WD Black SN7100 SSD review

It's a strange time for PC builders and console players alike. Both the prices of consoles and components have continued to climb in 2025, putting more pressure on budget-friendly Gen 4 drives like this WD Black SN7100 than ever before. That's because the reduced manufacturing costs of DRAM-less SSDs for gaming like this one can give your PC, gaming laptops, or PS5 a little boost and a new lease of life without the exorbitant price of newer Gen 5 alternatives, especially when the 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB models for the SN7100 retail for $69.99, $199.99, and $209.9,9, respectively.

I'm getting to this review a little late, so the costs have begun to fluctuate ever so slightly, but that's par for the course in the SSD market. Despite the passing of time, the 1TB SN7100 still provides great Gen 4 read and write speeds of 7,084.27 and 6,858.23 MB/s for $119.99, which is just shy of its quoted 7,250MB/s read and 6,900MB/s speeds on the box. Those times aren't revolutionary, nor are they the fastest available on the market today, but they get the job done, and I was able to still see faster loading times in a range of games from Marvel Rivals to Dispatch on my gaming rig.

The SN7100 has no heatsink model, so if you're after one of the best SSDs for your PS5, you'll need to grab your own, or you could spend a little more to grab an alternative like the WD Black SN850X if you can find it in stock. But the WD Black SN7100 still gets the job done and is worth integrating into your rig, and even if you wait a little longer, its pricing should remain okay as DRAM-less drives are typically more resistant to rising costs. Availability is still strong even this long after release - there's even a new 4TB variant available now too.

Design

The WD Black SN7100 is a PCIe Gen 4x4 DRAMless NVMe SSD designed with gaming laptops and smaller devices in mind, though it's also compatible with full-sized desktop gaming PCs, which is what I tested it in for this very review. As a drive with a M.2 2280 form factor, it looks pretty much as you'd expect - a small black rectangle, with Western Digital and Sandisk branding found throughout.

It's definitely part of the WD family, as it bears the resemblance of the WD Black SN770 range that came before it, and on the PCB, you'll find a single flash chip and a controller. There's no DRAM cache chip to be found, which may prompt you to look for a fancier, flagship option instead. This could be a wallet-friendly option though, especially in during the RAM wafer pricing apocalypse, which will cause a surge to more advanced SSDs.

If you're on the hunt for a new SSD for your PS5, you can, in fact, add this to your Sony console to give it a little storage boost. However, there's no heatsink model of this drive, so it will require you to provide one of your own that fits its 2280 sizing.

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Features

The WD Black SN7100 SSD is powered by Sandisk’s TLC 3D NAND tech and is available in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. Western Digital boasts on the box that the 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB triad of DRAMless NVMe SSDs are equipped with read and write speeds up to 7,250 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s, and that they can provide a 35% performance boost over their predecessors, like that of the WD Black SN770M SSD. Meanwhile, the 500GB model can provide 6,800MB/s read and 5,800MB/s write speeds.

I'm a bit late to the game, but it feels worth including that the 4TB model wasn't available at launch. Fortunately, WD rectified its omission earlier this year, and if you find even 2,000GB worth of space limiting for all your game and content creation needs, you've at least got that 4TB option available. The 4TB option also happens to support endurance ratings of up to 2,400TBW (1,200TBW for the 2TB model) which in layman's terms, means that it can handle up to 2,400TB worth of data in its lifespan before it starts to act not up to par.

Performance

SanDisk states that the WD Black SN7100 can reach "level-conquering speeds" of up to 7,250MB/s read and 6,900MB/s write when it comes to the 1TB to 2TB models, and it's the 1TB model that I was provided with to review. As with every SSD that passes mine and the rest of our team's testing benches (aka, our PC gaming setups), I ran the drive through our benchmarking processes to put this marketing spiel to the test. In CrystalDiskMark, I performed four read and write speed tests and calculated the average speed in MB/s of each, which you can see for yourself in the table below.

When it comes to its average read and write speeds, the 1TB SN7100 is a tiny bit shy of its on-the-box specs, coming in at an average of 7,084.27 and 6,858.23 MB/s. To put those numbers into perspective, the SSD that currently tops our best SSD guide reached average speeds of 7,462MB/s reads and 6,877MB/s as seen in our Samsung 990 Pro review, which is nearing what's capable for Gen 4 drives. The SN7100 is just marginally behind, but its speeds are nonetheless impressive, especially when you consider that the 1TB version I've got my hands on retails for just $119.99 / £109.99, though you're likely to find up to $168 right now thanks to the ever-fluctuating SSD pricing.

