WD Black SN850X 8TB Performance Results - WD Black SN850X 8TB SSD review: The no-compromise 8TB champion

Posted by 12318532110@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 118 comments

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Gippy_@reddit

$800 USD, oof. The 4TB is currently $305 but it has been on sale for $240-250. If this goes to $550 it'll be fine.

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RandomCollection@reddit

This is launch price. It will go on sale some time in 2025 likely.

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Boxkid351@reddit

Just like you said, some time in 2025, 8TB ssd is now $550 with instant rebates.
Well done.

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RandomCollection@reddit

No surprise - this is the time of year where sales are common.

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Loki25HMC@reddit

I just got one in Canada for $800 Canadian, so it went on a big sale already

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imaginary_num6er@reddit

Remember how all the SSDs launched in 2023 went up in price in 2024? Yep

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simo402@reddit

Last year was the lowest because pf oversupply of nand iirc (paid 112 euros for a 2tb crucial p5 plus)

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goldcakes@reddit

Paid $90 each for 5x2TB TLC NVMEs. Perfect for my video editing rig. Used some PCIe cards to get extra NVMe slots.

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PainterRude1394@reddit

990 pro launched in 2023 for $350. It's now $310.

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TheMiserableRain@reddit

Yep. Plus, isn't this the first mainstream branded 8TB? It does tend to be that once one arrives, more will follow, and some price & performance competition will begin to emerge.

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RainforestNerdNW@reddit

SSD prices need to come down a lot. 8TB WD Black HDD is $250. 8TB NAND needs to come down to that. we were supposed to be at price parity half a fucking decade ago

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geniice@reddit

SSD prices need to come down a lot.

Why? What are are you doing that needs an 8TB SSD and isn't isn't making you money?

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Kryohi@reddit

"What are you doing that needs more than 64MB of RAM and isn't making you money?"

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geniice@reddit

In other words you don't have any examples of people who need an 8TB NVME SSD for something that isn't making them money.

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Storing photos and videos, storing movies, storing any sort of scientific data (public research is underfunded in most of the world). Inb4 you can use an HDD for this. Sure, just like I can use Blender or pov-ray on a dual core PC. If you have a lot of data you need fast access to that data, precisely because it's a lot.

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Throwawayhelper420@reddit

He wasn't saying nobody should make these, he was merely stating that the price makes these unreasonable for regular people and that very few will buy them.

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geniice@reddit

Storing photos and videos,

How many people actualy have 8TB of photos? And RAID is good enough for video.

storing movies,

HDD raid all the way. Lot of plex setups out there. And they are 5200RPM HDD based because you simply don't need anything faster

games,

boards with 3 NVME slots aren't that uncommon. So who is storing more than 10TB of games?

storing any sort of scientific data (public research is underfunded in most of the world).

If helium filled HDs are good enough for the event Event Horizon Telescope they are good enough for you.

Very few forms of scientific data require speed and fankly most of them don't have that much volume.

Inb4 you can use an HDD for this. Sure, just like I can use Blender or pov-ray on a dual core PC. But if you have a lot of data you need fast access to that data, precisely because it's a lot.

Except you don't in most of the cases you listed. The things that need both volume and speed are limited to things you get paid for for the time being.

And remember I can (and have for reasons) buy something like an ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 Card and get more than 8TB of SSD storage at PCIe gen 5 speeds.

Running Alphafold2 (released in 2020) locally pretty much requires having a fast 4TB SSD. Imagine if in 2016 no one bothered to develop big ssds, because after all 128GB is more than enough for the OS, and even datacenters won't ever need large amounts of nand storage.

Datacenters are making money so if they actualy need an 8TB NVME SSD will pay whatever it costs for it.

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RainforestNerdNW@reddit

How many people actualy have 8TB of photos? And RAID is good enough for video.

any serious amateur photographer.

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geniice@reddit

Any? no. There are steam nerds will get into that kind of territory but again most of that can sit on HDDs as cold archives. With RAW+jpg on the canon R5 3.6TB will get you through 60K photos which is enough to cover whatever you are actualy working on.

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RainforestNerdNW@reddit

so yeah, you literally have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

any serious amateur photographer that shoots any serious number of timelapses will fill that out easily.

we get it, you have main character syndrome: but people other than you exist, and their needs for storage aren't exactly what you imagine.

also i would like large SATA SSDs for my NVR because it just performs better that way.

