Built with a focus on the needs of gaming applications and value in mind, the WD Black SN750 SE proved itself a decent DRAM-less M.2 NVMe SSD that won't break the bank, making it a solid match for those on a tighter budget.SSD’s get all the attention these days with all their blistering speed and shiny controllers, but the value for money crown for mass storage is still with mechanical harddisks. Often listed at roughly $100-$110, our 1TB sample undercuts most of its competitors, both PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0 alike. Like the Blue SN570, the SN750 SE is priced to sell. Overall, the SN750 SE is average compared to the best PCIe 3.0 SSDs on the market, but it is more competitive on the pricing front. Mind you, that is while being shackled with a PCIe 3.0 connection, too. It has tough competition against the Samsung 980, which took the lead in many of our tests, proving faster and more efficient in most areas. The WD Black SN750 SE is an entry-level PCIe 4.0 SSD that just barely makes the grade on a technicality, lagging its high-end competition severely. However, lacking the newer and faster BiCS5 112-Layer TLC used in the WD Blue SN570, the WD Black SN750 SE leaves some performance on the table. The Black SN750 SE is not only better than its predecessor in many application tests, but it also runs cooler and more efficiently, making it a decent pick for laptop use. Even without onboard DRAM, the WD Black SN750 SE managed to pull off solid mainstream performance results. With its larger dynamic SLC cache and its DRAM-less design, the SN750 SE's write speed can become inconsistent in some circumstances, but WD and Phison seem to have done a very good job at tuning it for real-world use. Plus, the WD Black SN750 SE delivers just slightly faster than PCIe 3.0 sequential performance over its PCIe 4.0 interface, which is hardly exciting now that we're used to SSDs with performance exceeding 7 GBps read/write. Traditionally, DRAM-less SSDs have been less reliable and much slower than their DRAM-equipped counterparts, especially in applications with sustained write workloads. ConclusionĪt first glance, we weren't too fond of the WD Black SN750 SE. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. ![]() We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.Īlphacool Eissturm Hurricane Copper 45 3x140mm data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best Ultrabooks can have mediocre storage. We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Instead, it simply wrote at direct-to-TLC speeds of 990 MBps continuously. When left idle, our sample did not recover its SLC cache within our half-hour idle window. Still, when it did, speeds fluctuated very inconsistently from 60-500 MBps until the transfer was complete. It wasn't until we had written roughly 750GB of data that the SN750 SE's performance degraded again. ![]() Sure enough, performance didn't degrade as badly after the cache was exhausted, but this time the cache measured roughly 150GB before write speeds degraded to roughly 900 MBps. We then performed simple drag n' drop operations within Windows to double-check. This behavior was so strange that we retested, but the second series of tests revealed the same behavior. ![]() ![]() After writing roughly an additional 120GB of data while the cache was folding, write speeds shot up to a consistent 990 MBps for the remainder of the test. After absorbing roughly 70GB of data at 2.9 GBps, write speed plummeted to a very inconsistent average of 250 MBps, with lows landing below 100 MBps. We noticed some peculiar behavior during sustained write testing that we believe is caused by the SN750 SE's DRAM-less architecture.
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