For all intents and purposes, Western Digital doesn’t make solid state drives. However, it seems that the company’s SSD branding will live on for the moment under the stewardship of Sandisk. This turn of events has come to light following leaks of a new WD_Black drive whose release could be imminent.
Numerous references to WD_Black SN8100 are appearing across the internet, including on the likes of Amazon. Though there’s no publicly available product page for the SSD, it seems it was live long enough for the drive’s details to leak ahead of launch. Look hard enough and you’ll even find an image of it sporting familiar stylings.
Amazon listings for SN8100 confirm the SSD will be available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. These pages also illustrate that the drive rocks a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface and boasts a maximum sequential read speed of 14,900MB/s. This would make it one of the fastest models on the market, clipping past competitors such as Samsung 9100 Pro.
Images for SN8100 are scarce, save for one example with no integrated heatsink. It’s likely that Sandisk plans to launch the WD_Black drive with optional cooling but there’s no evidence of that for the moment. In any case, I imagine the SSD will do just fine under the care of a motherboard’s heatsink. It’s also possible that its native thermal performance don’t warrant cooling but it’s impossible to know for sure.
Given that retailers are evidently preparing product pages for SN8100, I’m confident that it should hit the market relatively soon. Sadly, these leaks don’t contain any references to pricing but one shouldn’t expect an SSD of this calibre to be on the cheap side.
I’m excited to see how this would-be successor to WD_Black SN850X shapes up, and sort of jazzed about new drives flying the WD_Black flag full stop. As soon as this SSD makes its formal entrance, expect a detailed write up from the Club386 team in due course. For the moment, follow the site on Google News in preparation for its announcement.
