WD Black SN850X vs Seagate Firecuda 530 SSD Comparison

[Music] hello and welcome back and that is right today i want to compare two pcie gen 4 generation ssd so those of you that have followed this channel for a while you know that there's not many pcie gen 4 ssds that i've not reviewed and benchmarked here on the channel i've done pc benchmarks we've done designer specification comparisons we've done ps5 testing and more and in today's video i want to do a nice quick summary of everything about the we know about these two ssds and help you decide which one is best for you before we go any further a few disclaimers this is the sigo 5 cuda 530 but as you can tell it is slightly different to the majority this is the star wars um upgraded kind of special edition and although it here is on camera i'm not really referring to this specific model i'm talking about the fire cuda 530 series in general so kind of ignore the design on there it's just the only one that had its original retail box here that we've got for the studio the other thing is this today we are looking at the sn850x the latest generation of wd black 7k generation ssd but when i do need to talk about the um heatsink i will be talking about this the older generation which has got a very similar heatsink indeed so although you can see this on table with the star warsy branded version of the star wars of the seagate drive and a non-heat sink version occasionally i'm going to be flicking to that other one for the sake of design purposes and the last thing as mentioned in the intro this is going to be about talking about what we know about the drives comparing specifications and helping you decide what's best for you if you want to see performance benchmarks and see how they perform in an i5 6 core gen test machine as well as benchmarks for ps5 and pc gaming check out the back catalog of the channel because all of that stuff is there with testing real tests to show you how all of these drives compared but with the further ado let's crack on with business now the wd black arrived in um august 2022 the uh the wd black sn850x the reason it arrived that late comparative to others out there because actually wdd black were not the last people to produce an ssd a cracking 7k 7k they were indeed the first back in september october of 2022 they released the wd black sn850 it was the first drive to arrive with over 7 000 megabytes per second reported sequential read transfer rates there and at that time it blew everyone out of the war only really samsung had challenged them at that point now over the two years since then almost two years many many other brands have released their own 7k ssds seagate released theirs almost a year later in fact but when they released this it was basically it blew everyone out of the water in terms of performance in terms of durability the only place it didn't beat everyone was price because even now in summer 2022 it is not a cheap little drive star wars or normal or heating or not it's still one of the most expensive drives on the market so yes it's one of the fastest and the most durable that we'll talk about later on but it's not by no means the cheapest and you may not need all of those factors another reason why we're going to talk about in today's video but because of that because of other brands bringing out upgraded versions of their ssds with improved nand improved controllers and just generally challenging the superiority of the wd black at that point wd released the sn 850 x this is a scaled-up improved version of their original wd black drive it doesn't replace it because this still exists in the family indeed there's another wd black as well ssd that we'll talk about another time but right now when you're looking at buying an ssd whether it is for pc or console gaming or just generally you've bought a pci gen4 system these two are kind of the top tier they are the ones that get the most coverage for their own respective reasons now in terms of price as i've already touched on this one wins uh not wins this one is way more expensive the fire cuda due to a lot of its architectural choices and you know they're aiming for the sky the result is it makes it very tough for seagate to produce and sell this drive more affordably but there's another reason why the wd black being the old version or the new version happens to be that little bit more affordable and that is because of in-house development some people aren't aware that when you are looking at different ssds in the market there is a very distinct difference between brands that develop everything in-house and other brands that partner with other brands and use their r d use their hardware use their development and this is a classic example of that so in the case of wd and the wd black sn850x and the one that came out in 2022 the controller is an in-house controller developed between wd and sandisk the nand that's used inside is a combination of sandisk and coaxer development all of which are wd subsidiaries i believe the only thing inside it that one could perhaps question as a third-party element would be the um micron uh memory uh that's utilized inside and even then there's crossover at different factory levels so the result is when you go for the wd black drive you are getting a drive where the whole thing is developed in-house at the same time with all of the components being developed in a very geared very narrow very focused manner towards the product that means that warranty replacement that means the pricing and controlling resources and production is a great deal more fluid and easier for wd overall it's the reason why even after two years even after this less than a month old at the time of recording even with that in the mix the wd seemingly arrives with more flash sales and deals periodically and just generally a better price per terabyte when it goes to opting for that whereas the fire cuda one of the reasons among many that it is much more expensive isn't just because of that reaching for the sun icarus flying too close to the sun development towards its peaks of performance and more but although the ssd is see uh seagate branded and there are elements of it that are produced at seagate the controller inside is the fires on e18 developed by faison um who have produced one of the most critically acclaimed ssd controllers for pca gen 4 in the market which is also used by sabrint by kingston by a myriad 20 to 25 mainline ssd companies out there so that controller needs to be a bit more broader in how it's utilized the nand that you is used inside is micro nand on board and although it is exceptionally high quality a 176 layer 3d tlc nand a pinch higher than that of the wd it is still third party as well