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geniice@reddit

so yeah, you literally have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

The 200K images I've on this system and the time I've spent at clubs and events say otherwise.

In a world where professionals run off NAS and DAS solutions amateurs do not need 8TB NVME SSDs

any serious amateur photographer that shoots any serious number of timelapses will fill that out easily.

Thats a tiny subset of "serious amateur photographer". Worse still their numbers aren't as high as you might expect since their work is so post processing heavy. The run and gun steam photographers can actualy end up with higher shutter counts because they can spend more time outside and less in post.

but people other than you exist, and their needs for storage aren't exactly what you imagine.

Well let me know when you find them because so far you haven't found them.

also i would like

We're talking about need. I'd like an 8TB SSD. Less playing around with PCIe bifurcation but I'm not going to pretend I need one.

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OneFormal4075@reddit

64MB ram is pretty low even for a 20 year old machine.

It wouldn't even be able to boot windows 10.

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RainforestNerdNW@reddit

Why? Why are you asking stupid questions that don't matter?

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geniice@reddit

If they need to come down then the question both matters and you should be able to answer it.

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RainforestNerdNW@reddit

That's just like your opinion, man

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chuckaeronut@reddit

$250 is an absolutely terrible deal for 8 TB of HDD.

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BFBooger@reddit

There has never been a time when it was predicted that SSD prices would match or beat HDDs at high capacity points. They did meet price parity at the smaller size end where HDDs have larger constant cost factors unrelated to capacity. But the bulk of the cost for SSD is the NAND itself, so they cost more as capacity increases, and the rate of shrinking has slowed down significantly in the last 8 years.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Peoplein this very sub like to post prediction of SSD being same price as HDD by 2030. I just dont see it happening any time soon.

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Suitable_Elk_7111@reddit

What's the raw material cost of a 1tb nand drive, vs. a 1 tb 2.5" or 3.5" platter drive.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Doesnt matter if the price is different for consumer devices.

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Suitable_Elk_7111@reddit

It's been expected for well over a decade. The raw material cost of a 3.5" high capacity platter drive is immensely more than the material cost of a solid state drive. Many of the high capacity solid state options (going back to pcie cards for mounting an array of 1tb m.2 drives in the early 2010s) weren't using a single cutting edge manufacturing process, often they were using several generations old lithography. And as it seems like you intentionally tried to be as wrong as possible, about as much as possible... the techniques, architecture, and drivers used in consumer grade nand drives has absolutely accelerated exponentially, because tech like 7nm has matured, and like all mature litho, it now has more capacity than demand, that's why samsung is using it to make consumer hard drives.

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Frost8552@reddit

A 8tb ssd will never come down to a 8tb hdd price anytime soon now 8tb nvme to price of a 8tb ssd i see but a 8tb hdd can be found for 100$

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RainforestNerdNW@reddit

good 8TB HDDs are still $200-250

after expressing my frustration i looked it up and it seems now the newest projection is parity in 2030. yeah not holding my breath.

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BFBooger@reddit

By 2030 there will be 40TB HDDS that cost a lot less than the equivalent SSD.

its just not going to happen unless there is a fundamental shift in technology or some massive increases in SSD supply. As soon as NAND cost comes down, demand in the data center picks up and prevents prices from staying low for long.

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Kryohi@reddit

By 2030 there will be 40TB HDDS that cost a lot less than the equivalent SSD.

Source? AFAIK it's the opposite of what you wrote, it's HDDs that would need a fundamental shift in technology to remain competitive in GB/$ while hopefully decreasing latency and improve bandwidth.

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Strazdas1@reddit

They think they might develop 1000+ layers by 2030. but layering cannot be infinite. the current design requires a staircase layering, which means each new layer is smaller than the previuos one and at some point it would be physically impossible to add a layer. this is the thoeretical hard cap to current SSD tech.

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Not_Yet_Italian_1990@reddit

I honestly think that what will happen, if price parity is ever achieved, is that HDDs will eventually become so niche that the economies of scale break down.

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RainforestNerdNW@reddit

that is a fair point. datacenter SSDs are also pushing like.. 20-30 TB these days too aren't they.. and it's U.2 NVMe with EPLP

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nplant@reddit

8tb nvme to price of a 8tb ssd

Both are SSD's. NVMe is the protocol (vs. SATA).

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Not_Yet_Italian_1990@reddit

It's shitty to say it... but $800 is actually not a bad price.

8tb drives are fucking expensive...

I'm still gonna wait a few years for a sub-$500 PCIe 5 8tb drive, I think...

