- Hey guys. Andru Edwards here.
Editor-in-Chief at GearLive.com.
And today I wanted to talk to you
about upping the performance of your PC
with the Western Digital Black PCIe SSD.
Now, if you're unfamiliar with the new M.2 format,
this might look a little ridiculous to you,
because it looks like a stick of RAM.
But this is actually a 256 gigabyte storage drive.
And I've talked to you about the advantages
of SSDs like this one in the past.
This is the WD Blue SSD.
This is a SATA SSD that plugs in to any typical SATA slot.
These are solid state drive with no moving parts
that are able to read and write data way faster than
any spinning hard drive.
Now, however, as good as these SSDs are,
don't get me wrong, these are great.
I mentioned they connect to the SATA port
which was never really intended for flash storage.
Flash storage can actually perform much faster
than the SATA port allows.
But PCIe on the other hand, this allows for much faster
direct access to the flash storage via your motherboard.
That's all thanks to the NVMe interface.
We know have a storage standard that can plug
right into a PCIe port, giving you ridiculously fast speed.
You'll see what I mean as I take you through a couple
of tests in just a moment.
So the WD Black PCIe SSD is a gen three by four module
and it will be available in both 256
and 512 gigabyte variants.
Now, today I want to focus on some everyday tasks
as well as some enthusiast tasks.
This isn't about eking out every single drop
of speed from your computer that you can.
So today, I'm not talking about overclocking,
I'm not talking about water cooling.
I'm not talking about paying thousands of dollars
for a workstation class gaming PC.
Instead, I want to show you how you can get
much faster speed and responsiveness
simply by installing this little drive into your computer.
By the way, big shout out to Western Digital
for sending over the WD Black PCIe SSD,
for sponsoring this video and for providing
a very nice speed upgrade.
Now, Western Digital reached out to me
and they said that they think they have the best
M.2 PCIe storage solution for the money.
What I want to do here is compare the speeds
of a regular SATA SSD to the speeds
of their new WD Black PCIe SSD
and then compare that against the speed
of a much more expensive PCIe SSD solution as well,
which on paper should have have higher specs.
So let's take a look at how all three of these perform
and see which one provides the best bang for the buck.
Now, before I get into those benchmarks,
let me tell you about the test system that I'm using.
This is a barebones custom-built system,
rocking a 4 gigahertz Intel-core i7 processor,
16 gigabytes of HyperX RAM
and an Nvidia GTX950 graphics card.
The only piece of hardware that'll be different
in these tests is the storage solution itself.
All right, so the first test I did, the super simple test,
we've all done this one.
This is a simple cold boot-up.
I'm booting up the computer from a powered off state.
The computer by the way is running Windows 10 Pro.
And the fastest boot-up time was from the more expensive
PCIe solution, which came in at 20.68 seconds.
But the WD Black was 21.09 seconds,
about half a second slower.
And then the WD Blue SSD clocked in at 27.5 seconds.
Right off the bat we can see there is a distinct advantage
to the PCIe storage over even the already fast
WD Blue SSD over the SATA connection.
It saved us about 6 seconds of boot-up time.
Now, the next thing I wanted to do was launch a game.
Obviously if you're into playing computer games
then you're more than likely using a Windows PC.
And this actually one of the main areas where PCIe storage
can really help you out by boosting load times.
I decided to launch Batman Arkham Knight.
I have it here on the desktop and I started timing
right from when I double-clicked on the launch icon.
And once again, the fastest was
that third party PCIe solution clocking in at 16.38 seconds.
That was from double clicking the icon to getting
to the menu where I can make my next selection.
WD Black SSD came in at 17.5 seconds,
one and a half seconds slower.
And then the WD SSD clocked in at 19 seconds,
one and a half seconds slower than the WD Black model.
By the way, just to give you guys an idea
of how much faster all three of these are
than your typical spinning hard drive,
I did test this on a 7200 RPM hard drive as well
and the load time there was about 42 seconds
with all the same hardware.
Even though that WD Blue SSD is the slowest here
in the SSD shootout, it's still over twice as fast
as the hard drive I tested.
The next test is where things got a little interesting,
so interesting in fact that I did it twice
and I got similar results both times.
From the title screen, I wanted to jump into the game
and get to where the loading screen ended.
The loading screen of Batman Arkham Knight
will show the same thing,
regardless of the installed storage.
It's the speed at which it shows it
and the speed at which the loading sign
at the bottom right-hand corner of the display disappears.
What I wanted to do was see how long it took
from the loading screen to start, to when I could actually
click on the screen without seeing
that loading sign anymore.
For that to happen with the WD Black, it took 37.6 seconds.
37 and a half seconds, thereabout.
In second place was the more expensive PCIe solution
which took 43.5 seconds.
Now, that's seven seconds slower
and again that surprised me because it's more expensive.
If you're looking at a spec sheet,
you would assume that this one would be much faster
than the WD Black PCIe SSD, but in this case it's not.
