Western Digital 250GB WD Blue SN570 NVMe Internal Solid State Drive SSD - Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, M.2 2280, Up to 3,300 MB/s - WDS250G3B0C

As a DIY enthusiast, upgrading to the Western Digital 2TB WD Blue SN570 NVMe SSD has been a game-changer for my system. The installation process was straightforward, thanks to the M.2 2280 form factor, which fit perfectly into my motherboard.One of the most impressive features of this SSD is its speed. With read speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s, my system boots up almost instantly, and large file transfers happen in a blink. This drive has drastically improved the overall responsiveness of my computer, making multitasking and running heavy applications a breeze.The 2TB capacity provides ample space for all my data, applications, and games, which is essential for someone who likes to keep everything on their main drive. The Gen3 x4 PCIe interface ensures that the SSD operates at its peak performance, making full use of the available bandwidth.A small downside is that the drive can run a bit warm under heavy load, but this is typical for high-performance NVMe SSDs and can be managed with proper cooling solutions.In summary, the Western Digital 2TB WD Blue SN570 NVMe SSD is an excellent upgrade for anyone looking to enhance their system's speed and storage capacity. The impressive performance and easy installation make it a top choice for both casual users and tech enthusiasts.

WD Blue. What could be more ho hum and boring than the product tier that isn't marked as a 'green' low power tier or a black high performance tier?While that applied to the prior SN550, which was slow and definitely boring, this drive punches above it's weight and gets about the highest performance you can get from a gen 3 drive, while using low voltage.Low voltage in an nvme drive can be pretty helpful in drive to system compatibility. Some of the high tier brands like Samsung have pretty much the same performance, only their drive controllers need more voltage than many comparably performing drives. Some motherboards just can't make that work, while a low performance OEM drive works well.Further, less voltage through the controller means less heat on it, and heat on the controller is the thing to worry about with nvme drives. The flash chips don't like too much heat, but the controller will slow down if it gets too hot (thermal throttling).Drives like the SN570 and the Hynix Gold P31 for gen 3 drives are both extremely low power, and can get away in a tight space like a laptop or mini pc without a heat sink without seeing performance drops.Granted, even one of the $5-7 elastic band heat sinks you can buy on Amazon will more than adequately keep a controller chip cool enough under most circumstances and if you have the space to fit one it won't hurt at all.Further, the price on this is a fair bit less than the high tier Samsung parts of equal performance, without losing much. Some samsung drives have fancy encryption options. Other than that, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference, and the price of the SN570 has been around 75% of what a Samsung 980 sells for.Drive comes with western digital acronis and the western digital SSD dashboard, which notified me of a firmware update and installed it seamlessly. So the drive cloning and backup, along with health and firmware monitoring can be easily downloaded. The firmware update tells me that if you're going to run this on another OS that doesn't have a WD dashboard app, that you might want to install it first into a windows pc and update it before sticking it into a chromebox or a linux computer.I picked up a "used - adequate" as a bit of YOLO at a sharp discount, and got a nice clean drive well packaged that had 5 hours on it per crystaldiskinfo. No problems getting it to work.

Installed these in a Mac Mini and a MacBook Air. Installed and reformatted for MacOS, been cranking along for months no issues.As a typical Mac user, these drives are way faster than Mac OWM drives. Transfer large and many, many small files without a hitch.Sorry not a big numbers guy. Just is it; working well, no issues better than what I had before in my everyday working environment? For me the answer is yes.I move rather large (240gb to 700gb) files around more than I like, and they chug a long quite nicely.I also move a few to hundreds of smaller files around as well. Again not blazing, but waaaay better than what I had before.When I bought these I was trying to balance price, speed and reliability. And I feel I accomplished that.When the spirit moves me, and I upgrade to a system that supports a way, way faster drive I will upgrade. As it stands, the next Mac I get will still be able to use these drives and maybe, just maybe exceed their capabilities. But probably not.So I have a few years of very nice speeds and most in my pocket. Sounds like a win to me.