Pat PilcherSummary
WD Blue SN570 NVMe Solid State Drive REVIEW
Want to improve the performance of your PC in leaps and bounds? PAT PILCHER has just the thing!
$200
I’ve previously written about how to speed up an old PC by replacing its mechanical hard drive with a faster, quieter, more energy-efficient solid-state drive. The difference it’ll make to the performance of your PC has to be seen to be believed.
Since I wrote that, an even faster form of solid-state storage has emerged. NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) solid-state drives are becoming increasingly commonplace. Unlike their older solid-state counterparts, NVMe drives don’t use the slower SATA interface that was originally designed for mechanical disk drives. Because NVMe is used over PCI Express, the flash memory on the drive can communicate much faster with the CPU and memory in your computer to deliver superior performance.
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Most recent laptops and desktop PCs come with NVMe storage. Adding more NVMe capacity can be an absolute doddle depending on your computer. None of this is lost on the folks at Western Digital, who have released a super-fast and crazily affordable PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe solid state drive, the WD Blue SN570.
So why is WD’s SN570 blue? Is it a sad NVMe drive? The answer is WD is keeping things simple. This saw them using an easy-to-understand colour-coded naming scheme for their storage hardware. The reason for this is that colour coding can help people buy the right storage for their needs. Their blue range is for general purpose use. Green drives are for low-energy use where data transfer speeds aren’t super critical, but where energy consumption is. Black drives are for super-fast transfer speeds, red drives for NAS devices, and purple drives for camera surveillance systems.
The WD Blue SN570 promises blazing read speeds of up to 3500 MB/s, which is hugely faster than old-school mechanical hard drives. To get the best out of the WD Blue SN570 NVMe, you need a PC with PCIe 3.0×4 M.2 slots.
I got to work by borrowing an M.2 slot-equipped motherboard with an Intel CPU. The WD BLue SN570 was dead easy to install. It is held in place by a screw. So, I was good to go after pushing it into the slot and screwing it into place. The total install time was less than 5 minutes.
Benchmarking with CrystalDiskMark saw the WD Blue SN570 deliver just over 3557MB/s read speed and an equally impressive 3141MB/s write speed. In use, this made Windows 11 fly. Apps leapt onto my screen, and everything ran silky smooth.
If you own a laptop, it is worth checking to see if it can be opened without trashing its warranty to perform an NVME storage upgrade. Suppose there is a spare M.2 slot. In that case, you can upgrade your device in minutes without selling your firstborn or mortgaging a kidney.
Most motherboards can take multiple NVMe solid-state drives, older non-M.2 equipped PC motherboards can use NVMe PCIe expansion cards. Making the leap is a bit of a no-brainer. Prices are falling, and NVMe drives such as the WD Blue SN570 take up far less space, run silently and cooler, consuming less power. Most importantly, they’re dead easy to install. Compared to the amount of farting about installing a mechanical hard disk, equipping a PC with an NVMe solid-state drive can be incredibly straightforward.
Priced at a pocket/purse pleasing $200 for a 1TB module, the WD Blue SN570 NVMe SSD is a super-fast and affordable storage option. If your PC supports NVMe (or you can get your grubby hands on an NVMe expansion board), you really do owe it to yourself to get upgrading. Given the sheer performance on offer and the price of the WD Blue SN570, giving it a 10/10 is a complete no-brainer.
