WD Black SN750 1TB with Heatsink (10c improvements!)

Just like the standard WD Black SN750, the Heaksink version of WD's latest flagship consumer NVMe SSD uses the same 64-layer memory/ WD controller combination as the previous Black NVMe drive but with updated and tweaked firmware to squeeze some more performance out of the drive.

The heatsink in question is a sleek EKWB (EK Waterblocks) design. The silver and black finished cooler uses 21 fins across the top section with an aluminium base plate. The cooler uses six small Hex screws (3 per side) to hold it together. Naturally the addition of the heatsink has added to the SN750's height and weight. The heatsink adds around 6mm the height of the drive and some 25.5g to the weight.

The heatsink works well, shaving around 10 °C of the maximum temperature of the standard drive during our Performance Stability test. That may sound a touch insignificant in a standard desktop but it's a useful saving if you are planning to use the drive in a compact PC build.

At launch the standard Black SN750 was available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities but with the arrival of the Heatsink edition of the drive comes a new 2TB flagship drive for the range. That said there isn't a 250GB heatsink equipped model.

The official Sequential read/write figures for drive are the same as the standard model; 3,470MB/s and 3,000MB/s respectively. When tested with the ATTO benchmark these figures were confirmed with the review drive producing a read figure of 3,504MB/s (identical to the standard 1TB Black SN750 drive) and 3,019MB/s for writes. That read figure of 3,504MB/s puts both Black SN750 drives just behind Samsung's SSD970 EVO Plus drive at the top of the ATTO results chart.

Random 4K performance is quoted as up to 515,000 IOPS for reads and up to 560,000 IOPS for writes both of which are faster than the previous Black NVMe drive, some 15,000 IOPS for reads and a massive 160,000 IOPS improvement for writes. However under our tests we couldn’t get close to those maximum figures, the best we saw was 330,028 IOPS for reads and 330,583 IOPS for writes.

The drive is supported by the refreshed WD SSD Dashboard management software which now includes a Gaming Mode. When turned on, the firmware disables the power saving features that are incorporated into the drive allowing lower latencies and more performance. The one annoying aspect of this Gaming Mode is that you have to re-start the system to enable/disable it.

So the heatsink version looks good and performs very well but the fly in the ointment at the time of writing this review at least, is the pricing. Taking Overclockers UK pricing for the two drives as an example, the standard 1TB Black SN750 costs £219.95 while the new Heatsink equipped version is £269.99 – that's a lot extra for a heatsink no matter how well it works. The pricing of the new model needs some tinkering with, that's for sure.

We found the WD Black 1TB SN750 Heatsink model at Overclockers UK for £269.99 (inc VAT) HERE

Pros

• Overall performance.
• Well designed heatsink.

Cons

• The 4K performance was disappointing in some of the tests.
• Heatsink adds on a chunk of cash over the standard drive.

Kitguru says: The stylish EKWB heatsink does aid in keeping the drive cool and would be a useful ally in a compact PC build but its pricing could do with some adjusting.

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