something like WD Blue SN-570 1TB.

Cool story. I'm guessing most people don't buy fast NVMe drives to use as USB storage. But HMB doesn't work over USB, so in that niche case you definitely should get one with DRAM. Doesn't mean it's junk, it means you're using it in an application it's not optimal for. These are designed to be the C: drive in a desktop or laptop, not to be used in servers, storage enclosures, or disk heavy niche workstation loads. They're essentially as good as anything in the use case they are intended for - Office runs the same, games run the same, web browsing runs the same. That's about 90% of non-enterprise use right there.

 

[Chrispy_]

Cool story. I'm guessing most people don't buy fast NVMe drives to use as USB storage. But HMB doesn't work over USB, so in that niche case you definitely should get one with DRAM. Doesn't mean it's junk, it means you're using it in an application it's not optimal for. These are designed to be the C: drive in a desktop or laptop, not to be used in servers, storage enclosures, or disk heavy niche workstation loads. They're essentially as good as anything in the use case they are intended for - Office runs the same, games run the same, web browsing runs the same. That's about 90% of non-enterprise use right there.

This, I don't use DRAMless drives for NAS/RAID cache either, as HMB is specific to the OS and many of these NAS OSes or RAID controllers don't have an OS that can use HMB.

For Windows I have no qualms with modern DRAMless. HMB is definitely as good as DRAM, provided it's going into a system that supports it.

 

[THU31]

My mixed backup decreased by one minute for a 6 minute backup job.

Wow. It would take me more than 1 minute to think of what I could do with that extra 1 minute I saved with a faster drive.

Kidding aside, I can't ever imagine a scenario where I'd care about "productivity" performance in a home environment. Whether it's copying files, encoding video or whatever. When it's done, it's done. I'm doing other things while that task is happening. Of course it's great when it can be completed faster, but I'd never pay extra to achieve that.

 

[Wirko]

We should be aware of those special cases where HMB doesn't work but those are special cases. External enclosures, NAS, DAS, perhaps some flavours of Linux and certain handhelds. And my Windows 7, haha (the best I found was a Samsung NVMe driver which is half-compatible with my KC3000).

It would be nice if TPU ran a few critical benchmarks with HMB disabled when reviewing SSDs. But what operations are critical? Random writing?

 

[Chrispy_]

Kidding aside, I can't ever imagine a scenario where I'd care about "productivity" performance in a home environment. Whether it's copying files, encoding video or whatever. When it's done, it's done. I'm doing other things while that task is happening. Of course it's great when it can be completed faster, but I'd never pay extra to achieve that.

We truly are at a point where a lot of people don't need more performance than even what a cheap QLC drive can provide.

However, thinking like that is what got us almost a decade of Intel quad-core stagnation, so I will never stop praising progress (as long as it comes at a sensible price and doesn't push the power consumption up to the point that it excludes common use cases - like the need for heatsinks and fans for SSDs that means they can only be used in desktops, not laptops or consoles - and only desktops with motherboard layouts that don't bury the PCIe 5.0 slot underneath something like a CPU cooler or GPU cooler!)

It would be nice if TPU ran a few critical benchmarks with HMB disabled when reviewing SSDs. But what operations are critical? Random writing?

I think so. If it's used in a situation where HMB can't be used, it's probably being used for file storage rather than running an OS or applications, it's most likely as a write cache, and the biggest deficit of DRAMless drives without HMB is shown in small random writes.

 

[THU31]

However, thinking like that is what got us almost a decade of Intel quad-core stagnation, so I will never stop praising progress...

Progress is great, but personally I care more about storage capacity than performance, that's where I want to see progress. I'm still waiting for SSDs to match HDDs in terms of GB per dollar (which will happen, as HDDs are not getting cheaper anymore).
I still use HDDs for video storage, as they're much cheaper and transfer speeds are not that important. But I'd love to be able to buy big and slow SATA SSDs. That would still raise the transfer speeds by 3-7 times (some of my old HDDs are very slow) and eliminate all noise.

 

[_roman_]

Cool story. I'm guessing most people don't buy fast NVMe drives to use as USB storage. But HMB doesn't work over USB, so in that niche case you definitely should get one with DRAM.

