Western Digital launches trio of high-speed WD Black Gaming SSDs

The Western Digital Black series of storage devices has long been a favourite amongst enthusiasts and gaming PC builders. This week, the WD Black portfolio is getting some big upgrades, including three new NVMe SSDs, pushing PCIe 4.0 speeds to their limits. 

First up is the WD Black SN850 NVMe SSD, designed to bring out the very best performance possible with the PCIe 4.0 interface. You can expect read/write speeds of up to 7000/5300 MB/s on the 1TB model. This SSD uses Western Digital's new WD Black G2 controller, optimised for gaming workloads rather than NAS or server environments. There are two versions of this SSD, one with a heatsink to tackle thermal throttling and one without – in-case your motherboard already includes an M.2 heat shield solution.

Next up on the list is the new WD Black AN1500 NVMe SSD add-in card. This is for gamers “looking to achieve next-gen performance in a current-gen setup”. This takes two drives in RAID 0 and slots into a PCIe Gen 3 x8 slot and from there, you can expect read/write speeds of up to 6500/4100 MB/s. There are 1TB, 2TB and 4TB models, with prices starting at $299.99.

Finally, the WD Black D50 Game Dock NVMe SSD is a new form of external SSD. The dock hooks up to a Thunderbolt 3-capable laptop, giving you the option of speedy, external storage for a gaming laptop setup. The dock offers NVMe speeds and has additional ports that can be powered by the single Thunderbolt 3 connection, acting as a hub for other USB devices too, like game controllers.

The WD Black SN850 NVMe SSD (non-heatsink) will be available starting this month, while the heatsink-equipped version will be shipping in Q1 2021- pricing starts at £129.99 for 500GB and goes up to 2TB in capacity. The WD Black AN1500 NVMe SSD add-in card is available now for £228.99, while the WD Black D50 Game Dock (with SSD) is up for pre-order for £429.99. A non SSD version of the Game Dock is coming too, starting at £279.99

KitGuru Says: What do you all think of the latest WD Black SSDs? Are you on the lookout for an upgrade soon? 

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