Western Digital Launches Budget WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD

cageymaru

cageymaru

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Western Digital has announced its new WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD product line that features budget friendly offerings. The Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) in the U.S. is $54.99 USD for 250GB (model number: WDS250G1B0C) and $77.99 USD for 500GB (model number: WDS500G1B0C). The drives feature a single-sided M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 x2 form factor that makes them perfect for slim form factor notebooks or desktop PCs. Although the drives will appeal to price-conscious consumers, they are built on Western Digital's own 3D NAND technology, firmware and controller, and delivers sequential read and write speeds up to 1,700MB/s and 1,450MB/s respectively (for 500GB model) with efficient power consumption as low as 2.7W. The drives feature a downloadable SSD dashboard to help monitor drive health and a 5-year limited warranty.

"Content transitioning from 4K and 8K means it's a perfect time for video and photo editors, content creators, heavy data users, and PC enthusiasts to transition from SATA to NVMe," said Eyal Bek, vice president marketing, data center and client computing, Western Digital. "The WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD will enable customers to build high-performance laptops and PCs with fast speeds and enough capacity in a reliable, rugged and slim form factor."
 
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After they put out the SN750 blacks I figured a blue drive was coming. Will probably get poopoo-d because it's "only" x2. It's in the same price range as the other x2 500 GB drives and the lower priced end of the x4 500 GB drives.
 
That's a tasty price point! Dang!

I'm loving all these WD Blue NAND offerings! The SATA SSDs, now the NVMe stuff, aww yeah!

What a day to be a tech enthusiast.
 
Brokennails said:
Hmm, cheap Steam drive.....
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660p would be the better bet for that, probably (or SU800 for SATA). This only comes in 250GB/500GB but has no HMB, and even though that's not necessary for games you have drives like the HP EX900 competing with it there. The 1TB 660p has been down to $88 recently with Google Express promos. This one is based off a client drive (SN520) with a gimped WD controller (half the channels, IMC disabled) so while I would take it over the E8/64L drives (e.g. Kingston A1000) it's a bit of a niche product.
 
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No 1TB or 2TB options? $140 MSRP for an NVMe 1TB would certainly be interesting. Street price would end up being lower.

Although I'd be curious about the reliability of these.
 
At the end of the day it doesn't matter how cheap the drive is and how fast it is, hanging there with Samsung drives when empty, if it's dead withing a couple of months. Not saying that Samsung drives aren't overpriced, but the quality and reliability is there.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
^lol like WDC makes unreliable drives....
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Budget - Quality - Reliability. You can only cram two out of three in any product. Sadly though, manufacturers never tell us which it is that they married Budget to, so most of the time you'll find out after you bought it.
 
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