Western Digital announces new WD_BLACK NVMe M.2 SSDs

CES 2017 - Western Digital today announced its new line of PCIe Gen3 M.2 NVMe SSDs, the WD_BLACK series.

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The WD_BLACK SSDs are built on the PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 2280 socket and use the NVMe spec to hit high-end transfers of up to 8Gb/s and keep the actual storage footprint at a minimum. WD_BLACK SSDs come in 256GB and 512GB capacities, and feature enhanced reliability with a Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) rating of 1.75M hours.

As far as performance, the 512GB WD_BLACK SSD trumps the lower model with 2,050 MB/sec read and 800 MB/sec write speeds, whereas the 256GB flavor features 2,050 MB/sec reads and 700 MB/sec write speeds. The series' 4KB random read speeds are rated at 170K IOPS, with the 4KB random writes hit 130 IOPS (256GB) and 134K (512GB).

"With sequential read speeds up to 2050MB/s, the WD_BLACK PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe-based SSD unlocks a new level of performance for high-performance PC users."

Both drives will be available in 1H 2017 for $109 (256GB) and $199 (512GB).

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