The Western Digital WD Blue SN500 SSD Review: Moving The Mainstream To NVMe
by Billy Tallis on April 19, 2019 9:30 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, the average latency of the I/O operations, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The average data rate of the WD Blue SN500 on The Destroyer puts it in a tie with the ADATA SX8200 and ahead of other entry-level NVMe drives. The 250GB SN500 outperforms even the 1TB SATA WD Blue SSD and the 1TB QLC-based Intel 660p. Samsung's 970 EVO Plus is significantly faster overall, but that's to be expected considering there is no more high-end option in this capacity class.
The great average and 99th percentile latency scores from the WD Blue SN500 on The Destroyer make it easy to forget that the SN500 is designed to be an entry-level NVMe drive, not a flagship high-end product (to the extent that such a thing is possible with TLC NAND in such small quantities).
The average read latency of the WD Blue SN500 on The Destroyer is faster than any other drive in its capacity class, and only 60% slower than the Intel Optane 800p. The average write latency doesn't stand out much from the competition, but the SN500 is still behaving more like a high-end drive rather than showing any of the acute weaknesses often found in entry-level products.
The 99th percentile read and write latency scores from the SN500 are similarly excellent, and better than can reasonably be expected from a DRAMless SSD that we know is doing a lot of background garbage collection during this test.
The WD Blue SN500 was quite power efficient during The Destroyer; despite being significantly slower overall than the WD Black SN750, the SN500 used a bit less energy in total. The other drives in its capacity class all used at least 50% more energy to complete this test, and the Toshiba RC100 despite seeming most similar at a high level (DRAMless, TLC, NVMe) took several times longer to run the test and used several times the energy.
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rkmcquillen - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
This review is glowing about this hard drive. Contrast that with StorageReview.com, which basically says "stay away". I don't understand how these 2 reviews could be so different.https://www.storagereview.com/wd_blue_sn500_nvme_s...
"the drive placed last in every performance test we put it through"
DyneCorp - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
Did you even read the full article from the review you posted?Conclusion:
"In the end, for users looking to upgrade an older SATA SSD or HDD the WD Blue SN500 may be an ideal candidate where price is the leading decision factor and performance comes secondary. Considering a sub-$55 entry price, the overall package is impressive."
Did you even read the review from Anandtech?
FunBunny2 - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
"and performance comes secondary"So, I guess you're admitting that it really is any two?
DyneCorp - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
Performance is always secondary in the consumer workspace. Even high end consumer NVMe SSDs don't touch enterprise SSDs.I know, I know, consumers should just be given i9-9900Ks and 970 PROs for free and everyone holds hands and dances and gets along. But that's not the way it works, and even SATA SSDs are more than capable of handling consumer workloads. With as small as margins are in the SSD game, we're lucky we don't pay more for less.
Why don't you go work for Micron or Toshiba/ SanDisk and then go work for Silicon Motion or Phison and develop "The People's" SSD? Hmm?
LMonty - Friday, April 26, 2019 - link
I read the review you linked and it actually recommended the SN500. Nowhere does the review state or even hint that consumers should stay away from it."the drive placed last in every performance test we put it through, though the WD drives is of a smaller capacity than its comparables". Of course it would score lower. Apples to oranges.
GruntboyX - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
How is the latency on these drives? A system drive hardly ever does large File Transfers but ususually does a lot of random file access. Perhaps for a system drive its a good way to save some money without a significant performance penalty.I know the Samsung EVO / PRO drives are the gold standard and for good reason. However if the diminishing returns are small enough perhaps its a good cost/performance tradeoff.
....or am I missing something?
DyneCorp - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
Samsung hasn't been the "gold standard" for several years now. SSDs utilizing Micron/ Intel NAND and Silicon Motion controllers have been on par or even outperformed Samsung SSDs. Even Intel's 660p can keep up (and even outperform) the 970 EVO in certain metrics, but SSDs utilizing Micron 64-layer and SM2262 are really what shine against Samsung (EX920 and SX8200).evan.drake - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
Fueled by 3D NAND: https://www.wd.com/en-us/products/internal-ssd/wd-... #WDCemployeeBarry S - Tuesday, April 23, 2019 - link
I found the BAPCo SYSmark 2018 Responsiveness test very interesting. It kind of puts things in perspective. Thanks for including it.