New SSDs from Western Digital, with the SN5000S. These are aimed at the OEM sector. That’s a good thing, considering their endurance.
The program features SSDs interfaced with PCIe 4.0 x4, all in M.2 2280 or 2230 format. Internally, it benefits from memory chips from Toshiba in the form of BICS6 memory. The latter is of the QLC type, with 162 layers. As for capacities, this series is available in 512 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB models.
The entire range boasts a sequential read speed of 6 Gb/s. However, write speeds will vary according to capacity. The 512 GB model is the slowest, with a write speed of just 4.2 GB/s, compared with 5.4 GB/s for the 1 and 2 TB versions. As for random performance, we record at best 900k IOPS for reading and 900k IOPS for writing.
What’s really scary is the endurance, since the small 512GB model boasts just 150TB of write capacity, compared with 300TB for 1TB and 600TB for 2TB. This is a far cry from the 1200TB of a 2TB SN770. But there are worse cases, such as the P3 Plus 2TB at just 440TB.
