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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rkmcquillen - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
This review is glowing about this hard drive. Contrast that with StorageReview.com, which basically says "stay away". I don't understand how these 2 reviews could be so different.https://www.storagereview.com/wd_blue_sn500_nvme_s...
"the drive placed last in every performance test we put it through"
DyneCorp - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link
Did you even read the full article from the review you posted?Conclusion:
"In the end, for users looking to upgrade an older SATA SSD or HDD the WD Blue SN500 may be an ideal candidate where price is the leading decision factor and performance comes secondary. Considering a sub-$55 entry price, the overall package is impressive."
Did you even read the review from Anandtech?
FunBunny2 - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
"and performance comes secondary"So, I guess you're admitting that it really is any two?
DyneCorp - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
Performance is always secondary in the consumer workspace. Even high end consumer NVMe SSDs don't touch enterprise SSDs.I know, I know, consumers should just be given i9-9900Ks and 970 PROs for free and everyone holds hands and dances and gets along. But that's not the way it works, and even SATA SSDs are more than capable of handling consumer workloads. With as small as margins are in the SSD game, we're lucky we don't pay more for less.
Why don't you go work for Micron or Toshiba/ SanDisk and then go work for Silicon Motion or Phison and develop "The People's" SSD? Hmm?
LMonty - Friday, April 26, 2019 - link
I read the review you linked and it actually recommended the SN500. Nowhere does the review state or even hint that consumers should stay away from it."the drive placed last in every performance test we put it through, though the WD drives is of a smaller capacity than its comparables". Of course it would score lower. Apples to oranges.
GruntboyX - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
How is the latency on these drives? A system drive hardly ever does large File Transfers but ususually does a lot of random file access. Perhaps for a system drive its a good way to save some money without a significant performance penalty.I know the Samsung EVO / PRO drives are the gold standard and for good reason. However if the diminishing returns are small enough perhaps its a good cost/performance tradeoff.
....or am I missing something?
DyneCorp - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
Samsung hasn't been the "gold standard" for several years now. SSDs utilizing Micron/ Intel NAND and Silicon Motion controllers have been on par or even outperformed Samsung SSDs. Even Intel's 660p can keep up (and even outperform) the 970 EVO in certain metrics, but SSDs utilizing Micron 64-layer and SM2262 are really what shine against Samsung (EX920 and SX8200).evan.drake - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
Fueled by 3D NAND: https://www.wd.com/en-us/products/internal-ssd/wd-... #WDCemployeeBarry S - Tuesday, April 23, 2019 - link
I found the BAPCo SYSmark 2018 Responsiveness test very interesting. It kind of puts things in perspective. Thanks for including it.