Western Digital has revealed its first PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSDs, the WD Black SN850s, and will offer high read/write speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s and 5,300 MB/s to help minimize load times on your PC and games. These speeds are a significant rise from the 3,100MB/s and 1,600 MB/s read/write speeds of the SN750 and on par (with a slightly faster write speed) with the newly announced PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs from Samsung.
Since they’re standard M.2 NVMe SSDs, the SN850s should fit on most gaming PCs, as long as you have a compatible motherboard. Theoretically, for the PlayStation 5, they could also act as storage extensions, but Sony has not yet said what drives would be approved as compatible with its next-generation console. (On the other hand, the Xbox Series X / S has proprietary extendable storage.)
According to the firm, Western Digital’s latest SSDs will come in 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities and should be ready to buy “before the end of October 2020,” but you can preorder them now.