It is called backup. Do not tell me you do a backup on the same hardware in teh same computer. Do you? Faulty hardware could possibily ruin all the connected hardware in teh computer.
cloud is not to my liking. NAS is something which gets more complicated. USB is far easier.

Not really. Price / Cost / Brand count for backups. My scenario still showed me how bad WD dram less drives are in real life for mixed data.

These are designed to be the C: drive in a desktop or laptop

DRAM Less drives are designed to be low value components. I would not use it for C: where it possible slow down the main system bus and all the applications. It may be used for rarely used data which may be used previous on harddiscs

--

You guys miss the point. The inital question was - why all the complaints about DRAM less drives. I gave an explanation why they are bad - very bad. It is not about if someone should make a backup. Or if backups on USB are the right choice. It is about comparing DRAM less vs DRAM drive in an external - very slow 10gbps usb nvme case. There are even 20gbps cases available which costs instead of 20€ around 50€. USb 4 upgrade would cost me in the range of 200€ which is not worth it for only backup purposes. New add in cards and new usb 4 usb nvme bridge case.

--

We talk about storage. We do not talk about a idle windows 11 pro computer which does nothing and barely reads data.
DRAM less drives cause more useless writes over the system bus. regardless if it is over x670 chip - connection - x670 chip - processor or // direct connection to the processor. When building a computer i want to avoid overhead. I buy a computer which handles an instruction faster and than i buy a cheap "junk" drive from WD which slows down every data send to the data drive. Does not make sense. This is the same for microcontrollers and any other similar device. You may look into those keywords in detail if you are interested.

 

[phxrider]

It is called backup. Do not tell me you do a backup on the same hardware in teh same computer. Do you? Faulty hardware could possibily ruin all the connected hardware in teh computer.
cloud is not to my liking. NAS is something which gets more complicated. USB is far easier.

No, my stuff is mirrored on 2 different drives hooked to separate hosts. I just don't complain about a particular type of drive not being suited to that niche use. I use SATA drives on USB hanging off of mini PCs and it's plenty fast.... Because most of us who have been building computers for a long time now have plenty of SATA drives sitting around collecting dust or had them for a previous application.

 

[tsunami2311]

I think I gona pick this when on sale the 4tb and throw it in to z170 build might be limited to 3.0 speed but it should also keep temp a bit lower, I dont do large file transfer/writes so it should not mater if it dramless


150gb partion for OS and rest partition for Data/Games, atlest till I do a new system that has access to more then 1 NVME, Then I can retired my 830 ssd from lighter use like linux test bed and offload my games from 860 evo 1gb to SN7100

 

[Ridicke]

Only one question. I am about to buy the 2tb wd 7100 ssd and will install it in a laptop. In the review it is praised its efficiency and thermal performance, yet the controller of the drive has reached 110 degrees Celsius, which it is kind of concerning as I will use the drive without a heatsink. Other reviewers are also saying that this drive runs very efficient and cool... It is kind of confusing... Are there other ssd options that would have lower temperatures than this model? Thanks!

 

[chrcoluk]

I got one of these (1TB) to go in my new laptop and temp is really low for a NVME drive, only 31C during the summer. Have WD finally improved idle states? The M.2 port is limited to 3x2 though, so maybe that has something to do with it.

 

[tsunami2311]

I picked up the 4tb verison of this on primeday for $229 and ThermalRight TR-M.2 2280 type AB as my z170 extreme 4 from asrock dont have heatsink and I pretty sure the M2 slot directly under the pcie 3.0 slot for gpu, Though I dont think I should need if it running at 3.0 mode I just dont want heat from that make my gpu runn hotter

 

[3DVCash]

I picked up the 4tb verison of this on primeday for $229

Saaame! That discount was just too juicy to pass up. Especially since flash storage prices are supposed to surge this fall.

Mine still hasn't shipped tho

 

[tsunami2311]

Saaame! That discount was just too juicy to pass up. Especially since flash storage prices are supposed to surge this fall.

Mine still hasn't shipped tho

mine shipped, but honetly I regret not buy NVME few year back when I could get 2tb $89 now prices have gone nut this was pre covid/greed though, and purposely reducing production to keep prices high

 

[blinnbanir]

The best time to buy SSDs, just like most PC hardware is Black Friday

 

[Tyler-98-W68]

Fastest gen 4 drive but the KC3000 is beating it in most metrics?