some goes with the memory inside and just overall although it does use the very best of the ssd industry right now on that little pcb even the heatsink that we talked about there that i'll show you in just a moment is an ek it is a gamer high-end focus incredibly high quality heatsink that allows the drive to run a lot cooler than most ssds in the market the fact still remains all of these things add up to not only a drive that is more expensive on the rrp recommended retail price but also a smaller scope for reductions a smaller scope for creating more creative prices and therefore when it comes to spending the old money if how much you're spending is important the wd is going to win it for you but value for money or you're getting for your money then the seagate is going to win overall there so again price value between the two now you can't talk about concept like value without talking about what these drives are capable of because as mentioned they are both gen 4 um generation drives that produce um a 4 000 megabyte sorry a 7 000 megabytes per second sequential read of the two it should be added the sea gate goes even higher peaking at seven thousand three hundred and 350 i believe is the recent record there whereas the wd has now produced that 7 300 version because its predecessor peaked at 7 000. so now we have a little bit more parity between these two drives you've got two ssds here both of which could do sequential read at 7 300 and a pinch higher so for those unaware sequential read is about big blocky easy data your big chunk files not your kind of small you know database level files we'll get onto that later on but when it comes to accessing game data accessing existing archives and once again accessing big chunky block data there's very little between these two but what i will add is in my own personal testing when i tested this on that six core 12 gen i uh i5 system with 16 gig of memory in a windows 10 environment despite them being identical systems the seagate gave me more even though this was a 2tb drive the 2tb wd black sn850x gave a little bit less in sequential read than this 1tb cigarette by cuda 530 there and again when the testing was being done we used adequate heat sinks we used adequate coverage and overall not only did the seagate continue not to run as hot as wd but the sequential read factor was just a pinch better on the sea game but it was right activity where the sea gate again continued to dominate with its reported 6850 and my benchmarks taking it to that number exceeding that of the reported maximum 6600 of the wd black there now when you look at official specifications online you find if you scroll down to a little bit where they have to tell you what the test machine was what you find is these are running during their official benchmarks with insane systems 12 and 16 core xeons or rhizom9s these are kind of systems that are part of the one percent pc owner they're going to be very hard to get that level but i can tell you right now my mid-range i5 gave better read and write on the uh sequential reading right there on the seagate than it did on the wd there not a huge margin the margins were relatively small but it was still greater on that fire cuda which i think can go down if more than anything else down to the nand 176 layer nand inside and another land nand inside overall now moving away from sequential data we can talk about iops on both of these drives iops which represent uh the smallest operation you can perform as frequently as you can now i opted generally mentioned in 4k random with 4k being the smallest incremental um kind of data packet size and random being just allocated all the way across because you it's no longer the benefit of just going giant data now it's being spread across the entire spectrum of demand on these drives here and when that happens um the drive itself not only now has to deal with general performance externally but now it's got to be up to the task of now to retrieve and get all of this data from all the different areas as quickly as it can now in this score the wd did better although both drives have reported over one million uh 4k random iops in both read and write the wd was the better overall and indeed in right iops there was a reported 1.1 to 1.2 million from the official reporting and even on my uh modest six core i5 it's still won overall now a big part of that is because of that controller that i mentioned earlier when you develop things in-house in that way you can be a great deal more focused and targeted about the architecture because you're not developing a controller that needs to be used for a bunch of different facilities this is a controller that is designed for a setup there and it can be geared in a far more focused way hence why the 4k random iot performance to both read and write both official numbers and my own testing was so much better on the wd there so again that's going to be one of those things where it comes down to if you're dealing with a larger volume higher frequency database the wd is going to serve you but if it's big blocky chunky performance data you're looking for the seagate's got your back and ultimately there's a reason why wd have been almost silent about the idea of this drive in a ps5 system compared with that because this drive in a ps5 system you're never going to be able to take advantage of the full performance benefits of this because the ps5 system and its architecture and it's gearing more towards read actions and write actions and block data over ielt data means that this isn't going to is going to be the better option for the ps5 because although this is a better ssd it's not going to be able to utilize any of its new skill set in a ps5 environment whereas this drive is good straight off the bat and will have your back the whole time now we talk about the whole time that brings us to another important factor and that is durability and endurance for those who aren't aware unlike mechanical hard drives that have a little spinning bit in the middle those magnetic platters that are red in a kind of distant relationship and therefore the effects of read and write are incredibly negligible on an ssd things are very very different what you end up with if i was to use this box here the ssd on the board the pcb there are a series of chips let's remove that from there now these chips that you see on there the two we're focusing on here are the two at the end that one at the end there near the top that is the controller that we talked about there's a little blob there in the middle that's the memory the the dram we can ignore that and for now we're just talking about these two on the end now why are we talking about them that's where the