Earlier today, Western Digital announced a new NVMe SSD for its evolving WD Black lineup: The SN770. This affordable and rather barebones Gen4 gaming drive is aimed at providing fast storage for PC users without costing an arm and a leg.
The SN770 is available in four different capacities: 250GB ($59.99), 500GB ($79.99), 1TB ($129.99) and 2TB ($269.99). Unfortunately, there isn’t a 4TB option, which is disappointing for those looking to keep large game libraries at the ready.
The all-black SSD is also missing any sort of heatsink, something I’d recommend installing if you’re going to be using this for gaming. You can find reasonably priced heatsinks online that are easy to install. If your motherboard has on-board heatsinks for M.2 devices, then that’s even better.
The 2TB model, which Western Digital recently sent over for review, claims a sequential read speed of 5,150 MB/s. When benchmarking in CrystalDiskMark via a ROG Strix Z690-F Gaming Wi-Fi and Intel Core i9 12900K, I found this claim to be true. In fact, I observed even higher speeds within my testing environment, which you can take a look at below:
Keep in mind that if you’re eyeing this drive for PS5 use, I wouldn’t exactly endorse it. Sony suggests a sequential read speed of 5,500 MB/s or faster for M.2 SSD installation in its console, and even with the SN770 exceeding advertised throughput speeds, it still falls shy of the aforementioned ideal.
While the SN770 will never reach the lofty 7,000 MB/s sequential read speed of its sibling WD Black product, the SN850, the performance shown here is probably more than enough to comfortably run most modern PC games. Plus, it’s cheaper than the SN850.
Additionally, even without a proper heatsink, the SN770 only reached a max temperature of 77°C during various synthetic stress tests. HWInfo lists the critical temperature threshold as 88°C. I’d imagine a cheap heat sink would bring that 77°C down even more below the danger zone, but as is, I think this is pretty acceptable.
I’d say from initial impressions, the WD Black SN770 is a solid, cheap, quick and dirty sort of NVMe SSD. It isn’t fancy and it’s not the fastest Gen4 drive around, but for everyday tasks and general gaming, it certainly gets the job done.
Disclosure: Western Digital provided a review sample for coverage purposes.
