Western Digital introduces WD Black SSD with PCIe 4.0 and model with heatsink

Manufacturer Western Digital has announced new SSDs in the WD Black series for gamers. The SN850 now has support for PCIe Gen 4 for faster write and read speeds and a model with heatsink and RGB LEDs is coming. M.2 NVMe SSDs with read speeds of 7000MB / s and write speeds of 5300MB / s at the 1TB model, claims WD. This is much faster than last year’s predecessor SN750, which reaches 3100MB / s read and 1600MB / s write. The speeds of the Samsung 980 Pro are about the same level. The SSDs are only intended for gaming and not for server applications or NAS setups. The better performance should allow for shorter loading times. Caching has also been improved, but WD doesn’t say exactly how. Models for 500GB, 1TB and 2TB will be available, WD said. They cost 150, 268 and 536 euros respectively. The models without a cooling element will be released this month, while the variants with a cooling element and RGB lighting should appear early next year. The prices of these are not yet known.