[Hardware]WD Black AN1500 NVMe AIC SSD Review: For RGB Addicts Who Need Speed

[Revo]

WD’s Black AN1500 fuses two Gen3 SSDs into one sleek RGB add-in-card for Gen4-like performance.

 

WD's Black AN1500 is a high-end SSD built for gamers who want  PCIe Gen4 performance but lack the support for the standard on current-gen platforms -- we’re looking at you Intel. Containing two WD Black SSDs in RAID 0, plus customizable RGB lighting, it offers high-performance with looks and a price to match.

Got an ‘old’ PCIe Gen3 rig, but want Gen4 performance? Are you also a big RGB fan? WD’s Black AN1500 is probably the SSDs you’ve been dreaming of. This blazing-fast add-in card (AIC) eliminates the headaches of traditional NVMe RAID by providing a simple plug-and-play experience that is fully bootable. Built with an enterprise-grade NVMe RAID controller and two of the company’s high-speed WD SN730 NVMe SSDs inside, WD’s Black AN1500 seamlessly integrates into your system while providing all the gigabytes per second you could ask for on Gen3 hardware.
WD’s Black SN1500 is available in capacities of 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB and at roughly $0.23-$0.27 per GB, the AN1500 fetches a premium price, although acceptable given its high capacity and performance. WD rates the Black AN1500 to deliver up to 6.5/4.1 GBps read/write speeds under sequential requests over its PCIe 3.0 x8 interface.

These performance numbers don’t tell the whole story, however. Like most TLC-based SSDs, WD Black AN1500’s ratings are based on an SLC cache and will degrade under large file transfers that exceed the cache, but due to its robust architecture, it’s performance will still remain strong when writing directly to the TLC. When the transfer ends, the architecture’s more aggressive evacuation policy will help to quickly maintain the high availability of SLC blocks to keep most writes directed to the SLC for higher endurance, too. 

While most SSDs come with finite endurance ratings within their warranty, we were unable to get ahold of any official endurance ratings on the Black AN1500 from the company. We do know, however, that it comes backed by a five-year warranty. This is potentially great news to reassure avid videographers as WD will warranty the device regardless of the number of writes performed.

Secure erase is unsupported, since the device is preconfigured as a RAID 0 with no way to change it by the end-user. Or at least, we were unable to secure erase the device and are still waiting to hear back from the company on whether or not it’s officially supported. AES 256-bit hardware encryption is also unsupported. But, the AN1500 does support Trim and S.M.A.R.T. data reporting.