While most PC gamers tend to focus their attention on getting the best and most expensive GPU for their build, there are still other crucial components to consider in order to get the best performance. A good storage drive is a very important factor, as it not only determines how much space you have to install applications and games, but it also determines how quickly you’re able to load and run your system overall.
Hard drives have evolved at a rapid pace over the years, moving from HDDs to SSDs to now NVMe SSDs. The advantage of an NVMe SSD is that it can plug directly into your motherboard, eliminating the need for cables while also offering fantastic read and write speeds. These speeds are important for gaming, as you don’t want to have framerate drops in your game as it struggles to load level data and textures. After all, who wants to stare at a loading screen for longer than necessary during a particularly intense gaming session?
Getting good drive performance out of your PC isn’t as simple as just going out and buying the first NVMe SSD that you spot. It’s important to note that not all NVMe drives are created equal, so if you’re not careful you might end up with a slower drive that isn’t going to offer much benefit.
The WD Black SN850 NVMe SSD is a great choice for PC gamers, as it offers you some of the best read and write performance for practically any game that you play. The SN850 is a PCIe Gen 4x4 model, which can give you up to 7,000MB/s read speeds – enough power to jump into your favorite games without delay. It’s important to note the Gen 4x4 support in the SN850 – some NVMe drives are much cheaper but are only Gen 3x4, which will give you much slower speeds and long game load times.
To put this performance to the test, we compared the SN850 to a stock PCIe Gen 3x4 NVMe drive in our test gaming machine, equipped with an Intel i9 CPU, RTX 2070 GPU, and 32GB of RAM. Running a disk benchmark on the stock NVMe drive yielded read speeds of 2,700MB/s, while the SN850 produced speeds of 6,800MB/s. The drastic difference in speeds is a clear example of why you need to make sure that you’re buying an NVMe drive with the correct specifications, so that it can get the maximum performance when connected to your motherboard.
These impressive speeds aren’t just useful when it comes to booting your PC – they also affect how quickly your games load. Loading our save game in Horizon: Zero Dawn on the stock NVMe drive took 37 seconds, while the SN850 took only 15 seconds to get us back into the action. Furthermore, the SN850 supports a dedicated Gaming mode which can be toggled on or off to squeeze even more performance out of the drive for gaming. With this mode turned on, we were able to shave a few seconds off, loading into the game in 12 seconds.
The SN850 also supports RGB customization, so you can choose to match your drive with your PC’s RGB setup. The WD Black Dashboard also shows you useful information such as your drive health, temperature, and firmware version. The built-in heatsink is also useful for keeping the drive cool during intense gaming sessions.
If it’s speed and performance that you’re looking for, the WD Black SN850 is a fantastic NVMe SSD to go for. Long load times are obsolete with next-gen PCIe Gen4 technology, and impressive read/write speeds will bring a substantial boost to your PC. Arm your system with RGB lighting, an optional heatsink model, and up to 2TB capacity to get you back into the action faster than you ever thought possible.
