Western Digital WD Blue 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD Review

WD Blue 512GB NVMe SSD Review Western Digital's new WD Blue SN500 SSD could very well be the entry into the fast-paced world of NVMe drives for a lot of people. It promises a solid performance without breaking your budget. And isn't that something we all can get behind? WD Blue NVMe SSD Western Digital is known for its colour coded drives. Blue is the entry-level drives and intended for the general consumer. With that in mind, we already know that the WD Blue SN500 (product link) is a very competitive priced drive. With the NVMe standard to back it up, it delivers great performance at the same time. Granted, it is only a 2-lane drive, but that's still a lot better than SATA. The WD Blue is a complete in-house design which utilises their own controller and 3D NAND. There's no DRAM found on this drive which is another cost-saving factor. SSDs draw less power than HDDs and NVMe drives also deliver better performance than SATA drives. So there are another couple of reasons to upgrade. Especially if it is affordable. The WD Blue is a standard M.2 2280 PCIe drive which will fit into any system which can accommodate such. Without a heatsink, there are no worries needed when it comes to inteference issues. Performance and Endurance The WD Blue delivers up to 1700/1450 MB/s at sequential read and write operations. Random read and writes come in at 275K and 300K IOPS respectively. That is for the 500GB model which I'm testing today. Other capacity options vary slightly. The smaller 250GB model which also is available is a little slower. It comes in at 1700/1300 MB/s sequential and 210K/170K IOPS random. Endurance wise, you get a TBW rating of 150 per 250GB capacity. That makes it 300TB for the 500GB model I'm testing today. The MTBF ratinng is set at 1.75 million hours while WD backs the drive with a 5-year warranty. Software Western Digital also offers downloadable software for your new drive. There is the SSD Dashboard which allows you to monitor and mange the drive. Check up on its state and make sure it's running the latest firmware. It even features links to common used drive settings in Windows. This includes Disk Management, System Properties, and Device Manager. The places you'll open and look if you're troubleshooting a drive. Feature Highlights Transfer speeds up to 1,700MB/s Lower power draw over SATAFueled by Western Digital in-house controller and 3D NANDDownloadable WD SSD Dashboard5-Year Warranty Specifications The specifications are valid at the time of this review, but might be subject to changes in possible reivisions of the product. Changes are rare, but can happen. Package and Accessories Western Digital's packaging is easily recognisable and that's no different for the new Blue SN500. It follows the same design as the previous drive that we've seen from the company. The front has the name and an image of the drive along with the capacity, speed, and warranty information. The rear side doesn't feature a lot more information, but it does give us a view on the included drive. Or at least part of it. The drive is securely packed inside in a hard-plastic package. The only other thing you'll find in the package is the technical support and warranty guide. Testing & Methodology In a bid to make our testing as thorough and as accurate as possible, we have devised a testing methodology that will give us the maximum amount of data. While this means that testing each drive will take considerably longer – easily up 36 hours – the overall picture that we can gather is bigger too. It helps both you as the reader and us as the reviewer’s to gain a clearer view of the drive’s overall performance, strengths, and weaknesses. It also provides a more accurate analysis of how each drive performs under different conditions. Data Fillage There are many ways to test a storage drive, and we have chosen to include close to every test possible. We will start with a typical benchmark analysis of the formatted drive with various village scenarios. However, depending on how a drive is built, the performance may differ depending on how much data it is already storing. Testing this, the drive will be tested empty as well as with 25%, 50%, and 75% space usage. For these tests, we will be using Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AS SSD Benchmark, ATTO Benchmark, and CrystalDiskMark. Application and Gaming Besides these synthetic fill tests, the drive is tested with PCMark 8’s storage benchmark to get real-world performance results. Plain Drive Performance Following the fillage tests, the partition gets removed, and we check the drive’s raw performance. These tests will determine the hardware’s capabilities while eliminating any interference from the set file system. AIDA64’s storage benchmark and IOmeter are both great tools for this, and they help us paint an even clearer picture of the drive. The IOmeter tests I run are quite different from the rest as they will give a final result after a longer performance test rather than a maximum or average score; this gives us yet another view of the tested drive over the regular tests. Drive Conditioning Durability is a vital factor when it comes to NAND-based drives as the chips only can be rewritten so many times before they’ll stop working properly. Modern SSDs come with wear-level algorithms to increase the lifetime and reduce this factor as much as possible. We also take this into consideration in our reviews even tho it would take years to simulate this under real-world conditions. Luckily, Anvil’s Storage Utilities comes with an endurance test that can perform this action much faster, but it is still a time-consuming process. Depending on the hardware, this can easily take several days, and we write thousands and thousands of small files in various sizes and compressibility to drive over and over. Following this conditioning process, all of the previous benchmarks will be run again in the same scenarios and the same order. This will give us a great view of how a drive will perform after prolonged usage, and that is a very vital factor when you pick out your storage drive. The Preparation and In Between The