The Western Digital WD Blue SN500 SSD Review: Moving The Mainstream To NVMe
by Billy Tallis on April 19, 2019 9:30 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The best high-end NVMe drives offer average data rates on the Light test that are twice what the WD Blue SN500 can manage, though the perceived difference in performance for such light workloads is much smaller. When the test is run on a full drive, the fastest drives lose a much larger share of their performance and the SN500 ends up being only a bit slower than the high-end competition.
The average and 99th percentile latencies for the WD Blue SN500 on the Light test are clearly higher than for the top high-end drives, but the good full-drive behavior of the SN500 means it doesn't stick out like some entry-level NVMe drives.
The WD Blue SN500's average write latency shows basically no impact from running the Light test on a full drive, and the impact on average read latency is much smaller than for most drives, especially entry-level NVMe.
The WD Blue SN500 has excellent QoS for both reads and writes on the Light test, even when the test is run on a full drive. Some writes may take a few milliseconds to complete, but the SN500 won't present the user with any noticeable stalls during such a light workload.
The energy usage by the SN500 during the Light test is comparable to that used by the SATA drives, and is lower than what most of the NVMe drives can manage. The fastest drives require about twice the energy to deliver performance boosts that don't really matter to a light workload like this test.
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gglaw - Saturday, April 20, 2019 - link
There really is no market segment for this drive unless the WD name is enough to sway a lot of customers. Pretty much every week there's an EX920 or Adata 8200 500GB drive for between $70-$80 and they are superior to this drive in every way. You could nitpick on brand reliability, etc, but both those drives have an incredible track record in the last couple years.For a primary OS/Apps drive, I would get the faster HP/Adata for a few bucks more, and for a games/storage drive I would get the cheapest SATA I could find (usually an Adata 1TB for $90). Can't think of any scenario I would get a budget NVME over one of these options. This WD drive would have to drop to $60 to be a real contender.
DyneCorp - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
There's absolutely a market.The SN500 will drop in price drastically. It also will stand out when prices increase, as they always do. Just as QLC dropped in price, just as 3D NAND dropped in price.
Why you people have to drop negative comments about a product that was just released, I'll never understand. It always drops in price. First world problems, my son.
By the way, spending "a few bucks more" for an overkill drive makes no sense. The SN500 is more than capable as an OS drive.
Realistically, WD releasing the SN500 provides more competition and that will lower prices. I really don't understand what your issue is.
Cisco Guy 318 - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
Abismal endurance! What happened to petabyte endurance? MLC is bad enough but the newer chips have poor endurance!FunBunny2 - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
to paraphrase an ancient consultants' adage: "speed, endurance, capacity; choose two".DyneCorp - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
Except that 64-layer 3D TLC NAND has exceeded planar MLC in every metric?FunBunny2 - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
for now, I suppose. so long as TLC is fabricated on 40-50nm, perhaps so. capitalist greed will, in due time, impel vendors to drop down to contemporary nodes in search of capacity. what then? or, is it, now?Mr Tallis: true of speed and endurance?
DyneCorp - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
Except that 64-layer 3D NAND (and up) from Samsung and Micron/ Intel is at 20nm and Toshiba/ Western Digital is at 19nm. You understand planar TLC basically ceased at 14-15nm?Back in 2016, with the advent of smart SLC caching techniques in addition to intelligent controller firmware, SSDs utilizing 3D NAND effectively outpaced 2D "planar" MLC. In fact, the 660p (utilizing 3D QLC) can perform on par (in certain metrics) with SSDs utilizing MLC because of Intel's intelligent pSLC caching strategies.
In the end, it doesn't matter. You'll never chew through the endurance of a modern SSD when subjecting it to consumer workloads, period. The controller can effectively mitigate write amplification in most circumstances.
DyneCorp - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
Abysmal endurance? Far from it. The SN500 carries an endurance rating far above the Samsung 850 EVO and is in SU800 territory; its endurance rating is actually quite high, comparatively.You do understand that just about any SSD utilizing 3D NAND has endurance ratings far beyond what 2D planar MLC SSDs had?
Most importantly, remember this: endurance doesn't matter for consumer drives. SSDs last far beyond their warranted endurance life.It's been tested.
Why is this? Because modern controllers can effectively mitigate write amplification by several factors. The majority of consumer workloads will NEVER burn through rated endurance, period. Honestly, including a TBW rating is unnecessary.
PeachNCream - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
You can expend the write endurance of a modern SSD. It isn't a difficult prospect and workloads don't have to be heavy ones for that to happen.DyneCorp - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
Under consumer workloads (OS and gaming) no, you cannot. It has been tested. Also, SSDs regularly outlast their given TBW rating by multiple times. If you check the S.M.A.R.T. attributes and software of older planar SSDs you'll see that even heavily utilized SSDs are healthy.