The test system used in this review is equipped with an Intel Core i7-6700K CPU, GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-UD3 motherboard, 32GB (16GB x 2) of Crucial Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 memory, Samsung 960 PRO 512GB SSD and a GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G graphics card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 Enterprise.
To test the performance of Western Digital's WD Black NVMe SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark, HD Tach RW, ATTO Disk Benchmark, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro, Anvil's Storage Utilities, Iometer and PCMark 8. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Samsung 970 EVO, Samsung 970 PRO, Plextor M9Pe, Plextor M8Se, Patriot Hellfire, ADATA XPG SX8000, Samsung 960 PRO, Toshiba OCZ RD400, Samsung 950 PRO, Crucial MX500, Plextor M8V, Crucial BX300, ADATA Ultimate SU900, Plextor S3C, Toshiba OCZ VX500, ADATA Ultimate SU800, Plextor S2C, Crucial MX300, Plextor M7V, PNY CS1311, OCZ Trion 150, PNY CS2211, Plextor M6V, Crucial BX200, OCZ Trion 100, Kingston HyperX Savage, Crucial MX200, OCZ Vector 180 and Samsung SSD 850 EVO.
As I mentioned earlier, the WD Black NVMe uses Western Digital's new Spectrum controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 WD Black NVMe 1TB |
 Samsung 970 EVO 2TB |
According to Western Digital, the 1TB WD Black NVMe is capable of reading at 3,400 MB/s and writing at 2,800 MB/s. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the drive had no problems reaching these speeds in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write tests.
 WD Black NVMe 1TB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 Samsung 970 EVO 2TB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The WD Black NVMe performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 3,469 MB/s and write at 2,865 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the WD Black NVMe's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
The WD Black NVMe's performance was hit and miss when tested with HD Tach. While the drive was able to write at 1,523.5 MB/s, its read speed averaged out at only 1604.1 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the WD Black NVMe's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 WD Black NVMe 1TB |
 Samsung 970 EVO 2TB |
When tested with ATTO, the WD Black NVMe's read speeds topped out at about 3,388 MB/s and its write speeds at 2,869 MB/s.
