Review on WD_Black AN1500 Internal Gaming Card by Ashutosh Takumatla

I've owned this drive for about two weeks now. It's terribly fast, but has a few downsides: 1. It uses 2 NVMe SSDs in RAID. This means that the probability of failure is TWICE higher than a regular NVMe SSD, since if one of them fails, the drive will stop working. Whether you can just replace these SSDs and rebuild the RAID array remains to be seen.2. The write resistance is pathetic. Only 400TB. The 2TB Samsung 980 Pro costs $150 less than the 2TB WD version and has a write capacity of 1200TB. It's almost on par with an inexpensive corporate drive. WD markets it as an enthusiast drive, but I doubt it will last me more than a year or two as a pro. This drive will last your average computer user 7-10 years, but they don't sell it as a device for the average computer user.3. HOT HOT HOT! Did I mention hot? This thing is so damn hot I had to add a fan that fits in the PCI slot just below, and even then this drive was idling at 45C. In comparison, the 980 Pro idles around 30 degrees. Under load without a fan, the WD heated up to 60°C and more. At these temperatures, it burns through very quickly. I was able to get it up to around 50C at full load with the fan, which is better but still not perfect. The 980 never exceeds 42C under full load, and my build doesn't have a fan or heatsink (in case it's not already obvious, I have both the 980 Pro and this WD drive on the same machine). If you have PCI Gen 4, this drive is actually slower than the 980 Pro in most cases. The only reason you should get this is if you want to get the best possible speed out of your drive and don't want to pay to upgrade your motherboard to Gen 4. This was my case. I have a very expensive motherboard and processor, so paying a $150 premium for a really worse experience made more sense than spending $1500+ to get my motherboard, processor, and memory to upgrade to something that is on the same budget level as what I previously bought. If you have Gen 4 or can upgrade to Gen 4 without spending too much money, skip this disc and go for 980 Pro. Message to WD: Shame on you for selling a 400TB hard drive to enthusiasts. Get the best cooling system. Rainbow lights are cool but not required. I would prefer you invest that money in a built in fan or better heat dissipation materials. If this budget drive dies, you can bet I'll file a warranty claim. I bet you have to replace it 3-4 times within a 5 year warranty. Wouldn't it be wiser to use better discs and materials? I'm sure you don't want to hurt the sale of your enterprise class drives by making this a bargain, but I expect at least 800TB of write endurance from an enthusiast product. a drive with only 800TB write capacity, even if it's 1/3 the price of an enterprise-class drive. You didn't have to make this useless product just to keep your business selling, so my only conclusion is that it's deliberate price gouging. You bet a lot of regular computer users will buy it just because it looks cool and these drives last 5 years and you are right but professional users like me will destroy these drives very quickly. If I had known that the write permanence was so poor (a fact you conveniently overlook in all your marketing materials and even the specs listed on your website) I would never have bought this. Unfortunately, I'm using this disc for a project that will take months. I can't turn off my computer during this project, so I'm forced to leave it. So yes folks, stay away from this disc unless your circumstances are the same as mine. This is robbery. If this thing cost $300 instead of the $550 I paid OR if the write endurance was 800TB+ I wouldn't complain so much, but $550 really doesn't make sense for 99% of users. If you can get a 20% faster drive for $150 less with 300% longer write times, why the hell would you choose it?