Review on 💨 High-Speed Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe Internal SSD - Up to 2,400 MB/s - M.2 2280, Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, 3D NAND - WDS100T2B0C by Maurice Branch

Hard drives are undoubtedly a data transfer bottleneck, so it's always best to pursue a path that reduces potential bottlenecks as much as possible. I've posted a screenshot of a test showing the results for this NVME SSD on an ASUS ROG Strix X570-e motherboard with a Ryzen 7 3700X processor. The WD Blue SN550 really lives up to its sequential read performance specifications. However, actual NVME performance is only slightly better than a standard SATA SSD. It's definitely not that big of a difference you see between a mechanical hard drive and an SSD, especially when you factor in the RAM caching and other technologies that are built into the newer SATA SSDs to improve their performance. The test screenshot shows ridiculously high read/write speeds in MB/s for sequential read/write. However, test those lower numbers for random read/writes (which is closer to the real world than testing a bunch of standard disk I/Os). These numbers aren't much higher than what you'll see when testing SATA SSDs. If you're expecting Windows 10 (or Mac OS) boot times to be noticeably faster on an NVME compared to a standard SATA SSD, you'll be a bit disappointed. While you can save a few seconds booting the operating system and some applications, the overall performance improvement for NVME (compared to SSD) is only slightly better. However, if you are building a new PC and want the best possible performance from your OS boot disk, NVME is a good choice and not much more expensive than a SATA SSD. If you're considering NVME as an upgrade for your SATA SSD, the performance gain isn't significant enough to make the switch to NVME worth your time and effort. Overall, the WD Blue SN550 is very well priced and meets the specs. If you're looking for a fast boot drive, especially on a newer motherboard with built-in M.2 NVME slots, this product is a great choice. If you're looking for plenty of storage space for media or backups, a SATA SSD or mechanical hard drive remains your best bet.