The WD Black SN850 1TB drive is the fastest PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD you can buy today. It may not top every benchmark, but when it comes to real-world benchmarks, nothing beats it. Don't get us wrong, it tops many of the synthetic benchmarks, and there are a few places where the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and Samsung 980 Pro have the edge, but overall, it doesn't overshadow the fact that this is the pinnacle of current storage

The Western is the best in the market.

Western Digital was a bit late to the PCIe SSD party, but quickly made up for it with the WD SN750. If you are still using a PCIe 3.0 platform, the WD SN750 is a great option. It is important to note that WD did not suddenly take the performance crown, but their focus on performance has paid off.

Western Digital is in a great position to produce high quality SSDs in that it produces everything it needs in-house, from its own memory controllers to NAND flash and RAM. Because they produce everything in-house, they are able to push everything a little harder than manufacturers who use off-the-shelf components, and it shows.

But pushing components hard obviously shows up in another important area, temperature. Since the 1TB version of the drive is single-sided, it should run a bit cooler than the 2TB double-sided product. This is because this is not a drive that runs cool, and it was 10°C hotter than other PCIe 4.0 drives I have tested recently. The test rig recorded 77°C, but this was with the heatsink that came with the motherboard.

If your motherboard does not come with a heatsink, you may need to look at the $20 more expensive version of the drive. This drive uses the aesthetics of a shipping container like Western Digitals external drives. If you can apply active cooling to the drive, even better. While it is important to note, we did not notice any throttling in our testing.

Temperatures can be tracked with Western Digital's Dashboard app. We still have a problem with Western Digital thinking that having ad-blocking in their toolbox software is not a problem. And this is not inexpensive. There are tools for updating drive status, performance, and firmware, access to Acronis True Image for duplicating existing drives, and much more.

Any SSD is ultimately defined by its performance, and as mentioned at the outset, this is where the WD SN850 stands out from the pack: synthetic benchmarks led by ATTO and AS SSD clearly show that this is a second-generation PCIe 4.0 drive. Peak sequential read and write speeds of 6,750MB/s and 5,920MB/s were recorded, respectively. Write speeds were lower than the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, but still above 5GB/s. AS SSD 4K write performance was similarly reversed, with the WD SN850 outperforming the Sabrent drive. [In PCMark 10's Quick and Full storage tests, the SN850 is well ahead of the pack, with an overall throughput of 495MB/s in the Quick test and 550MB/s in the Full benchmark, making this drive a force to be reckoned with in everyday use. This performance is a testament to the power of the Final Fantasy drive. [This performance was also demonstrated in the Final Fantasy XIV benchmark, where the SN850 recorded less than 7 seconds to load five scenes for the first time. While many "fast" SSDs take 12 seconds to complete the same task, this proves what a difference the latest technology can make in game performance.

Western Digital has been impressive of late, with the WD_Black AN1500 bringing tremendous performance to the PCIe 3.0 platform, and external next-gen SSDs like the P50 also performing well in our tests. External next-generation SSDs like the P50 also perform well in our tests.

The SN850 meets all of these criteria and stands head and shoulders above the rest as a performance drive for gaming PCs. Now let's talk about price. The closest to this drive in terms of performance are the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and the Samsung 980 Pro; the Sabrent is $30 less than this at $200, giving it a slight edge in terms of value for money.

The Samsung 980 Pro has had the edge for a few months, but is particularly cold, as it is the same price as the SN850. Obviously neither is a bad drive, but if we were to recommend a next-generation SSD right now, there is only one clear choice: the WD SN850 is the best drive you can buy right now, and the SN850 is the best drive you can buy right now.