WD Black NVMe M.2 2280 1TB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) WDS100T2X0C

Pros: When I first looked into M.2 NVMe drives for booting I was a bit apprehensive at first. I didn't think it would be as easy as it was. But I just stuck this stick of gum sized stick on my board and I had storage right on the board. It's going from using standard SATA SSDs to something even smaller and more convenient to install. OS install was easy, everything just worked and this was the fastest install of Windows I've ever experienced. Booting is lighting fast and I have a bunch of stuff start up. Within seconds of hitting the power-button I have Steam, Origin, Corsair CUE, Corsair LiNK, battle.Net and nVidia's Geforce Experience up and ready. Chrome, Krita, Audacity, Discord, pretty much all my programs load really fast on this. Loading games is wicked quick, freaking fantastic. When it comes to game loading, it feels like going from a HDD to a SSD, the interface and the memory used on this is a blessing. Overwatch replays load up wicked quick, and a neat thing I noticed is ever since I've used this drive to play Overwatch I seem to have much more time to pick my character. I assume that the game loads so fast that I just get to the character selection screen first. It's a nice plus for this drive if that's the case. GTAV loads nice and fast with single-player, and PUBG also loads very quickly. Transferring the installs from my old SSD to this M.2 drive was lighting quick, slowed only by the old SSD. This is a fantastic drive, I highly recommend it.

Cons: This is not really a con, but something to keep in mind. On some boards (for example my B350) two of your SATA ports will be disabled when using this or any M.2 drive. Check your motherboard's manual for more information.

Overall Review: I'm using this 1TB Western Digital NVMe M.2 2280 on my Asus ROG Strix B350-F Gaming, with a Ryzen 2700x, G.Skill Trident-Z 16GB DDR4 2933Mhz RAM and a Zotac Geforce GTX 980-Ti AMP. All inside a NZXT Noctis 450 with a Corsair 850Hx and Corsair H100i. I ran the latest version of Windows 10 as of 5.15.2018. I ran Crystal Mark 6 x64 while playing Overwatch on this drive, here are my results: Seq Q32T1 Read = 1885.5 ------- Seq Q32T1 Write = 1598.7 4Kib Q8T8 Read = 1678.4---------4Kib Q8T8 Write = 1520.6 4KiB Q32T1 Read = 409.8---------4KiB Q32T1 Write = 367.2 4KiB Q1T1 Read = 46.68----------4KiB Q1T1 Write = 151.4 Temperatures on HWMonitor were 47 C

Pros: • Amazing speed – see other thoughts for benchmark comparison. • Minimal packaging • Easy installation • Competitive cost when compared to SATA SSD drive • HIGHLY RECOMMENED

Cons: • Will not work with older motherboards. From my research, pre-2015 non-UEFI bios.

Overall Review: • This product is highly recommended. As a replacement for my main drive on my gaming PC, it added even better performance over my SSD drive that is noticeable. • Packaging is minimal and is recyclable • Installation was a snap. I installed with a PCIe adapter into my desktop PC in an available PCIe slot. Windows recognized the drive immediately. Formatted in less than one minute. • Cost when compared to SATA based SSD is competitive and comparable. At the time of this writing, this unit is $199 and Samsung 860 EVO (500GV) is $128 on Newegg. The price difference is made up in the performance. • Performance is off the charts. Comparison provided is between this review unit (first number, denoted with “WD”) and my existing Silicon Power 500GB SSD (second number, denoted with “SP’) via SATA connection. Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1704.615 MB/s(WD) 238.465 MB/s (SP) Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1546.219 MB/s(WD) 225.129 MB/s (SP) Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 688.622 MB/s [ 168120.6 IOPS] (WP) 28.147 MB/s [ 6871.8 IOPS] (SP) Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 410.315 MB/s [ 100174.6 IOPS] (WP) 64.544 MB/s [ 15757.8 IOPS] Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 133.928 MB/s [ 32697.3 IOPS] (WP) 28.079 MB/s [ 6855.2 IOPS] Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 77.464 MB/s [ 18912.1 IOPS] (WP) 50.575 MB/s [ 12347.4 IOPS] Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 36.924 MB/s [ 9014.6 IOPS] (WP) 22.478 MB/s [ 5487.8 IOPS] Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 63.077 MB/s [ 15399.7 IOPS] (WP) 35.144 MB/s [ 8580.1 IOPS] (SP)

Pros: 1. Storage Size 2. Fast 3. Costs for the speed I love the fact that you can get 1 TB and ½ TB size on a M.2 socket. This is the kind of thing that makes sense to me. It is small and takes up very little space. Yet, it has a good amount of storage. It is fast. I have an older M.2 drive to compare with. In all test it was nearly twice as fast. It just worked.

Cons: Cons 1. Could not boot with all motherboards 2. Speed is nice, but maybe not the fastest I struggled getting this drive to boot on a Gigabyte Z97 board, but the Asrock board that was similarly setup worked without a problem. I used Windows 10 for all set-ups. It did work on the Gigabyte board as a storage drive though. This is not the bleeding edge of technology. It is a great solution though for much better than the middle of the road. If you need the very fastest times, then look elsewhere. If you want a very zippy drive then this is a good choice.

