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SanDisk has just launched a new PCIe 4.0 gaming SSD with a budget price tag, offering speeds that trade blows with the WD Black SN850X, but with a price that starts at just $54.99 for a 500GB drive. The company claims the new WD Blue SN5100 can read at speeds of up to 7,100MB/s, with a top write speed of 6,700MB/s, which would have placed it among the fastest SSDs you could buy before the PCIe 5.0 era.
SanDisk says it’s aiming this new WD drive at creators and professionals, but it also looks like it would be a fine SSD for gamers on tight budgets. One of its predecessors, the WD Blue SN580 has been proudly sitting on our best gaming SSD buying guide for a while, thanks to its cheap price, and this new drive looks set to be much faster.
Four capacities are available, covering 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB drives at launch, with a 4TB model due to ship in October. The fastest drives in the range are the 1TB and 2TB models, which hit the aforementioned 7,100MB/s and 6,700MB/s read and write speeds. Comparatively, the WD Black SN850X, which still tops our buying guide as the best drive for most people, writes at 6,600MB/s, but has a faster 7,300MB/s read speed.
These are fast speeds for a budget SSD, even if they’re a long way from the peak pace of the PCIe 5.0 WD Black SN8100. As a point of comparison, the WD Blue SN580 tops out at just 4,150MB/s, and the later Blue SN5000 only hits 5,500MB/s, with WD pointing to a 30% boost in peak performance. If you buy the 4TB drive, SanDisk says you’ll get the same write speed, but a slightly slower 6,900MB/s read speed. Meanwhile, the entry-level 500GB drive slows down to max read and write speeds of 6,600MB/s and 5,600MB/s respectively.
The drives themselves are basic single-sided M.2 2080 cards, with a SanDisk NVMe controller joined by BiCS8 QLC (quad-level cell) 3D NAND flash memory. This QLC NAND was primarily designed to achieve high-density capacity in AI data centers, rather than high performance. This means that large amounts of storage can be condensed into a small number of chips, but in this case, it looks as though they can still achieve pretty good performance too. There’s no requirement for a heatsink either, although we’d still advise using one on a high-speed PCIe 4.0 drive if your motherboard comes with one.
Meanwhile, pricing is a mixed bag. The WD Blue SN5100 price is $54.99 / £39.99 for a 500GB drive, but that hardly gives you any space for today’s massive game installs. The next step up is the 1TB version for $79.99 / £63.99, which still undercuts a lot of PCIe 4.0 drives and gives you a more useful capacity. However, the 2TB WD Blue SN5100 price of $149.99 / £110.99 is similar to what you pay for a 2TB WD Black SN850X already, and the same goes for the 4TB version, which is set to cost $299.99 / £222.99.
If you’re thinking of upgrading your SSD, check out our tutorial on how to install an SSD, which takes you through the whole process from start to finish. You’ll also need a motherboard with a 4x PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot to run this drive at full speed, which is covered by practically every new board these days – you can check out our guide to buying the best gaming motherboard if you’re still stuck on a PCIe 3.0 system.
Are you looking to buy a new budget SSD? You can discuss the Blue SN5100 and everything else to do with he world of PC gaming hardware with us on our community Discord channel.
