Western Digital has announced its brand new WD Blue SN5000 NVMe SSD, specifically designed for creative and artificial intelligence workloads. However, rather than just sticking AI in its name, there’s a method behind the madness, and the product has an aggressively low price point in the current climate.
Nowadays, file sizes are out of control. While 4K video has always taken up a lot of space, games are larger than ever, meme folders are bursting at the seams, and AI-generated content isn’t slowing down. In an attempt to handle our unwieldy digital hoarding and prepare us for the latest apps, WD Blue SN5000 comes in up to 4TB.
Like other Blue-labelled drives, this one isn’t trying to go toe-to-toe with the best SSDs. Its max 1,200TBW endurance matches a 2TB WD SN850X, is half the 4TB model, and pales compared to the eye-watering 219,000TBW in Gigabyte’s AI TOP 100E SSD. Up to 5,500MB/s sequential read and 5,000MB/s write speeds also don’t make the most of the PCIe 4.0 connector, but they’re zippy enough that you probably won’t notice.
| 500GB | 1TB | 2TB | 4TB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seq. read speed | 5,000MB/s | 5,150MB/s | 5,150MB/s | 5,500MB/s |
| Seq. write speed | 4,000MB/s | 4,900MB/s | 4,850MB/s | 5,000MB/s |
| Random read | 460K IOPS | 730K IOPS | 650K IOPS | 690K IOPS |
| Random write | 770K IOPS | 770K IOPS | 770K IOPS | 900K IOPS |
| Endurance | 300TBW | 600TBW | 900TBW | 1,200TBW |
| Price | $79.99 | $89.99 | $149.99 | $289.99 |
Its strength comes from optimisations. WD says it improves performance by up to 24% over the previous generation and handles Stages 4 and 6 of the AI Data Cycle better than others in the series. Without a hands-on, I can’t tell you how this translates in the real world, but the aim is to help you “maximise content creation workflows within AI environments.”
Without a doubt, my favourite aspect is the price point. WD Blue SN5000 doesn’t come as an immediate recommendation, as there are plenty of other drives with similar specs that benefit from discounts, undercutting the newcomer, but its £275.99 / $289.99 MSRP is far below the $400+ we’re used to seeing for 4TB models. Once we get to a point where these also benefit from sales, like this Samsung 990 Pro deal, they’ll unquestionably become one of the best budget NVMe drives on the market.