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If you’re looking for a drive in a last-ditch effort and have passed up the WD Green SN3000, you may want to rewind. Despite the rocky reputation this line of SSDs has, we’ve discovered that this one is actually a hidden gem. Some of the results will definitely surprise you as it delivers good performance and power efficiency for its class. Its performance in random read workloads, in particular, might raise some eyebrows. That makes it a dark horse of a bargain if you catch it at the right time.
It’s easy to look at the warranty – only three years and meager endurance rating – and think this isn’t the one for you. Dismissing it out of hand might be a mistake, though. This drive has a reliable proprietary SSD controller from SanDisk, the same one that makes the Blue SN5000, Blue SN51000, and Black SN7100 work so well. It also has the excellent BiCS8 flash of the latter two. This means it’s basically an updated SN5000 with QLC flash within its capacity range.
For the less technical-minded, this is good news because it means you’re not dealing with an underpowered SSD controller with old flash, and while the move is from TLC to QLC – effectively an endurance downgrade – the newer QLC is faster in most cases. The terabytes written (TBW) endurance rating is also sufficient for a budget drive. It’s the perfect drive to pop into a system if you’re not too worried about the details.
WD Green SN3000 Specifications
Swipe to scroll horizontally PricingProduct 500GB 1TB 2TB Pricing $114.99 (99.99 at Best Buy) $204.99 ($149.99 at Newegg) $406.99 ($406.99 at SanDisk) Form Factor M.2 2280 (Single-sided) M.2 2280 (Single-sided) M.2 2280 (Single-sided) Interface / Protocol PCIe 4.0 x4
NVMe 2.0 PCIe 4.0 x4
NVMe 2.0 PCIe 4.0 x4
NVMe 2.0 Controller Sandisk Proprietary Sandisk Proprietary Sandisk Proprietary DRAM N/A (HMB) N/A (HMB) N/A (HMB) Flash Memory Sandisk 218-Layer BiCS8 QLC Sandisk 218-Layer BiCS8 QLC Sandisk 218-Layer BiCS8 QLC Sequential Read 5,000 MB/s 5,000 MB/s 5,000 MB/s Sequential Write 4,100 MB/s 4,200 MB/s 4,200 MB/s Random Read N/A N/A N/A Random Write N/A N/A N/A Endurance 100TBW (0.18 DWPD) 150TBW (0.14 DWPD) 250TBW (0.11 DWPD) Security N/A N/A N/A Part Number WDS500G4G0E WDS100T4G0E WDS200T4G0E Warranty 3-Year 3-Year 3-Year
The WD Green SN3000 – and yes, this is the model name, even though it’s sold by SanDisk – is available at 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB at $114.99, $204.99, and $406.99 from SanDisk’s site. This is pretty expensive, but luckily, it's available at Newegg for $149.99 at 1TB with the ability to get two in a combo deal for $10 off. We are testing it at 1TB and recommend that capacity, and we also think it’s a good value for the price, despite what your first impressions might be of it being a Green drive – these are traditionally ultra-budget drives that don't have a great reputation – and limited performance specifications.
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