WD Black SN850 1 TB SSD

[mtrantalainen]

SSD in the PC industry refers to NAND flash, which Optane isn't.

SSD literally means Solid State Drive. Did you notice the letters "SSD" in the name of the Intel's product?

I agree that 905P is more expensive than slower drivers but then again you don't get 2x the performance of 50% cheaper drivers with Samsung 980 PRO either which I guess would be included in your "SSD really means NAND" idea.

In real-world consumer tasks, an Optane SSD and decent NVMe drive would provide experiences so similar that people would struggle to identify which was which in blind A/B testing.

If you really believe that "people" cannot see difference between 5x faster drive then I guess any SSD will do for those people and benchmarking any SSD drives is wasted effort. I can definitely see difference between 905P and e.g. Samsung 980 but I know where the difference really shows. On the other hand, I also know how much more expensive 905P is so I don't get it for every system.

I also know not to declare slower devices as fastest.

 

[Chrispy_]

SSD literally means Solid State Drive. Did you notice the letters "SSD" in the name of the Intel's product?

I predicted you would be this pedantic.

If you want to be pedantic and say that Optane is a "solid state drive" then so are lots of other things like RAM, DVD discs, and BIOS chips.

Do you know what else is solid state? Mechanic hard drives, Books, and carved stone tablets. I don't know how to make it more clear to you than I already have; The term "SSD" in the PC industry refers to a specific type of NAND+controller arrangement - Bootable USB memory sticks, eMMC Chromebook drives, and Optane drives aren't included. I have already listed several other "solid state" storage mediums but despite being solid state drives, they are not classed as such and go out of their way to make the distinction that they are not SSDs.

If you don't like those rules, then argue with the manufacturers, not me. Intel themselves go out of their way to say that 3D Xpoint is not NAND, and Optane is not an SSD

If you really believe that "people" cannot see difference between 5x faster drive then I guess any SSD will do for those people and benchmarking any SSD drives is wasted effort. I can definitely see difference between 905P and e.g. Samsung 980 but I know where the difference really shows. On the other hand, I also know how much more expensive 905P is so I don't get it for every system.

This depends on your definition of "people". If by "people" you mean people like me who are enterprise datacenter architects spinning up dozens of database VMs per host with 50K IOPS needed per host with overheads, then yes - Optane has a place. That is, in fact, what Optane was designed for and it does a fantastic job.

If by "people" you mean your average consumer, like me at home with a single-socket CPU on a consumer motherboard just trying to do consumer things like game, encode, compile, and piss about with benchmarking software, then Optane is completely pointless outside of pissing about with benchmarking software. What exactly are you doing that can justify a $2500 purchase on a refurbished, discontinued product that Intel abandoned in the consumer market because it was so utterly pointless?

Intel cancelled Optane, the consumer version of it's 3D Xpoint storage, because there was no viable consumer market for it.
You cannot buy it (new) any more, it has limited purpose outside of extremely niche applications, and even when you could buy it as a consumer it was frighteningly expensive for marginal gains.
If I had to guess, these are the reasons why TechPowerUp doesn't compare consumer SSDs to Optane any more.

 

[ryderstorm]

WD Black SN850 1 TB SSD Review - The Fastest SSD

The WD Black SN850 is the fastest SSD we ever tested thanks to support for the fast PCI-Express 4.0 interface. In our extensive real-life testing it beats the Samsung 980 Pro, the Phison E18-based Corsair MP600 Pro, and even the MLC-based Samsung 970 Pro.

www.techpowerup.com

On that page of the review, it says:

Due to the compact form factor, M.2 drives lack the ability to cool themselves and usually have to rely on passive airflow instead. All vendors include some form of thermal throttling on their drives as a safeguard, which limits throughput once a certain temperature is exceeded.

On this page, we will investigate whether the tested drive has such a mechanism

But the page never states any conclusion of the investigation. Looking at the charts, the transfer rates never dropped, even when the drive was running at 85C. The data in doesn't indicate any thermal throttling happened, but also indicates that the drive never reached a point where throttling would kick in.

Anybody have any clarification on if this drive has thermal throttling? The official datasheet isn't clear:

https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-black-ssd/data-sheet-wd-black-sn850-nvme-ssd.pdf

 

[W1zzard]

But the page never states any conclusion of the investigation. Looking at the charts, the transfer rates never dropped, even when the drive was running at 85C. The data in doesn't indicate any thermal throttling happened, but also indicates that the drive never reached a point where throttling would kick in.

Anybody have any clarification on if this drive has thermal throttling?

In our testing the drive never throttled, and we're testing pretty much worst case. I'm sure if does have the thermal throttling capability if it gets too hot (it won't just die).

 

[R-T-B]

Do you know what else is solid state? Mechanic hard drives

No. Technically, since the pedantic ship sailed long ago, solid state simply means "no moving parts." HDDs do not qualify.

