Western Digital has introduced the WD_Black SN770M M.2 2230 compact solid-state drive, designed specifically for portable gaming consoles such as Valve’s Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally. The new product is available in volumes of 500 GB as well as 1 and 2 TB.
Image source: Western Digital
Replacing the SSD on a Steam Deck or ROG Ally console is quite easy. It is more difficult to find an M.2 drive with the required capacity and at the same time in the compact M.2 2230 format. Such media is not very common in retail and is more often found only in finished systems from OEM manufacturers. Recently, the situation in the segment of NVMe M.2 2230 drives is beginning to improve. Sabrent, Micron, Corsair and other brands have presented their solutions in this format relatively recently, writes The Verge.
Specialist SSD manufacturer Western Digital’s entry into the compact NVMe drive segment is certainly a positive sign and indicates growing demand for such solutions. The new products use TLC 3D NAND flash memory. WD_Black SN770M PCIe 4.0 drives offer sequential read speeds of up to 5140 MB/s. The sequential write speed of the 500GB version is 4000MB/s, the 1TB model is 4900MB/s, and the 2TB model is 4850MB/s. Random read performance is 460,000 IOPS for the Junior model, 740,000 IOPS for the 1TB version, and 650,000 IOPS for the 2TB version. Random write performance is 800,000 IOPS in all three cases.
As for the lifespan of the WD_Black SN770M, the 500 GB model is quoted at 300 TBW (terabytes of information overwritten), the 1 TB model is 600 TBW, and the 2 TB version is 1200 TBW.
The manufacturer has priced the WD_Black SN770M PCIe 4.0 500GB drive at $74.99 and the 1TB version at $109.99. Both available in the Western Digital online shop. The 2TB option hasn’t appeared there yet, but the new product retails for $239.99.
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