WD Blue SN5000 4TB NVMe SSD review

pcgamer.com:

4 TB of solid state storage—boy, that's a lot. Let's face it, when it comes to file sizes, the gaming world is hardly slowing down. With resolutions and frame rates creeping steadily upwards and some of the best 4K monitors out there now being, let's call it «reasonably priced(ish)», that growth isn't exactly surprising. Even with DLSS, FSR, and other forms of AI upscaling, the need for HD textures to compensate for those extra pixels is catapulting game install sizes ever upwards.

Of course, with that comes extra strain on your own system resources, especially if you prefer to hold onto those latest AAAs rather than doing the old download-and-delete shuffle every few weeks. In that case, a bigger SSD is a must, and if you employ a «games» drive as a secondary storage solution, then 4 TB is a tantalizing premise. Here's the thing though: right now, we're not when it comes to 4 TB options, so where do you even start? Well, that's where Western Digital believes it comes into play with its latest Blue SN5000 PCIe 4.0 SSD.

But hold up, it's a bit of an odd one.

The Blue SN5000 is an entry-level PCIe 4.0 SSD. It's built on the M.2 2280 single-sided form factor, and is available in capacities ranging from 500 GB all the way up to 4 TB. It's sort of skirting around the realms of being affordable, coming in at $280 US at this capacity; however, it's not without fault, the biggest being its competition at that 4TB mark.

Capacity: 4 TB
Interface: PCIe 4.0 x4
Memory controller: Sandisk Polaris 3
Flash memory: Kioxia 162-Layer BiCS6 QLC NAND
Rated performance: 5,500 MB/s sustained read, 5,000 MB/s sustained write
Endurance: 1,200 TBW
Warranty: Five years
Price: $280 | £276 | AU$500

There's a lot to unpack here. It's a QLC NAND drive as standard, featuring Kioxia's 162-layer BiCS6 flash paired with Sandisk's Polaris 3 controller. There's no DRAM cache or anything similar, and it's all situated on a single side of the stick, likely to give it broad compatibility with laptops,