 

[Chrispy_]

No. Technically, since the pedantic ship sailed long ago, solid state simply means "no moving parts." HDDs do not qualify.

I'm sorry to say that the U.S.S. Pedantic sank into the ocean almost three months ago, no reported survivors.

 

[R-T-B]

I'm sorry to say that the U.S.S. Pedantic sank into the ocean almost three months ago, no reported survivors.

So it did indeed sail?

Ah, I necro-quote'd. Sorry.

 

[Chrispy_]

So it did indeed sail?

Indeed she did sail!

Out of context I think the mechanical hard disk platters can be considered solid state in the same way that a vinyl record is solid state. Alas it doesn't really matter as the point I was making is that neither of them are an SSD as defined by the PC industry. Sometimes analogies backfire.

 

[Yearofthegoat]

Am looking for a new nvme and the SN850 is the cheapest vs 980 Pro, Firecuda 530 and MP600. The SN850 reportedly runs hotter than those by maybe 2x (e.g. vs the 530). Not really a problem if it doesn't throttle, I guess.

I was just wondering which M2 slot was used in testing, and whether the motherboard heatsink was on or not?

I have an MSI Tomahawk X570 board that has heatsinks for its two M2 slots, hence the question. Thanks

 

[W1zzard]

I was just wondering which M2 slot was used in testing, and whether the motherboard heatsink was on or not?

I always use the slot closest to the CPU (above the VGA card). No motherboard heasink, just the bare drive like you see it in thermal camera photo

SN850 is the cheapest vs

Buy the SN850

 

[Yearofthegoat]

Thanks, that clears things up. £124 (~$170) for 1TB at Amazon right now.

 

[Yearofthegoat]

Well, I got one, it arrived yesterday and it's quick, that's for sure. But it's also quite hot - runs ca. 70C during a CrystalDiskMark test. This is with the stock heatsink on my motherboard (MSI Tomahawk x570).

Will keep an eye on it, temp wise. Haven't seen any throttling, but does anyone know at what temp that kicks in? The WD Dashboard reports that the drive overheats. Might have to return it.

Thanks

Update: The drive just quit transferring a disk image file, as it overheated. This is with the heatsink on (v hot to the touch) and the side of the case still off.

Returned to Amazon, and FireCuda 530 ordered instead.

 

[W1zzard]

runs ca. 70C during a CrystalDiskMark test

that's not hot

does anyone know at what temp that kicks in

WD Black SN850 1 TB SSD Review - The Fastest SSD

The WD Black SN850 is the fastest SSD we ever tested thanks to support for the fast PCI-Express 4.0 interface. In our extensive real-life testing it beats the Samsung 980 Pro, the Phison E18-based Corsair MP600 Pro, and even the MLC-based Samsung 970 Pro.

www.techpowerup.com

I couldn't get it to throttle, even at over 80°C

The drive just quit transferring a disk image file, as it overheated

that's not how thermal protection should work. the drive should just slow down

 

[Yearofthegoat]

By quit, I meant slowed right down to a crawl such that the transfer would take hours. I didn't buy a Gen4 SSD to have it run like a snail in normal use, hence why I'm returning it.

No big deal, I knew it was going to be hot before I bought it. At least I tried it rather than dismissing it out of hand. If it had worked, I'd have saved £25. But it didn't.

 

[W1zzard]

By quit, I meant slowed right down to a crawl such that the transfer would take hours. I didn't buy a Gen4 SSD to have it run like a snail in normal use, hence why I'm returning it.

Interesting, how's the airflow in your case? Considering that you've got the mobo cooler installed I would have expected no throttling at all, especially since I saw no throttling in my review either

 

[Yearofthegoat]

Interesting, how's the airflow in your case? Considering that you've got the mobo cooler installed I would have expected no throttling at all, especially since I saw no throttling in my review either

Airflow is fine, at least fine enough for the other components anyway (Ryzen 5 3600, RX580). Noctua D15 (IIRC), four case fans, front to back airflow. One of them blows more or less directly at the GPU/M2 area.

As mentioned above, the heatsink was on, and the side of the case was off. The SN850 still hit 81C, according to the WD Dashboard. I haven't installed any cooling specifically for the SN850.

Since this is a main desktop used for work/DAW/Photoshop/video transcoding occasionally, it needs to be capable but quiet in normal use. The SN850 I received is no good for this use case, as it's just too hot without either fitting extra, specific cooling, or making the whole rig too noisy to use as intended.

The FireCuda arrived just this morning, so it'll be interesting to see how that performs in the same situation.

 

[Yearofthegoat]

Just by way of an update, the FireCuda 530 stays at a much lower 46C when doing a 200+GB write (a Macrium image file, from a WD SN750, same as I tried with the SN850). Performance wise, it's very similar so altogether a better-suited drive for my purposes than the very hot SN850.

 

[amd64skater]

My benchmark with current setup. With the SN850 1TB