One important caveat is that the advertised maximum performance of the WD Black NVMe drops off a bit for the 512GB version, and significantly so with the 256GB one. Performance (As Usual) Scales by Capacity The Black NVMe's eyebrow-raising performance means that it will likely never be a significant bottleneck in any system you build today, and the same goes for when you upgrade the rest of the components in a few years. So why shell out extra for the WD Black NVMe version over the Black PCIe? In a word: headroom. Of course, any M.2 SSD that uses the PCIe bus will be significantly better than a SATA drive, and light years ahead of a conventional spinning drive. These typically top out at around 2,000MBps for PCIe-bus drives, or 500MBps for SATA drives. But the fact remains that the potential of the WD Black NVMe is far greater than not only its WD Black PCIe sibling, but also less-expensive M.2 drives from other manufacturers, such as the SATA-based Crucial MX200 ($168.00 at Amazon) (Opens in a new window) or the PCIe-based Plextor M8Pe. It's likely that you won't either, because many external factors affect drive-access speeds, and there's always some overhead involved. In testing, I didn't hit those theoretical heights with regularity. ![]() As a result, the 1TB version of the WD Black NVMe drive promises theoretical maximum read speeds of up to 3,400MBps for sequential reads, and top write speeds just under that amount (2,800MBps). It offers extraordinarily low latency and high power efficiency compared with the cheaper but more prevalent TLC NAND. The WD Black NVMe makes use of a newer 64-layer MLC version of the 3D NAND memory modules that are the building blocks of high-end SSDs. The second difference between the two is their potential throughput, which helps explain the price differences. Compare that to the regular WD Black PCIe drive, which comes in cheaper, at $93 for the 256GB version, and tops out at a 512GB capacity for $180. In addition to PCMag's 1TB review unit, which lists for $399, you can buy a Black NVMe drive at 500GB ($199), or 250GB ($109). You'll note two key differences between the WD Black PCIe and the WD Black NVMe. And both offer an excellent mean time to failure (MTTF) rating of 1.75 million hours. (For more on NVMe and other key SSD lingo, check out our explainer Buying a Solid-State Drive: 20 Terms You Need to Know.) Each comes with a five-year warranty, which compares favorably with the relatively short three years that Samsung offers for its competing M.2 version of the SSD 960 EVO. And both, despite their names, support the NVMe drive-control protocol. Both of them use the speedy PCI Express (PCIe) bus (not to be confused with a PCI Express slot) instead of the older, slower Serial ATA (ATA) bus. (Opens in a new window) Read Our Plextor M8Pe M.2 NVMe SSD Review ("Black" indicates that they're intended for high-end PCs.) Western Digital offers a handful of different drive families with the "Black" designation, some of them SSDs and some of them conventional platter hard drives. The 1TB version we tested is an excellent all-around performer at a reasonable cost per gigabyte, which helps it unseat the Samsung SSD 960 EVO as our Editors' Choice for best high-performance internal M.2 SSD. Reading and writing data from your primary storage or boot drive can be just as critical as processing power when it comes to running specialized programs or demanding games at tip-top speed. But you should also be thinking about adding a high-performance M.2 solid-state drive (SSD), such as Western Digital's WD Black NVMe SSD ($399 for 1TB as tested), to serve as your primary boot drive. If you're planning to put a CPU with more than a dozen cores and two screaming-fast SLI video cards in your next gaming rig or workstation, you're off to a good start toward extreme performance. ![]() Lower capacities offer lesser performance.How to Set Up Two-Factor Authentication.How to Record the Screen on Your Windows PC or Mac. ![]() How to Convert YouTube Videos to MP3 Files.How to Save Money on Your Cell Phone Bill.How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone or iPad.How to Block Robotexts and Spam Messages.
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