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Kougar@reddit

Already down to $580 from AmazEgg with the coupon/rebate

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Not_Yet_Italian_1990@reddit

Nice! See? Progress.

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Deep90@reddit

$511.78 on amazon today

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snakebite2017@reddit

$800 is absolutely a bad price considering x2 4tb is less than $650. You can get another 2tb with the 150 saving.

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Not_Yet_Italian_1990@reddit

I mean... that's not how it works.

Of course you pay more for 1 8tb drive than 2 4tb drives. The 8tb drives are much more expensive to make, have much lower volume, and take up 1 slot rather than 2 slots. It's a super niche market.

Price-per-GB goes down and then back up again once you have enormous drives. It's always been like that, as far as I can remember.

For example the Crucial P3 Plus costs $110 for 1tb, $170 for 2tb, and $360 4tb. So the best value drive is the 2tb one.

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Strazdas1@reddit

I mean... that's not how it works.

thats exactly how it works unless mobo manufacturer scammed you and sold you one of those boards that disable SATA slots if you add two m.2s or something.

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Not_Yet_Italian_1990@reddit

Some people don't want to use SATA due to its limitations, and M.2 drive slots are limited. Larger NVMEs ensure a higher maximum storage size, which is why drives over 2GB command a price premium.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Sure, if your workflow requires above SATA3 speeds then i can understand. Still, almost every mobo in existence has at least 2 M.2 slots.

I think you meant 2 TB drives because 2GB drives would be very small. Based on me looking at the prices yesterday, 4TB drives are barely over 2x the price of 2TB drives, so no longer a premium.

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simo402@reddit

They were 1k and above, its improving

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Kougar@reddit

Down to $580 from AmazEgg with the coupon/rebate

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KerrickLong@reddit

It's already on sale for $550

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RE4Lyfe@reddit

With the BF sale and my 5% off with Prime Visa I just paid $522.50 (+ tax), and bought a OWC Express 1M2 to put it in.

I plan to use it with my Mac mini M4 Pro as an overkill storage drive for media and ProRes/insta360/Drone video editing

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CaptainKitKit@reddit

$550 on black friday sale 2024 on amazon

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Wyllio@reddit

Dropped to $550 today

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chuckaeronut@reddit

I just bought four of these this week for $2208 total. $552.

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Phillip1026@reddit

Sandisk's website has a bundle discount of about $1,100 for two 8TB. I think the price is much more reasonable now.

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simo402@reddit

800? I remember 8tb nvme being 1k and above very recently, thats actually a improvement

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EvilWiffles@reddit

Honestly thought of buying one myself. I have the sn850x 4TB and still need more storage.

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Strazdas1@reddit

why not just 2x4TB since thats cheaper? or are you lacking slots?

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_deadcruiser_@reddit

You can regularly find these brand new on ebay at least for $100-$200 under msrp, maybe 250 if you're lucky

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RedTuesdayMusic@reddit

If it was single sided I'd pay up immediately. Double sided my limit is $700

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Kougar@reddit

Down to $580 from AmazEgg with the coupon/rebate

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RedTuesdayMusic@reddit

In Norway we have 5 year retailer RMA so buying electronics from abroad is dumb thing to do :/

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Kougar@reddit

Nice! Is great to have other options than just Amazon/Newegg, both of which have massive third party seller problems and phony/broken returned products being resold out of official stocks by amazon itself.

I'd imagine when buying products that already have their own 5 year warranty it becomes more of an issue of convenience, or are there other issues?

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RedTuesdayMusic@reddit

Warranty is only ever a bonus, it's always more convenient to take the RMA directly to the retailer so they get to deal with the distributor/manufacturer themselves, you just take the replacement/money and forget about it

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KerrickLong@reddit

It's already on sale for $550

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MrDGS@reddit

I have a 4TB SSD, and the block size in the formatting is so large that it wastes a lot of space of smaller files. All that extra space does have a penalty.

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imaginary_num6er@reddit

What do you mean block size?

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TwinHaelix@reddit

Filesystems allocate space for files in chunks, so that the chunks can be spread out to fill space. (This is what disk fragmentation is, but it doesn't have a performance penalty on SSDs like it did on HDDs, so defragmenting SSDs isn't a thing.)

The chunks all need to be a fixed size for everything to work, so when the drive is formatted you pick a chunk size, called the block size. For bigger drives, the block size is usually bigger too, but the tradeoff is that the minimum space taken up by a tiny file is one block. Lots of tiny files, combined with a large block size, means lots of mostly-empty blocks - AKA wasted space.

