Western Digital today announces the latest addition to its mainstream WD Blue family, the SN580 NVMe SSD. The DRAM-less PCIe 4.0 x4 drive offers better performance than the line’s current flagship, his SN570, which is due out in late 2021. This DRAM-less drive is the first PCIe Gen4 SSD in the WD Blue lineup.
As a mainstream drive, WD Blue SN580 is designed for consumer systems that require fast application startup and high responsiveness in multitasking scenarios. WD has also optimized the firmware to load large media assets faster (consideration for content creators). Most importantly, the WD Blue SN580’s power efficiency makes it an excellent candidate for battery-powered systems due to its DRAM-free nature and not exceeding its performance targets (up to 4150 MBps, which is low end for a Gen4 drive). means that .
The SN570 was released in three capacities: 250GB, 500GB and 1TB, with a 2TB model coming later. The SN580 family launches today in four capacities ranging from 250GB to 2TB. All drives are single sided, have a 5 year warranty and a DWPD rating of 0.25. The major performance improvements compared to SN570 are sequential read/write speed boost from 3500 MBps to 4150 MBps and random write IOPS boost from 600K to 750K at high capacity points. The SN580 still uses the same BiCS 5 112L 3D TLC as his SN570, so the move to the new Gen4 controller is the only reason. These drives will have 3D TLC for the rest of their life and will not transition to QLC (now consigned to higher capacity WD Green NVMe SSDs).
| Western Digital SN580 SSD specifications | ||||
| capacity | 250GB | 500GB | 1TB | 2TB |
| controller | SanDisk 20-82-10082 | |||
| NAND flash | Western Digital / Kioxia BiCS5 112L 3D TLC NAND | |||
| form factor, interface | Single-sided M.2-2280, PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0 | |||
| sequential read | 4000MB/s | 4150MB/s | ||
| sequential light | 2000MB/s | 3600MB/s | 4150MB/s | |
| Random read IOPS | 240K | 450K | 600K | |
| Random write IOPS | 470K | 750K | ||
| SLC caching | yes | |||
| TCG Opal Encrypted | no | |||
| guarantee | 5 years | |||
| write endurance | 150TBW 0.25 DWPD |
300TBW 0.25 DWPD |
600TBW 0.25 DWPD |
900TBW 0.25 DWPD |
| Manufacturer’s suggested retail price | $28 (12¢/GB) | $32 (6.4¢/GB) | $50 (5¢/GB) | $110 (5.5¢/GB) |
The combination of in-house controllers and NAND is actually nothing new. The same DRAM-less 4-channel controller can also be found in the recent WD_BLACK SN770 SSD with the same BiCS 5 3D TLC flash. The main difference seems to be firmware optimizations focused on normal consumer workloads and power consumption rather than gamer performance.
WD claims a sleep power of 3.3 mW and an average active power of 65 mW (with no traffic). The company also claims that its SLC caching scheme (called nCache 4.0) consumes less energy compared to the SN570 and delivers very good burst performance.
The memory industry is currently in recession, so flash prices are very low. This has led to excellent launch pricing for SSDs such as the WD Blue SN580, starting at as low as 5.5 cents per GB for 1TB and 2TB SKUs.
