- Manufacturer: Western Digital
- Model: WD SN750 NVMe SSD
- Type: M.2 SSD
- Sizes available: 250GB/500GB/1TB/2TB
- Supplied by: Western Digital
For a long time, Samsung was the manufacturer to beat when it came to high-speed SSDs, with their blisteringly fast Evo series. Much has changed since then, and many more manufacturers have caught up to and even surpassed the mighty Evo. The SN750 is WD’s updated version of the WD Black NVMe SSD, but the new model comes in with several improvements and an even more impressive price-point. Can the WD upstart knock the Evo from its throne?
The WD SN750 is the latest M.2 drive in Western Digital’s BLACK lineup, designed from the ground up to contend with extreme gaming sessions.
Available variants
Western Digital’s SN750 is available in a multitude of storage sizes, both with and without a heatsink. The heatsink is designed for use in desktop PCs, though, and due to the larger form factor may not be suitable for laptops. Capacities for the non-heatsink range are in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB sizes, while the heatsink fitted variant starts at 500GB. For our testing, we were lucky enough to receive the 1TB SN750 with heatsink, which I eagerly popped into my system.
The SN750 utilises the same hardware seen in the previous model but with new firmware that has been ramped up to extract every ounce of performance that the sweet NVMe drive has to offer, and places itself at the top of the class for speed and performance in the current market.
The heatsink model features a stunning aluminium heatsink, designed by EKWB, the renowned manufacturer of premium water cooling components. Bearing a beautiful angular design, the heatsink variant will look amazing in any system. The added cooling capacity also allows for peak performance that can be maintained for up to three times longer than the standard variant, which is highly impressive.
I have played a multitude of games from the SN750 while running various programs in the background and noticed almost zero performance drop.
Performance
The 1TB model I have received states massive performance at 3470 MB/s Sequential Read and 3000 MB/s Write, which makes it a blazing fast SSD. Rather than trotting out the standard benchmark sheets that, in addition to being unfathomable to general users, also doesn’t accurately reflect what they are like in actual use, I decided to compare a huge amount of different practical speed tests that would actually apply to my usage. Every game and program I moved over to the SN750 booted into life in a fraction of the time.
I moved a few pieces of software over to the SN750 to see how they would benefit and even installed Windows onto it to see the boot time. The boot time was insanely fast. For someone like me who always powers down their PC, it makes all the difference: It’s almost instant on.
As for software, I found it benefitted After Effects and Premier the most. The speed that I could transfer files to and from it seemed incredibly quick in comparison to my previous drives, and my rendering somehow seemed to go up. When I edit my videos they will frequently move from folder to folder, and I will be saving a huge amount of clips to later compile together. The SN750 made it a snap to load up, and since installing the WD SN750 and moving my workflow on to it I have not seen the loading bar once.
Most importantly to me, however, was Rust. I am a huge fan of the game and it has always been a very slow-to-start game. Last year, it was such a slow start that I upgraded to a new SSD in my personal system and, out of curiosity, I decided to move Rust onto the SN750. Previously, booting the game up and joining a server like EUmain would have taken me anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes total. The SN750 consistently did it within 1 minute.
This is by no means technical but it’s practical and easy to prove. The SN750 performed amazingly compared to all other storage solutions I have tested, and the performance is breathtaking. For those who like computer-generated figures for reference, I ran the SN750 through CrystalDiskMark and it achieved a 3468.5 MB/s sequential write speed. This is right up there with the Samsung Evo 970 (1TB), however, the WD SN750 eclipses the Samsung with its much faster write speeds.
Extra features
The SN750 also has full use of the WD SSD dashboard that provides a huge amount of information, including a general overview of the drive’s health, live performance monitoring and even a lifespan measurement, letting you know a rough idea of how many write operations the drive has left in its life.
Within the dashboard is the toggle for Game- mode, too. This disables all of the energy-saving settings, and it makes sure that your drive is active and fully ready for any situation. In practical use, game mode removes those slight pauses as your SSD springs back to life, and it makes a noticeable difference while gaming.
Pricing
For the 1TB variant I received, with the heatsink, the SN750 will set you back £199.99 RRP. On a price-to-performance scale, the WD SN750 is far and away one of the best performing drives at this price point, even surpassing the Evo 970 when it comes to blistering write speeds. This value extends across all the different capacities, and if you’re a laptop user, the variant without the excellent heatsink is slightly cheaper again.
Another major bonus with the WD SN750 is the manufacturers 5 year warranty, which should provide peace of mind if you’re thinking of purchasing this drive. There’s nothing worse than upgrading your drive, only to have it fail after a couple of years of use.
Summary
The SN750 has sped up every aspect of my PC and I can not imagine going back to HDD or even entry-level SSD storage solutions. With its aggressive price point, amazing performance and optional heatsink variant, I find it hard to not recommend the SN750. With a read performance almost equal to the Samsung Evo 970, and even better write speeds for far less outlay, the WD SN750 is our new recommended SSD for any PC build.
