Western Digital has offered storage solution for years with a recognizable name for its performance and dependability. The company has spawned off a gaming division known as WD_BLACK and it continues to innovate performance on storage solutions. A few months ago,WD_BLACKoffered three new solutions for gamer that include the super-fast SN850 NVMe solid state drive that uses PCI-Express 4.0 technology, the new D50 Game Dock for all-in-one storage solutions on the go, and finally the AN1500 that is actually a plug-in PCI-Express card. WD_BLACK sent over the AN1500 plug-in card for testing and review and it’s impressive, but at a premium price.
There’s no doubt a lot of flash tied into the AN1500. This is a card designed to plug into a PCI-Express slot rather than a M.2 slot or SATA port. The card is enshrouded in metallic casing and is designed to remove thermal throttling. Along the rim of the card is a light strip for RGB lighting. It’s customizable with thirteen patterns and tons of colors via the WD_BLACK dashboard. This software also includes tools and monitoring software including heat monitoring. Thermal issues were never a problem for casual use or while gaming. The only issue I could see would be this card being under full load for an extended period of time, so basically heat should never be an issue.
The RGB strip can add to anyone’s system, but the use of the AN1500 will come down to specific setups. This shouldn’t be an issue for most setups, but it’s worth noting on my setup I have a gigantic boat sitting directly above it with aRTX 3080. If you vertically mount a card, chances are you won’t see the AN1500 at all. The lighting isn’t super bright, but it does tie into Razer Chroma which is an excellent addition. The card is flashy, but at its premium price, I wonder if certain aspects of this could have been removed to still achieve the performance.
The performance of the AN1500 is where the storage stands out. It’s available in a 1 TB, 2 TB and 4 TB format. One thing that the AN1500 has going for it over its sibling the SN850 is the larger size. WD_BLACK provided the 2 TB for the review, and the read/write speeds come in at 6400/4100MB/s. This isn’t as fast as the SN850, which clocks in at an astounding 7000/5300MB/s. The SN850 is also cheaper, but doesn’t offer the 4TB option and does also offer a 500GB option for the lower end. The AN1500 is also using PCI Gen3 Technology as opposed to the SN850 Gen4. This may have something to do with making sure the thermals are compliant. In comparison, the PlayStation 5 SSD features a 5.5/GB/s transfer rate with raw data, so the AN1500 seems to be at least on par at the bare minimum with that touted drive. The AN1500 also defaults to a RAID 0 setup, as the card is actually comprised of two separate SSDs, internally. Installation of the card was extremely simple as it is plug-n-play and doesn’t require any type of cables. 1.8 TB of the 2 TB is what was actually available on the card even after formatting. The card incorporates and enterprise-grade RAID controller, but no type of configuration was needed for the card to work. It was easily recognized by Windows and was ready within five minutes of unboxing.
As for real world performance, I looked at a couple of games. Some of these were previously on a traditional SSD and a few others were on a hybrid 7200 RPM HDD. I focused the testing on the amount of time it took to launch one of these titles and load into the actual game. This was also tested on games that did not require any type of server to connect to. The first title I tested wasCyberpunk 2077. This previously resided on the traditional SSD and loading into the game at any starting point took six seconds. Moving this to the AN1500 shaved about a second off of that time at five seconds. The next title isCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold Warand I went with the Fracture Jaw mission. This also resided on the traditional SSD and clocked in at 14 seconds and moving this to the AN1500 clocked in at 8 seconds, shaving 6 seconds off.Hades, although not demanding, was tested with taking about six seconds on the traditional SSD, but was almost an instantaneous transition taking only two seconds on the AN1500. In conclusion from transitioning from a traditional SSD, there are gains here, but does that equate the cost of upgrading?
There were only two games I tried from the 7200 RPM Hybrid HDD. The first wasDoom Eternaland I can never not help but marvel at how well optimized this game is on PC. Loading from that traditional hard drive took 19 seconds, and it strangely got quickly to 99% and hung for half of that time. The AN1500 clocked in at just 6 seconds, which is the biggest gain that was seen in the testing. The last title, however, was disappointing. Loading intoGTA V’sstory mode is always a haul, and the HDD clocked in at 33 seconds. Strangely, it still took 30 seconds on the AN1500, which made me double check to verify it was installed on the card. There are caveats to having the AN1500 as it provides improvements across the board. You have to weigh those gains with the costs. The 1 TB version costs $299.99, which is a lot for a 1 TB storage solution. The 2 TB that was tested comes in at $549.99, which is high. The 4 TB reaches $999.99 and is possibly the most premium storage solution for normal users. The SN850 range from $119.99 (on sale) for 500 GB to $469.99 for a 2 TB M.2 NVMe drive with a heat sink. I firmly believe the glamour and the technology of the AN1500 is what drives the pricing.
Closing Comments:
The WD_BLACK brand is, no doubt, for gaming enthusiasts when it comes to storage solutions. The company offers premium tech and solutions with premium pricing. The AN1500 is one of the best storage solutions on the market. If you’re looking to upgrade to this, you may consider this if you have no available M.2 slot, want to add to RGB or just want the best of the best. Using PCI-Express directly is an excellent outside-of-the-box design and the fact that it’s simple to install and use makes it more attractive. The pricing is premium and probably would be tight to squeeze into a dedicated budget. Adding more to this would be the SN850, which has faster read/write speeds and is cheaper. Just strictly looking at the tech, performance and design, however, the WD_BLACK AN1500 is one of the best storage solutions out there.