data lives now um where do you have little that tlc nand that we talked about earlier on the data is being applied to those now because ssds take advantage of uh right activity that doesn't use a mechanical part but just electro just energy being passed through it and the reading happens from it nand gradually gradually as more data is written and data is being deleted and rewritten and deleted and rewritten slowly where away not really quick it's not like play-doh it will take many many many years and thousands of hours but they will wear away slight starts to lower performance until eventually it lowers actual right activity now most gamers are never going to feel this if you're using it for caching you might if you're using it for editing as a scratch disk and constantly writing over it then you might feel it after five years it's the reason why most ssd manufacturers when you really zoom in to the warranty bit at the bottom you see this drive is good for five years but also they tack in or this many right hours or this many right actions of tbw that's why they talk about that because they know these things have a finite utilization now between these two drives and i've alluded to it earlier on but i'm going to talk about it again the seagate is by far the highest durability drive in the 7k and above pci4 generation not only is it better than the wd either of those wds it is more than double now the two figures that people throw around in the ssd arena are tbw and dwpd terabytes written and drive rights per day these equate to the same thing but ultimately the drive rights per day is based on for example a 2 tb drive how many terabytes or how many gigabytes even you can write per day and delete and rewrite per day to still remain within that 5 year warranty or to stay on the good side of durability now the wd arrives with 0.3 drive rights per day which equates depending on the capacity starting at 500 gig at 150 300 600 1200 and 2400 terabytes written that's an annual figure that you can write to the drive with a refresh cycle there now the fire cuda arrives with a 0.7 drive rights per day that is massive so it's more than double that of the wd and it means the drive will last longer also means the performance will be more sustained over time it's also one of the reasons the drive is more expensive because the way the data has been applied on there safely on that noun and to deal with it be more enduring with that 176 layer now on top of that you find that on the seagate model if you go to say the 2 and the 4 tb the nand chips that are on board there's more of them so fall on the floor with regards to the wd this 2tb model has nothing on the back the top there has two nan chips we talked about earlier those are that's one tb each on this 2tb model this is a 1tb model it also has two chips each one is 512 gigabytes each but the 2tb model of this separates the data on either side it has four 1tb models that's another reason it costs more because there's more nand and it's spreading the data over more noun which also results in a higher read and write action as data is being read and written from four things at once rather than two things at once but on top of that it allows durability to be better that's the other reason why this drive has a reported 0.7 drive writes per day over that of the 0.3 to 0.38 on the wd and when it comes to durability although the um mtbf is higher on the wd mtbf has all has often been overlooked in modern times outside of insatiably high enterprise level as a not really great way to measure drive durability mean time between failure is how long the drive will last before it dies replacement carries on and it's not very applicable outside of a very specific user drive right to play in tbw therefore has become the far more um desired and trackable industry standard for durability and in that world the fire cuda winter overall and there you go that's really breaking down the key specifications of these drives now which one should you go for if you are a standard gamer you are a ps5 or pc gamer you are someone that just wants the game you're going to do some light streaming you're doing some esports your attention is pure pure gamer go for it this is just a better ssd when it comes to those sorts of services it's got your back for the durability if you're doing streaming or content creation casting within that spectrum as well as overall gaming and that lower temperature overall means it's still the better recipe yes it costs more but it's that word value once again now the wd is better for price it's a better for availability it's better for all round use it's much much better for content creator content creating in a more traditional post-production space there because it's a has a better balancing act there in the middle and although it's durability isn't as high as that as a fire cuda it's still a great ssd for a more multi-purpose user there and of course let's not overlook the fact that again as mentioned here on the channel and said back and forth to me during all of my testing that the wd black sn850 is still the recommended ps5 ssd for a reason and in that architecture although it doesn't have the benefits of that via cuda as a precise ps5 user that is going to be the drive for you but a more diverse ps5 user go for the fire cuda or if you are a mode my diverse ssd user overall go for the wd black sn850x thank you so much for watching again i tried to talk about ssds as much as possible more broader sense and more specialized stuff i put in ps5 videos in pc benchmark but if you enjoy these comparisons i've got a few more coming up and i will do more if you guys enjoy them but otherwise thank you so much for watching click like if you've enjoyed the video subscribe if you want to learn more we've got loads more of these and other ssd videos coming very very soon as we are starting to tippity-tippity-toe into the pcie 5 generation stay tuned for that and take advantage of the guides and the free advice section linked in below over to nice compares but apart from that i will see you next time

Channel: NASCompares

Views: 14,896

Keywords: Best PCIe 4 NVMe SSD, Best PCIe SSD, PCIe 4 NVMe SSD Comparison, PCIe 4 SSD, PCIe 4X4 SSD, PCIe Gen 4 M.2, PS5 Internal SSD, Seagate Firecuda 530, Seagate Firecuda 530 PS5 Compatibility, Seagate Firecuda 530 vs WD Black SN850X, Seagate Firecuda vs Samsung 980, Seagate Ironwolf 530, WD Black NVMe, WD Black SN850X, WD Black SN850X ps5 expansion, WD Black SN850X TBW, ZP1000GM3A013, ZP2000GM3A013, ZP4000GM3A013, ZP500GM3A013, WDS100T2X0E, WDS100T2XHE, WDS200T2X0E, WDS200T2XHE, WDS400T2X0E

Id: tsHMpxOoDik

Length: 21min 45sec (1305 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 17 2022