WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD Review: Made For Pro Gamers

Specifications

• Interface - PCIe Gen3 8 Gb/s, up to 4 lanes
• Sequential Read/Write (1 TB) - Up to 3,470 MB/s Read
• Up to 3,000 MB/s Write
• Form Factor - M.2 2280

 

Design And Installation

The WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD comes in two variants. The base model costs slightly less than the model with physical heatsink, which is claimed to sustain the performance even with the continues usage. We have been using the standard version of the WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD, and it does look almost identical to most of the M.2 SSDs in the market.

The SSD comes with a black colored sticker, which explains some of the features and specifications of the WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD, which also offers a stealth look compared to other SSDs.As of mentioned in my previous SSD reviews, installing the M.2 SSD to a laptop or a desktop is a pretty straight forward process and one can do the same in just seconds.

The WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD can be used on both laptops and desktops. However, the WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD with the heatsink can only be used on a desktop setup.

Benchmark And Performance

Though it is a 1 TB SSD, after formatting to NTFS the drive offers 932 GB of storage and is based on NVM Express 1.3 and uses PCIe 3.0 x4 standard.

On the CrystalDiskMark 6.0, the WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD records a read speed of 3294 MB/s or 3.3 GB/s, and a read speed of 3016 MB/s or 3.0 GB/s of write speed. The read speed is slightly slower than the Samsung 970 EVO Plus, which offers around 3.5 GB/s, whereas, the write speed on the WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD is faster compared to the 970 EVO Plus, which offers an average write speed of 2.3 GB/s.

Compared to the read-speed of a typical 7200 RPM HHD, these scores are at least 10x higher, which should improve with the day to day tasks like gaming and moving big sized files.

Real World Test

In the real world test, I tried to copy a 60GB file from an HHD, which offered an average copy speed of 255 MB/s and the drive maintained a steady copy speed through the transfer. Similarly, when I tried to copy the same file internally (after restarting the device to remove the cache) it offered an average write speed of 1.07 GB/s.

These numbers re-iterate the fact that the WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD is a really quick SSD. Though the SSD might not improve the gaming performance, it will help to load the game much quicker compared to the standard HHD or a SATA SSD.

We tried to load the GTA V game from a standard 7200 RPM HHD and it took around 1 minute and 37 seconds to load the game and WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD just took 1 minute 2 seconds to load the same game, which is around 35% quicker compared to the HDD load speeds. As per the gaming is concerned, we did not notice any sort of difference in the graphics performance.

Verdict

There is no doubt in the fact that the WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD is a fast SSD, which will help you to load apps and games quickly compared to a typical HDD or SSD. The read speed of the WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD is slightly lower than the Samsung 970 Plus EVO SSD, but the WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD offers better write speeds compared to the Samsung's counterpart.

With almost 1 TB of high-speed storage, one can install games and apps directly on the SSD, which load quickly compared to an HDD. Installing the OS on the SSD will also improve the OS boot speed, and the WD Black SN750 M.2 SSD is a must for professional users and gaming enthusiasts, who value every second of their time.