Overall Review: I really like M.2 as a form factor. It takes up very little space on the motherboard, but drive sizes have been limited. This drive answers the size question very well. It is also blazingly fast. It makes it a great boot drive for a gaming system, graphics station or lots of heavy photography or video editing. Honestly, any system that will get it work will feel faster. This is not a Lamborghini, but it is a muscle car that is going to take you there fast. So, who should buy this drive, well most people would benefit from it. You need the large M.2 size 2280 and a M.2 socket on your motherboard. Finally, it should be a newer piece of hardware. Some older hardware may work, but not all. What I see then is a new build, with Windows 10. Look at this as the work horse drive then. It can handle boot-up and a lot of storage. I would not try to store a professional photographer’s library on it; it just won’t happen. But to work with the photos and later move them elsewhere, it is a great choice. I was able to transfer a 250GB of data in about 3 minutes with operating system overhead compared to an early M.2 drive at 6 Gb/s, which told over 10 minutes with the operating system overhead. This is a my music library. The bottle neck may have been on the other side or operating system. The results are still great.

Pros: The WD black NVMe 500 gig SSD arrived in an unremarkable black and white box. Please note the NVMe on the box. This is quite important as you will read later on. Inside was the drive itself in a 2 part plastic container and a fold out tech support and warranty paper in about a dozen languages. Nothing else was included. Personally I think they should at least include that tiny screw that you use to install the drive since it’s always getting lost. Be aware that this is a newer version of a current WD m.2 drive. As you’ll read below this is a much faster drive so look for the NVMe on the box. There is absolutely no reason to buy the older drive unless you have a motherboard without a PCIe X4 socket or it’s on sale at a much reduced price. Installing the drive is about as easy as anything you can do to a motherboard… unless you don’t have the tiny screw and then you’re sc….. But you get my drift. The only thing you have to check is if you have a PCI-e X4 m2 slot. The older your mother board the more likely you are not to have one. Check your motherboard manual or the Internet. Remember… Google is your friend. The install of the WD Black NVMe the installation of Windows 10 Pro X64 went fine. There is no need to install a driver with this device. I checked and the only downloads available were the SSD Dashboard and a copy of Acronis if you need to move your current Windows install to the new drive. Since I was installing a fresh copy of windows I didn’t use the Acronis. The SSD Dashboard however I did download and install. It gives you some helpful information. It covers SSD temp, a pie chart for how much of the SSD is being used, an app for checking for firmware and an especially useful readout of what interface you are using. Helpful for knowing why your speed may not be what’s advertised. It does not handle manual trim so you’ll either have to count on Windows or download a utility like SSD Tweaker. I installed the WD Black SSD into the PCIe X4 socket on my test system which includes an ASUS Strix Z270G Gaming motherboard with a core i7 7700K processor and 16 gigs of memory. It also has an MSI GeForce 1060. This is my old production system that I’m reconditioning to sell. That’s why I needed to install windows on this SSD. The WD Black NVMe SSD took everything I could throw at it in stride. I played some Far Cry 5 at 2560 x 1440 and it ran between 40 and 50 FPS so I was happy. I got a crystal disk mark score of 3460 MB\s read and 2550 MB\s write which is just about the same as advertised on the box. I’m only using the first box in Crystal Disk Mark. It’s really only be used as a comparison so no need to fill up the space with lots of random figures. I had a 250 Gig Samsung 960 Evo in this machine and the Crystal Disk Mark scores were 3073 MB\s read and 1396 MB\s write. This is a smaller drive so the scores will be lower so I’m going to say the Read marks were about even for the two. The WD Black had a much higher write performance so maybe I’ll give the lead to it. I actually have one of the older WD Black m.2 ssds in my new production machine. It has an ASUS Z370 motherboard and a core i7 8700K with 16 gigs of memory and an ASUS 1070 GTX video card. The old 500 gig black SSD gives me crystal Disk mark scores of 1854 MB\s write and 773 MB\s write. That is quite a difference from the new drive.

Cons: Can't think of any except maybe they should include that darn tiny screw.

Overall Review: The new WD Black 500 G NVMe SSD is most certainly the winner. I wish I had more drives available to test it against. But it is certainly the winner. To be fair, when you get to these speeds the experience is pretty much the same. I mean using the computer in day to day tasks you can’t tell the difference between the old and new WD black drives unless you do a lot of transferring files or the like. Office documents don’t spring open twice as fast and watching Youtube videos don’t magically go twice as fast. So what you have here is an SSD that’s as fast as a Samsung 960 Pro that’s cheaper. I actually cannot find any fault with this drive. WD has a super-fast NVMe drive that’s cheaper than Samsung’s best. Saving some money is always a good thing. You can bet I’m going to put this SSD into my new production machine.

