Western Digital announces Black NVMe SSD family

Western Digital has announced the launch of a new Non Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) SSD, aimed firmly at the enthusiast gaming market and featuring an in-house architecture and controller.

Entering the company's Black family of performance-focused products, the Western Digital Black NVMe SSD is the company's first to feature 3D NAND flash technology implemented using an in-house architecture and homebrew controller built from the ground up with performance in mind. The result is a drive which, under WD's internal testing, is claimed to offer up to 3,400MB/s sequential read and 2,800MB/s sequential write alongside 500,000 random input/output operations per second (IOPS) in the flagship 1TB capacity version.

'Today's gaming applications require increasing capability from their PCs, and this will only continue to advance. With our new architecture and controller, the Western Digital Black SSD integrates our 3D NAND technology with the NVMe interface to enable new levels of performance,' crows WD's senior vice president of the devices business unit Mark Grace. 'Whether it's a new gaming rig or a video-editing workstation, our innovative NVMe drives will power many existing and future environments that enable data to thrive.'

WD has confirmed three models, all of which are due to hit shelves by the end of the month: a 250GB entry-level model, a 500GB mid-range model, and the flagship 1TB model. UK pricing has yet to be confirmed, with WD setting US retail pricing at $119.99, $229.99, and $449.99 respectively (around £86, £164, and £321 respectively, excluding taxes). All include a five-year warranty as standard.