WD Blue SN5000 1TB NVMe SSD Review

SPECworkstation 3.0.2 Storage Benchmark

SPECworkstation benchmark is an excellent benchmark to test systems using workstation-type workloads. In this test, we only ran the Storage component, which is fifteen separate tests.

SPECworkstation results for the WD Blue SN5000 are strong, turning in solid results for Product Development and Energy in particular. The other three test are at least competitive as well, and 3/5 of the time the SN5000 manages to outpace the SN580.

Sustained Write Performance

This is not necessarily a benchmark so much as trying to catch the post-cache write speed of the drive. While I am filling the drive with data to the 85% mark with ten simultaneous write threads, I monitor the drive for the write performance to dip to the lowest steady point and grab a screenshot.

Long term sequential write speed for the SN5000 bounces between 300 MB/s and around 550 MB/s, and it is not thermally constrained as far as I can tell. When I wrote down the results I put it in as 300 MB/s, but I have gone back and looked at the SN580 and it was essentially the exact same traffic pattern, and for that drive I put it down at 375 MB/s. I will simply say they perform very similarly for long writes like this, despite the graph showing the SN580 ahead. Compared to the rest of my test drives, 300 MB/s is not particularly fast, but for most consumers it will be fine.

Temperatures

We monitored the idle and maximum temperature during testing with HWMonitor to get some idea of the thermal performance and requirements of the drive.

Thermal performance for the WD SN5000 is a bit strange. Most of the time, my test drives hit their hottest point when I am doing my big initial data write, which is when I pull the post-cache write speed number. During that test, the SN5000 only hit 55C. However, during ATTO testing the drive spiked all the way up to 75C, which I was not expecting. To prevent thermal throttling I went ahead and did my testing under a heatsink. For common consumer uses I would guess the SN5000 will be fine without a heatsink, but it is interesting that it managed to spike so high during ATTO.

Final Words

The WD Blue SN5000 1TB is $65 at the time of this review, commanding a $2 price premium over the SN580. That $2 is definitely worth it, as the SN5000 is almost universally a faster drive. It is less expensive than most of the other drives on my chart, with the SN850X coming in at $85 and the Predator GM7 at $78 as perhaps its biggest competitors.

The WD Blue line of drives has, for the most part, been an easy recommendation for the past few product generations. It is a drive that feels like knows its target market exactly. It aims to be inexpensive, reasonably performant, and reliable. The SN5000 seems like a solid continuation of that line. Personally, I do not like the mixing of NAND types across the drive lineup, with the QLC-equipped 4TB acting as an outlier in the SN5000 lineup, but WD is upfront with their NAND type on their spec sheet which takes a lot of the sting out of that particular bit of criticism. The price is right and performance is generally improved over the previous generation drive, so I think there is a lot to like in the SN5000, while lots of room still exists for higher-performance drives.

I said it in the SN7100 review, but the SN850X is the largest spoiler to this drive as well. $20 separates the drives, which is a significant upcharge versus the $65 SN5000, but you also get a lot of extra performance for that difference. If you can spare an extra $20, I would consider springing for the SN850X. But if you do not need the performance and want to save the $20, the WD Blue SN5000 looks like yet another decent mid-range offering from WD.

Where to Buy

We purchased this drive on Amazon (Affiliate link.)