It's worth noting that block sizes, even on massive drives, are usually measured in Kilobytes, so it's not usually a problem... Also why people don't really talk about it, or spread "optimal block size" wisdom. The default is usually a good choice.

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SomeAcanthocephala17@reddit

You forgot to mention that larger blocksizes result in better IOPS, because each block has an adress, and they are randomly stored, therfore the controller must look up every block that constituates a single file. For large files 4K blocks means many adresses to look up, if you make a blocksize of 32KB on partitions that have large files, you now have 8 times less adresses to lookup per 32KB bits of that file. If you have MKV movie files of 50GB (50.000.000KB) you see how you can remove a lot of address lookups for loading that file. But also for writing this has advantages, because you store 8 times less addresses to your FAT. This makes the wear and tear smaller for your SSD's. The only downside is when you have files smaller then 32KB, then they still take 32KB space... not advisable on an OS partition. But for Media or Documents paritions, 32KB is the best size.

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Strazdas1@reddit

well, technically you can defragment ssds, its just.... actually detrimental for average use case. having file spread out overmultiple controllers improves read times. not to mention extra wear from extra writes. SSD firmware usually move files around anyway to level off wearing.

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TwinHaelix@reddit

I suppose when I said defragmenting SSDs isn't a thing, I didn't mean that you can't, but that it wasn't a thing anyone would ever want to do, for all the reasons you outlined

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BFBooger@reddit

Then you're formatting it wrong.

You can use 'normal' 4k blocks all you want with a large SSD, provided you're using a non-ancient file system.

Even vFAT should support 4k blocks for a 4TB device, but its possible some disk formatting software might choose something silly, like 32k blocks, if they want compatibility with some legacy devices.

But really, friends don't let friends use vFAT unless there are no other reasonable options.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Yeah, i have 4k blocks everywhere from 512GB to 8TB. All on NTFS btw, works fine.

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Slyons89@reddit

Should be closer to $600 to be a fair price. But there are few 8 TB drives on the market to drive competition at this point.

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KerrickLong@reddit

It's already on sale for $550

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someguy@reddit

Not interesting for its price.

And it's not even PCIe 5.

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RedTuesdayMusic@reddit

And it's not even PCIe 5

It's double sided. Most motherboards' PCIe 5 m.2 slots have integrated heatsink with no back side cooling so that's the one place you don't use a double sided drive.

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Long-Appeal-1090@reddit

I read that you only need the heat sink for the side that holds the controller because that is where the most significant heat is produced

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RedTuesdayMusic@reddit

Of course, but there should still be metal clamshell underneath to also reach the back NAND

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steik@reddit

so where would one use a double sided drive? are you saying you need a PCIe card with m.2 slots to properly use this on most motherboards?

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exsinner@reddit

Depends on your motherboard. Some came with preinstall thermal pad on the board. I guess those 8(maybe more for current gen) layer pcb is quite capable of taking some heat off from your double sided ssd.

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NeverMind_ThatShit@reddit

Is there such thing as a 8TB SSD that's interesting for its price, no matter the interface or speed of the drive?

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Gippy_@reddit

7GBps is still plenty fast. 8TB SSDs will be needed as people shift over to 8K60 video editing. (No one has an 8K TV, but recording at double resolution allows zooming with no quality loss, or simply better sharpness when resizing to 4K.)

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greggm2000@reddit

I wouldn't say noone has 8K TVs, you can go to Best Buy's website and see several for sale. Now, is this something a lot of people have yet? Of course not.

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Stingray88@reddit

Someday we’ll all have them. Someday when you go to buy a new TV, the only good options will be 8K, with a few really shitty $150-250 4K options someone might put in a bathroom or buy for their grandma.

But I don’t suspect that day will come in the next decade to be honest.

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No-Relationship8261@reddit

Tbh at normal TV sizes 8k is not noticeable. That is why companies are trying to innovate in other ways like HDR.

So only way 8k becomes more normal is, we either start sitting closer or get bigger TV's.

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Not_Yet_Italian_1990@reddit

The issue is that "normal" TV sizes change over time. There's definitely an upper limit, but I'm not sure if we're there yet.

Another big utility they'll have is in computer monitors. People tend to sit a lot closer to their monitors, and so PPI matters a lot more.