So I did the test again, WD Black came in at 38 seconds
and the third party SSD was 42 seconds.
Now, comparing those two PCIe models to the WD Blue SSD
over the SATA connection, that one took 51 seconds
before the loading screen was done.
Once again, that was Batman Arkham Knight.
But let's jump out of gaming for a second,
because you might not be a gamer and you might be wondering
how this might apply to your everyday life.
I decided to test another area where I'm pretty proficient
and that was video editing.
So I downloaded a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro 2017
and got it all set up and then I closed it
so I can relaunch it without having to go through
all that setup process, just to see how fast it would go.
Launching Adobe Premiere Pro took the third party SSD
nine seconds from when I double-clicked the icon.
WD Black PCIe SSD took nine and a half seconds
and the WD Blue SSD over the SATA connection
took 10.5 seconds.
Then I wanted to test exporting a video project.
I was exporting it directly to the storage
that was inside of the computer.
And then again, the results here
were pretty interesting to me.
On a two-pass native export, the third party PCIe model
exported in one minute and 1.5 seconds.
WD Black PCIe SSD did one minute and three seconds
which is one and a half seconds slower.
The WD Blue SSD took 1 minute and 12 seconds.
Then I wanted to do a 4K single pass export
on a one minute video, and here's what I got.
The third party PCIe SSD did it in 6 minutes and 28 seconds
while the WD Black PCIe model did it in 6 minutes
and 31 seconds, a 3-second difference.
The WD Blue SSD clocked in at 6 minutes and 53 seconds,
so it took about 22 seconds more over the WD Black.
Now, I do have a couple of more test to go over,
but the pattern that I'm seeing here so far
is that the WD Black SSD is pretty much able to hold its own
and in one case even surpassed the speeds
of what is a much more expensive PCIe solution.
Next, I wanted to check on the process
of extracting three gigabytes of data from a ZIP archive.
So I started clocking the time after I hit extract
and waited until it was done.
The third party PCIe storage module came in at 22 seconds.
The WD Black PCIe came in at 22 and a half seconds,
so a half second lower to extract
three gigabytes worth of data.
And then the WD Blue SSD came in at 28 seconds.
Then finally, I wanted to do something
again that's more common that we all do.
I closed all the programs and I simply had windows reboot.
From the moment I hit reboot until I was back at a desktop
where I can get back to work is what I clocked.
For this one, the fastest was
the WD Black PCIe SSD at 47 seconds.
Second place was the third-party PCIe module at 50.5 seconds
so that one was three and a half seconds slower.
And then the WD Blue SSD took 1 minute and 11 seconds.
Those were all the tests that I performed
and as far as what I saw, performance was very, very close
between the WD Black PCIe SSD
and the more expensive third party version.
This is pretty much what Western Digital told me upfront.
In two of the benchmarks, the WD Black actually
outperformed a more expensive version.
So, let's talk about price.
The WD Black PCIe SSD will be available in two
configurations, a 256 gigabyte and a 512 gigabyte variant.
We're starting at the 256 gigabyte level.
The WD Blue SATA SSD is actually available in 250 gigabytes,
not 256, and that sells for $79.99.
Opting for the WD Black PCIe SSD instead is $109.99.
About 30 bucks more for a nice speed and performance boost.
And the third party SSD module sells for $129.99
at that same 256 gigabyte level.
Now, that's $20 more than the WD Black
and as you saw on the benchmarks, they're pretty much
neck and neck in speed for these common every day tasks
that you use a PC for.
But again, that's the 256 gigabyte version
and I think the bigger story is when you compare
the 512 gigabyte models.
Again, starting with the WD Blue SSD
over the SATA connection, they have a 500 gigabyte model
and that sells for $139.99.
Bumping up to the WD Black PCIe SSD,
the price there is $199.99.
That's a fantastic price for 512 gigabytes of PCIe storage.
Now, that third party module for the same amount
of storage, 512 gigabytes, is $329.99.
Again, as we saw in the benchmarks,
those two PCIe SSDs were in many ways virtually identical
and in a couple of places, the Western Digital model
handily beat the more expensive version.
There you have it guys, from my perspective
the Western Digital WD Black PCIe SSD is the winner
bringing us the best balance of speed, performance
and value for the dollar.
Soon you'll be able to get something much faster
than the typical SATA SSD without having to spend
the big bucks on some of those higher level PCIe solutions.
Now, if you're like me, you probably can't wait
to get your hands on these.
They were just announced at CES today
and they'll be available some time
in the first half of 2017.
But now I want to hear from you guys out there.
Let me know what you thought of these tests.
If you found anything interesting
and if you think you're someone
who could directly benefit from something
like a PCI based storage solution.
Drop a comment below as well as any questions you have
and I'll meet you down there for further discussion.
Be sure to drop a like on this video if you enjoyed it,
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Thanks so much for watching guys.
As always I appreciate your support.
I'm Andru Edwards and I'll catch you in the next video.
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