Remember also, that the higher capacity you go for, the more likely you are to see slight increases in performance, so if you opt for the 2TB version of this drive, you may get even closer to those quoted speeds.

Those speeds aren't going to mean much until you test them in practice. To do just that, I fired up a bunch of games on my gaming PC of varying install sizes and compared how fast they loaded on the onboard storage while stored on the SN7100. My calculations aren't entirely precise, as this test is basically carried out via me loading up games and using the stopwatch function on my smartphone, but it can still provide a rough indication of how speedy the drive is in action.

The 105.39GB of Marvel Rivals took on average 39.5 seconds (over the space of three tests) to load from its launcher to the start menu from my PC's onboard PNY CS1030 500GB drive. After being moved to the SN7100, it took an average 35.77 seconds. Additionally, the 14.33GB of Dispatch took an average of 15.21 seconds to load to its menu screen from the onboard storage, and 13.4 seconds from the SN7100. The SN7100 was faster compared to the default storage of my PC, but the differences of a few seconds were barely noticeable in the grand scheme of things, and won't be to the average player. However, the general speediness of the drive will be, and it was nice to be able to fire into Marvel Rival matches and finish up the anniversary events in no time flat - well, 35.77 seconds to be exact. Quicksilver would be proud.

Now, I don't own a DC meter, so I couldn't directly test the power consumption of the SN7100 to put Western Digital's "100% more power efficiency at maximum speed" claims to the test. However, I never noticed any slowdown or issues with my rig when it came to playing games directly from the drive, or just working away on any given day. What I was able to additionally measure was the temperature, which reported back as 39° during most tasks, and that barely budged when I was playing more graphically intensive games, like Marvel Rivals, which was a nice sight to behold.

It's worth adding that while I was given a model without a heatsink, I made sure to combine it with one to ensure there weren't any overheating issues - and there were none. Whether it was testing the loading times of the games above, or going about my day-to-day workload with far too many Chrome tabs open, and apps like Discord and Spotify running in the background.

Overall - should you buy the WD Black SN7100 SSD?

The WD Black SN7100 isn't the fastest Gen 4 drive that we've tested here at GamesRadar+. That award is currently held by the Samsung 990 Pro, which achieved blistering 7,462MB/s and 6,877MB/s read and write speeds, which is up there with the Corsair MP600 Elite, the Seagate Firecuda 530, and the WD Black SN850X.

With Gen 5 drives like the Samsung 9100 Pro SSD out in the market, we're at a point where we're reaching the pinnacle of what Gen 4 drives can achieve, and the SN7100 isn't necessarily trying to reach the peak of the mountain with its 7,084.27 and 6858.23 MB/s average read and write speeds. With these kinds of DRAM-less drives, it's less about achieving the pinnacle of speed and more about value, and if you can find the SN7100 for as close to its US and UK MSRP as possible, I'd definitely recommend adding it to your rig for some extra space that still performs speedily.

It's not going to provide the pinnacle of futureproofing as opposed to a Gen 5 alternative, but with the 1TB version coming in at $119.99 / £109.99, you're getting a lot of bang for your buck. Sure, you wouldn't have to spend that much more to grab an alternative like the 1TB WD Black SN850X, and that solves the pain of having to source a separate heatsink. Yet, if your PC or PS5 just needs a little boost and you can't afford to budget for the scarily demanding costs of new consoles and updating your entire rig, this drive is still a worthy pick up.

How I tested the WD Black SN7100 SSD

To put the 1TB WD Black SN7100 to the test, I attached it to the SSD slot of my gaming PC, with a Corsair heatsink in tow. While it was part of my PC setup, I ran the drive through the benchmarking tool CrystalDiskMark, and over four tests took the average read and write speeds and compared them to the on-the-box speeds. Additionally, I downloaded games like Marvel Rivals, Dispatch, and Battle Suit Aces to the drive via Steam, and timed with a stopwatch app how fast they took to load to their respective start screens, by taking an average time over 3 tests for each. Afterwards, I deleted then reinstalled the games on the onboard storage of my rig and did the same, then compared the times to see how the SN7100 stacked up.

To read more about the ways we test PS5 SSDs and the rest of our gaming tech, have a look at how we test PS5 SSDs and our hardware policy.

If your consoles should use a boost, check out our guides for the best SSDs for PS5, the best PS5 external hard drive, and the best Xbox Series X hard drive for more storage picks.