Overall, the WD Blue 3D is a very competitive SSD. It also includes excellent software. Those utilities tend to be one-time-use, or in most situations not really required, but they are nice to have.
Western Digital's WD Blue SN550 is three to four times faster than our favorite SATA SSD, the Crucial MX500, even though the drives usually cost the same amount. All versions are covered by a five-year warranty, and the 500 GB version has a 300 TBW durability rating, in line with more expensive drives.
Acronis® True Image™ WD Edition software, available as a free download, can clone drives and backup your operating system, applications, settings and all of your data. Every WD Blue SATA SSD comes with a 5-year limited warranty, so you can be confident of your storage when you upgrade or replace any of your drives.
The good The WD Blue SSD is faster than any regular hard drive and you can write a ton of data to it before it wears out. The bad The drive is expensive and doesn't justify the added cost. It has a short warranty. The bottom line The WD Blue is a decent SSD that may be worth the investment when the price comes down.
If you have a massive game library that can't all fit on an M.2, or if an M.2 isn't an option for your motherboard, then the WD Blue 3D NAND might be the best gaming SSD if you really need a large capacity drive but can't afford a higher capacity Samsung 860 Pro.
Ok dram-less ssds are fine to use and are significantly quicker than a hdd and will provide quick boot times but writing to them could be slower than dram ssd's. They are cheaper due to not needing dram, but if you just need to get off a hdd they are fine.
Much like WD's hard disk drives, their range of SSDs are also categorized by colors. The WD Blue is their mainstream SSD, whereas the Green is their entry-level SSD and the Black is their high-end enthusiast-grade SSD. The WD Blue comes in two form factors: the standard 2.5-inch SATA form factor and as an M.
WD Green drives are available in capacities ranging from 500GB all the way up to 6TB and are the quietest consumer drive available from WD. Even though they are quieter and use less power than the WD Blue drives, WD Green drives are actually faster in most situations with only a marginal increase in price.
Hi Tony, The WD Black SN750 uses a 64-layer, 3D NAND, triple-level cell (TLC) design and 256MB of DRAM cache for every 250GB of capacity. If anyone tries to upcharge you with a cache, then don't buy it.
The seek time for data is ten times faster. NVMe can deliver sustained read-write speed of 2000MB per second, way faster than the SATA SSD III, which limits at 600MB per second.
For a more accurate test, use an app called AS SSD Benchmark. It's a free app that can give you a more accurate reading of your SSD's speed. Download and run it. The default 1GB test will do the trick.
In layman's terms 3D NAND is the stacking of memory (or silicon) chips on top of each other. Some manufacturers call this V (for vertical) NAND. The aim is to make your device faster, hold more information, run more efficiently and use less energy.
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a communications interface and driver that defines a command set and feature set for PCIe-based SSDs with the goals of increased and efficient performance and interoperability on a broad range of enterprise and client systems.
The SSD Cache feature is a controller-based solution that caches the most frequently accessed data ("hot" data) onto lower latency Solid State Drives (SSDs) to dynamically accelerate system performance. SSD Cache is used exclusively for host reads.
Unlike NAND flash, DRAM is volatile memory that must be powered on to hold data. However, DRAM is not a mandatory component of every SSD.
A 1TB hard drive stores eight times as much as a 128GB SSD, and four times as much as a 256GB SSD.
Details
| Volume Size | Minimum Size of SSD Cache |
|---|
| < 24 TB | 400 GB |
| 24 TB - 40 TB | 960 GB |
| 40 TB - 80 TB | 1.92 TB |
| > 80 TB | 3.84 TB |
SSD caching, also known as flash caching, is the temporary storage of data on NAND flash memory chips in a solid-state drive (SSD) so data requests can be met with improved speed. A flash cache is often used with slower HDDs to improve data access times.
You can enable the feature via Samsung's SSD Magician utility, and you'll need to be running Windows 7 or 8 for it to work. DRAM is even faster than the flash memory used in SSDs, so there's some wisdom in using it as a high-speed cache for solid-state drives.
No problems whatsoever. I've tried a few games on the SSD and I couldn't notice any difference. The greens have no audible noise when working so that might conceal any delay that you would have heard (and driven you nuts) otherwise, but as I said I didn't notice any difference.
2 SSD is a solid choice for pc builders who are on a budget. In terms of performance and quality, you can't go wrong with the WD Green SSD. Based on the results of our benchmarks the wd green m. 2 is good for OS and Games, however, it's struggling on 4k.
Best SSDs at a glance
- Intel Optane 905P – best U.2 SSD.
- Samsung 970 Pro – best NVMe SSD.
- Toshiba OCZ RD400 – best PCIe SSD.
- Adata XPG SX8200 SSD – best M.2 SSD.
- Samsung 860 Pro – best SATA 3 SSD.
- Intel 750 Series – best U.2 SSD.
- Samsung 860 Evo – best budget SSD.
- HP S700 Pro – best endurance SSD.