drive will be formatted as NTFS with default settings, as most users will do. The quick format option isn’t used as that might affect the performance the first time data is written. Modern operating systems all take care of the TRIM command in the background and it isn’t something to worry about for regular users. However, for these reviews, I will add a waiting period between each benchmark to make sure that the TRIM command has been fully executed and finished. After all, we want a clear picture of the drive’s performance with minimal interference from the operating system. On each page that follows with the benchmark results, I have inserted result screenshots from the benchmarks, created drive analysis chart for the fill-level performance, and added drive comparison charts where possible. Hardware Supermicro C7Z270-PG Intel Core i7-7700KCrucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz (4x8GB)Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSDbe quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 (1200W)Noctua NH-D15SCooler Master HAF XB EVO with Noctua NF-A14 FLX fans Software AIDA64 Storage Benchmark Anvil's Storage UtilitiesAS SSD BenchmarkATTO BenchmarkCrystalDiskMarkIOMeterPCMark 8 Storage BenchmarkWindows 10 AIDA64 Storage Benchmark AIDA64 is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users with a broad range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. The app has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives and is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also has a disk benchmark tool, and that is the one I’ll be using. Fresh Drive The Linear Read and Write tests measure the sequential performance by reading or writing all sectors without skipping any. It gives us a view of the drives overall performance from start to end. The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. The Access Time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Conditioned Drive The Linear Read and Write tests measure the sequential performance by reading or writing all sectors without skipping any. It gives us a view of the drives overall performance from start to end. The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Drive Analysis Anvil's Storage Benchmark Anvil’s Storage Utilities is a complete benchmark solution used to test any writeable storage drive. It also has a drive endurance test that consistently reads and writes data to the selected medium to deliver days, months, and potentially even years of use in a shorter period. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive’s consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. AS SSD Storage Benchmark The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD, and they aren’t using the operating system cache. The copy tests are cached and as such not viable results at this time. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive’s consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. ATTO Disk Benchmark The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customise your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive’s consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD and SSD benchmark utility that allows you to measure a drive’s sequential and random performance. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive’s consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. IOmeter IOMeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterisation tool for single and clustered systems. As a benchmark and troubleshooting tool, it is configurable to replicate the behaviour of many popular applications. One commonly quoted measurement provided by the tool is IOPS. Sequential Tests Random Tests Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. PCMark 8 Storage Benchmark PCMark 8 Storage benchmark tests the performance of SSDs, HDDs, and SSHD hybrid drives with traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office and a selection of games. You can test any recognised storage device, including local external drives. Unlike synthetic storage tests, the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark highlights real-world performance differences between storage devices. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. Pricing and Final Thoughts I meantioned a few times earlier that the WD Blue SN500 won't break your budget. So let us get to the price point. At the time of this review, the 500GB version can be yours for $77.99 and £66.99 through Amazon. The smaller 250GB model can be yours for $54.99 and £46.99. Final Thoughts The terms entry-level and budget have changed and gotten a new meaning since NVMe drives entered the market. We get very well-performing drives for relatively little money. At least when we compare it to what it was not long ago. Western Digital created an amazing drive with the WD Blue SN500. It meets all the requirements of a great drive for your entry into this new world of even faster drives. Sure, it doesn't break any records, but it wasn't built to do so. With its 2 PCIe lanes, it has some natural limitations. It still performs as advertised with good speeds; over 3 times with that of an SATA-based drive. The design is clean and simple. It is a 1-sided design for maximum compatibility. Even in the tightest notebooks with M.2 2280 slot will easily fit the WD Blue SN500. Two bonuses we always welcome is a long warranty and good support software. WD has this covered with a 5-year warranty and their WD SSD Dashboard. Should I Purchase One? If you're building a £3 grand high-end gaming system, then probably not. But, if you're building a small office workstation, casual gaming system, surf station, or similar, then you might want to conside the WD Blue SN500. It will deliver fast boot times, quick application loading, fast data access, and enough capacity to satisfy. Pros Good Performance for Entry-Level NVMeGood lookingLarge heatsinkUp to 2TB capacityHigh Endurance Rating Cons None "Western Digital WD Blue SN500 delivers a solid performance for casual gaming rigs as well as office systems." Western Digital WD Blue 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD Review Thank you Western Digital for providing us with this sample.