Western Digital’s Black SSD gets upgraded performance and a heat sink for gaming

Western Digital has announced an updated version of its WD Black SSD, the WD Black SN750, a more incremental update that looks to improve on performance from last year’s version. It’s also offering a heat sink-equipped variant that’s designed specifically for gaming.

The second-generation drive keeps things largely the same as the original from a hardware perspective. AnandTech noted in its review that the changes are largely on the firmware side of things, optimizing the existing hardware for even better performance and speed. (There’s also a new 2TB model being added to the lineup along with the aforementioned heat sink versions, although those won’t be available until later this spring.)

The performance will vary depending on the capacity of the drive you get, but it tops out on the 1TB model with 3,470 MB/s sequential read and 3,000 MB/s sequential write speeds. Western Digital has also overhauled its SSD Dashboard app, adding new options that are specifically geared toward gaming performance.

The WD Black SN750 comes in a 250GB size for $79.99, 500GB for $129.99, 1TB for $249.99, and 2TB for $499.99, with a five-year limited warranty. Those are considerably lower prices than last year’s model, which is especially nice since Western Digital isn’t rolling out these firmware updates to the older models. Those prices are only for the standard models; the heat sink model prices are set to come out closer to the release date.