Western Digital has announced its first PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSDs, the WD Black SN850s, and they’ll offer fast read / write speeds of up to 7,000MB/s and 5,300MB/s that should help reduce load times on your PC and in games.
Those speeds are a notable increase from the SN750’s 3,100MB/s and 1,600MB/s read / write speeds, and on par (with a slightly faster write speed) with Samsung’s recently announced PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs.
Because they’re standard M.2 NVMe SSDs, the SN850s should work in most gaming PCs, as long as you have a compatible motherboard. Theoretically, they could also work as storage expansions for the PlayStation 5 — but Sony hasn’t actually said what drives will be certified as compatible with its next-generation console just yet. (The Xbox Series X / S, on the other hand, have proprietary expandable storage.)
Western Digital’s new SSDs will come in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities and should be available to purchase “before the end of October 2020,” according to the company, though you can preorder them now.
Update October 8th, 8:22PM ET: Added that the SN850 SSDs are available for preorder.
