At CES 2017, storage technology provider Western Digital announced the availability of new WD Black PCIe solid state drives (SSDs).
This is the first Western Digital branded client PCIe SSDs. The new SSDs complement the recently announced WD Blue and WD Green SATA SSDs.
Western Digital claimed that its new offering is a performance PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe-based SSD that delivers more than three times the sequential read speeds of current SATA SSDs.
It comes with 256GB and 512GB capacities, which are considered ideal as a boot drive when paired with a high-capacity hard drive, or as primary storage when building a future-ready PC.
Consumers who are using the new WD Black PCIe SSD to boot up, load read-intensive games or applications, or shut down a system may realize a performance improvement of more than 10 seconds when compared to SATA SSDs.
As a compatible and reliable solution to ramp up newer PC configurations with PCIe performance, the WD Black PCIe SSD is the ideal storage solution for the performance PC enthusiast and for more demanding gaming and VR-focused applications.
The WD Black PCIe SSD delivers more than three times the sequential read performance of SATA SSDs, an industry-leading 1.75M hours MTTF, and WD Functional Integrity Testing (F.I.T.) Lab certification. The WD Black PCIe SSD has been designed with thermal and power management algorithms beyond the NVMe specification to help with consistent performance as well as low power consumption.
Like all WD SSDs, the WD Black PCIe SSDs include free, downloadable, WD SSD Dashboard software, which allows continuous performance, capacity monitoring, and firmware updates.
WD Black PCIe SSDs will be available in 256GB and 512GB capacities in a single-sided M.2 2280 form factor. Available in H1 2017, Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Black PCIe SSD start at $109 for the 256GB and $199.99 for the 512GB.