My first HDTV was a 32" 720p display and I remember being amazed at how much better it was than my CRT display. I remember when I got my 27" 1440p monitor. The "wow" factor was real. Then I upgraded to a 42" 4k OLED monitor (basically the same PPI), and I love it.

The only place to really go from here is 8k. I'd definitely notice the 4x increase in PPI if I stick with a 42" monitor. You'd also definitely notice it at 32" as well, although, as you go smaller, obviously you have diminishing returns.

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Strazdas1@reddit

People also tend to not be blind, in which case even with current size and sitting distane 8k is noticably better.

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Not_Yet_Italian_1990@reddit

It depends. It always comes down to PPI and viewing distance. You're not going to notice 8K if you're 12 feet away from a 55" TV. You will know it if you're a couple of feet away from a 32" monitor, though.

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Strazdas1@reddit

I think a lot of people have a warped view of how much PPI you need to not notice the issues. Its a lot more than the falsely advertised retina.

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Strazdas1@reddit

we are selling 98" TVs now. Normal TV sizes have moved from 17" to 55" in the last 25 years.

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No-Relationship8261@reddit

Agreed. If 100 inch TVs become the norm. I can see 8k becoming normal.

I am just glad 4k phone thing is finally over.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Personally i see pixel issues on my 4k TV (75") across the room (tv and sitting possition in opposite side of a relatively small bedroom). But 8K is just in that space where... there really isnt any content for it so it would be pointless.

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Stingray88@reddit

Right, that’s why it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

It will become more normal simply because manufacturers will push it as the next big thing you gotta have. And at first, people won’t buy it. But eventually they won’t have a choice.

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No-Relationship8261@reddit

Ohh just like innovating by removing the headphone jack. Got it. Agreed.

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Stingray88@reddit

lol well not exactly. 8K is at least technically better than 4K, whether you can tell a difference or not. That’s the other reason why I feel it’s inevitable, because for some people with truly massive TVs it’ll be better, and for everyone else it’ll just be no difference.

Removal of the headphone jack is just a downgrade across the board. No tangible benefit, no reason for it.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Digital audio is also technically better than analog, but its still nice to have the 3.5mm

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nplant@reddit

I don't disagree with you, but right now, it's actually not technically better. Last time I checked, the 8k TV's had worse contrast than the equivalent 4k model, unfortunately.

As for the headphone jack, it was the biggest single component inside phones. For every 1 person that misses it, there are probably 20 who would never use it at this point. That's why it's gone.

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BFBooger@reddit

In order of what average users find more pleasing to the eye in blind trails (for media consumption):

1080p w/ quality HDR > 4k SDR

4k SDR @ 120fps (no judder) > 8k 60fps SDR

4k HDR @ 60fps >> 8k SDR @ 60fps.

Basically, to our eyes 8k is a very small improvement over 4k, and is easily trumped by better colors, better contrast, and smooth frame pacing. Even 1080p, with high quality HDR and smooth frames will beat out vanilla 4k in the eyes of most users, with most media content. 8k which is perceived as a much smaller improvement over 4k than 4k is over 1080p, has no chance at being a truly major quality enhancement.

Obviously for monitors or professional photo/video editing, etc, extra resolution is a completely different need. But for TVs, 8k is really the least useful of upcoming technologies.

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Strazdas1@reddit

A big issue is that a lot of our content isnt made for 8k. We put a lot of blur and smearing in the content. Often intentionally for some insane reason. If you have content that isnt blurred 8k shines a lot more.

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Stingray88@reddit

I don’t disagree, it’s an incredibly minimal improvement… and yet I still know it will come in due time. I don’t expect it soon, but eventually.

Same story, we’ll eventually get higher a consumer video standard with 14bit depth dynamic range. People will be able to see the difference between this higher range compared to HDR much less easily than they can HDR compared to SDR… but we’ll still see it eventually.

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greggm2000@reddit

I agree. I suspect you’ll see it in high-end monitors and VR headsets first, towards the end of the decade.

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RedTuesdayMusic@reddit

Lots of people filming 6.2k open gate already as its a standard feature on Fujifilm cameras now (even the cheapest one X-M5 has it)

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greggm2000@reddit

Not right now, with pricing as it is. I can’t speak for others, but a 8TB SSD, that’s PCIe 5 with one of the new cool-running controllers, so no need for active cooling or a big heatsink, and priced at $300 or less, I’d be all over that… and this would be for home use, mind.

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I don't think it will go any lower for BF deals.

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