Western Digital Blue SN5000 announced as new low-cost NVMe SSD

A Western Digital announced this Thursday (20) its new line of SSD NVMe WD Blue SN5000 aiming at low cost.

With models from 500 GB to 4 TB, this is a series that will not focus on performance, but on the proposal to be accessible and economical.

Low-cost Western Digital Blue SN5000 NVMe SSD

Western Digital has expanded its cost-effective NVMe SSDs with the launch of the WD Blue SN5000 series, an updated lineup of SSDs featuring models up to 4TB. The SN5000 series won’t have monstrous performance, but their combination of capacity, reliability, and relatively low price could make them popular with both casual buyers and enthusiasts looking for more affordable bulk solid-state storage. The predecessor of this line is the SN580, launched last year.

The new SN5000 uses the same BiCS 5 TLC NAND as the SN580 in the 500GB to 2TB SKU, but the 4TB uses BiCS 6 QLC NAND. The SN5000 is a PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe drive, with significantly improved overall performance. The 1 TB version, for example, uses up to 1 GB/s higher sequential read speeds, from 4,150 MB/s to 5,150 MB/s. Sequential write speed is 750 MB/s, 4,150 MB/s to 4,900 MB/s. As for random performance, read IOPS increased from 600K IOPS to 730K IOPS and write IOPS increased slightly from 750K to 770K.

Western Digital’s WD Blue SN500 NVMe drives come in an M.2-2280 form factor and are based on an internal WD controller. WD’s controller has a DRAM-less 4-channel design, which is what we typically see in budget and mainstream SSDs. All drives are single-sided and covered with a thin graphene heatsink for heat dissipation.

The WD SN5000 series has the following prices: 500 GB model costing US$70; 1TB model costing $80; 2TB model priced at $140; 4 TB model priced at US$280. ​​For now, only the 500 GB model is available on the Western Digital website, with the other models becoming available in 3 or 4 weeks. All models come with a five-year warranty.

SOURCE: Western Digital