Western Digital Black SN750 SSD Review

Game Load Time

We a lower queue depth 1 and 4 random read performance compared to many of the other drives in the charts today, we don't expect the 1TB Black SN750 to break any performance records with applications.

In the Final Fantasy: STORMBLOOD game level load time test the 1TB Black SN750 scored 14.149 seconds. The drive took less than 2 seconds longer to load the levels compared to the HP EX950 we tested just days ago. We observed a slight performance increase over the SanDisk Extreme Pro NVMe and both WD/SanDisk SSDs outperformed the aging Samsung 970 EVO by a second or more.

PCMark 8 Total Storage Bandwidth

The PCMark 8 Storage Bandwidth suite runs nine commonly used applications for ten tests to gauge performance across a wider range of software. The WD Black SN750 scores 508.65 MB/s on average with the ten tests. In WD's lab, the 1TB SN750 scored around 100 MB/s more but the company also uses a newer version of the test. We use an older version that allows us to compared previously tested products.

PCMark 8 Extended Storage Test

The PCMark 8 Extended Storage Test uses the same nine applications but preconditions the drives to show heavier workloads from more data written to the flash in a shorter amount of time. The recovery phases of the test inject a 5-minute pause between each run of nine tests to allow the drives to recover (perform background data management). None of the TLC-based SSDs performs as well as the Samsung 970 Pro, the only model on the charts with MLC flash.

SYSmark 2014 SE System Responsiveness and Power Tests

The SYSmark 2014 SE test is the first to measure what we commonly refer to as the user experience. The technical term is called system responsiveness. This is the amount of time it takes from requesting an action to when the it starts. The pause between those two actions is usually so small that we don't chart the data. This test changes the microseconds of latency into a weighted score. The base score is 1,000 and that comes from a specific system with an OEM version of Samsung's 850 EVO.

The new 1TB WD Black SN750 delivers slightly better system responsiveness compared to the 850 EVO but trails all of the other next-generation NVMe SSDs.

Notebook Battery Life

At one point in the testing process, we were under the impression that Game Mode changed Windows settings and not the drive itself. This inadvertently led to testing the Black SN750 in our notebook battery life test with Game Mode enabled. If you pull the drive from your desktop to run it in a notebook, be sure to install the software to disable Game Mode.

With device side low-power states enabled we gained a significant amount of "on battery" time with BAPCo's MobileMark software and our Lenovo Y700-17 gaming notebook. The increase was not enough to push the 1TB Black SN750 into the upper half of the chart, but it did make a difference.