WD Blue SN500 WDS250G1B0C 256 GB

3 times faster than regular SSD

WD's new Blue drive provides a clear answer to why you should shell out for an M.2 SSD. It runs on a progressive PCIe 3.0 2x bus and at a price of a modest $50 provides a data transfer rate of 1700 MB / s. That's 3x the speed of a typical 2.5 Patriot Burst SSD, although the price difference between them is a ridiculous $10-$12.

1700 Mbps speed limit

This SSD is built on the basis of SanDisk's proprietary controller 20-82-10018-A1, which provides very serious read and write IOPS (210 and 170K). For example, for the popular Samsung 860 EVO, these figures are actually 2 times less. Although, in fairness, it does not work on the PCIe 3.0 bus, but on the usual SATA 3. The claimed sequential read and write speeds are 1700 MB / s (which is the practical maximum of the PCIe 3.0 2x bus) and 1300 MB / s, respectively.

Minimum Drawdowns

Naturally, the 3D TLC type of flash memory is forced to reduce the write speed of very large files after the virtual array is full. Plus, in order to save money, they trimmed the buffer RAM, so after copying a large archive of 20 – 30 GB, the speed quickly sags to 700 – 800 MB / s. However, these are still excellent indicators, since the drawdown for most competitors starts later, but usually it reaches 500 MB / s. Throw in a 5-year warranty, support for Trim, SMART and NCQ technologies and you have a promising candidate for the ultimate gaming or work PC. Its performance is enough for the vast majority of home and professional use scenarios.