Pros: I did a little something different with this WD M.2 2280 1GB drive. I installed it on an older Z97 motherboard using Windows 7 64 as my operating system. I hope some readers find this helpful if they have an existing Intel Z97 motherboard with a PCIE x4 slot available and have wished they could upgrade their already fast system to be a blazing fast system sporting a new WD Black NVMe M.2 2280 1 GB boot drive. My test stystem specs: Gigabyte Z97X-SOC Force MB (0 onboard M.2. sockets) 4970K 32 GB RAM 1050Ti 4GB Windows 7 64 1. NVMe Express standard controller for Windows 7 Windows (ADK) download link: *Note: This native Windows 7 NVMe driver is not necessary if you are installing the WD M.2 drive on Windows 10. Only for Windows 7. Also, the Intel Z97 chipset, socket 1150, I used is the oldest Intel chipset I know of that will support an NVMe PCIE boot drive. The older Intel Z77, socket 1155, chipset will not support this drive as a boot drive. Also fair to note, this Windows 7 native NVMe driver will be required if installing any, not just this WD drive, M.2. SSD drive when using Windows 7. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39982 2. StarTech PEX4M2E1 M.2 Adapter - x4 PCIe 3.0 NVMe - SSD PCIE M.2 Adapter - M2 SSD - PCI Express SSD - Link: My MB has no native M.2 socket. This adapter provided the socket for the WD M.2 and made it possible to install the WD 1GB NVMe drive on my Z97 MB. In addition, this adapter works perfect if you have a PCIE x 4 slot available. The adapter can be installed and used to clone this WD Black M.2 NVMe from your existing operating system M.2 drive should your system have a single M.2. onboard slot. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=1Z5-0018-00020&ignorebbr=1 3. Free download WD edition Acronis True Image Link: https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?lang=en CrystalDiskMark6 speed comparision with my system: Samsung EVO M.22 250GB: Seq. Read/Write: 2829 mbps./1589 mbps. WD Black NVMe M.2 2280: Seq. Read/Write: 2461 mbps./2789 mbps. *The WD drive's write speed is significantly faster on this system.

Cons: For whatever reason, WD Support chose to not produce a driver for their line of NVMe M.2 PCIE SSD drives. This drive uses the native Windows NVMe PCIE driver. My Samsung SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 250GB NVMe uses a driver Samsung support offers which does improve the performance of that drive.

Overall Review: Brings back memories of the days when a couple of WD Raptors set up in Raid would boot XP pretty much faster than the trained eye could see. If you blinked, you missed it. The WD Black NVMe M.2. 2280 1TB is about as cutting-edge as you can get if having a blazing, faster than meets the eye machine is on the short list of your computing needs. I have talked to people working in IT who have never heard of M.2.'s. It's fun explaining to them how fast this drive is. Forget that SSD that gives you 550MB per. Get one of these if you want a noticeable, effectively faster than you can imagine experience.

Pros: One TB and SSD plug and play provided your board has M.2. Simple set up and you have a backup drive built on to the motherboard. No cooling issues, No cords, Great setup

Cons: Not every board has M.2

Pros: Installed and tested without issue in both M.2 slots on my AM4 motherboard. Roughly four times faster sequential read/write speeds than a fast SATA SSD according to CrystalDiskMark. Temperatures were ok in my system in both M.2 slots, according to HWMonitor, reaching 62C max in the PCIe Gen2 x4 slot and 58C max in the PCIe Gen3 x4 slot (the latter gets some cooling from the CPU fan). No cable management needed, unlike regular SSDs. Just install and you're ready to go. It happens to match the black and white color scheme of my motherboard.

Cons: A lot more expensive than a regular SSD of the same storage capacity. While sequential read/write speeds are extremely fast, 4K speeds are not that much better than regular SSDs. In day to day use I can't really tell the difference between SATA SSDs and NVMe drives unless I am copying files from one NVMe drive to another (my boot drive is a 250GB Samsung 960 EVO). Copying to and from SATA drives will be limited to the SATA drive speed, of course.

Overall Review: Tested on Asrock Taichi X370 motherboard with Ryzen 7 1700 CPU (not o/c) and 64GB of G.Skill TridentZ RAM at 2933MHz. Windows 10 Pro. Here are the results I obtained with CrystalDiskMark on each M.2 slot PCIe Gen3 x4 read/write: Seq 2169/2394 512K 1496/2325 4K 46.55/140.2 4KQD32 311.4/202.1 PCIe Gen2 x4 read/write: Seq 1296/1369 512K 1058/1220 4K 39.74/90.86 4KQD32 178.4/132.1 I am awarding four eggs as I am not completely convinced of the value compared to regular SSDs. Others have given five eggs and I agree that it is worth that based only on performance. Note: Newegg provided me with the drive for the purposes of this review.

Pros: It's Western Digital, it's M.2 2280, it's 500GB!

Cons: This drive turns out to be non compatible with my MB and Windows 7 64 Bit Professional refuses to see it.

Overall Review: I already have an SSD M.2 2280 drive in my PC running Windows 7 64 Bit Professional, no issues, but since this is NVMe it will not work. This is very annoying, and I am not going to upgrade to W10 or upgrade my MB so I can use this drive and test it out. This is my fault, I should have researched a lot more before I said yes to this drive.