MP 7,1 WD_BLACK AN1500

[ondioline]

WD_BLACK™ AN1500 NVMe™ PCIe SSD Add-in-Card | Western Digital

Experience lightning fast gameplay with this bootable, plug and play add-in-card that reaches extreme velocity with minimum effort. Includes customizable RGB lighting and heatsink.

shop.westerndigital.com

I bought this drive to try out, it's certainly a compelling form factor for the MP. It's basically a RAID 0 setup with an 8x PCIE 3 interface.

For starters it works without issue in MacOS, which is obviously a plus! My current setup is 2X 2TB 970 EVO Plus in software RAID 0. It's easy to compare these two because they're so similar. Here are some results:

WD AN1500



2x 970 EVO Plus RAID 0




So as you can see reads are extremely fast and consistent on the AN1500, but writes are significantly worse than the 970 EVO Plus setup. There is definitely a tradeoff with this SSD. Anyway hope this helps someone!

 

[theSeb]

Would be interesting to see some results for those not copying massive files back and forth on their drives.

 

[Nellopop]

Interesting.. will this ssd work into Mac Pro 2019 (7.1) ?

 

[LeonPro]

The OP posted that it works under Mac OS and he also tagged his post with 7,1 - so he is stating it will work on a Mac and also works on the 7,1.

The drive isn't a compelling purchase for me:

- My Samsung 970 Evo Plus in RAID 0 at 2 x 2TB tests at over 3,000MB/s in both READ and WRITE.
- The WD is limited to 2 NVMe SSD sticks and cannot be expanded to 4 total.
- Therefore the WD cannot do RAID 0 at 4 sticks.
- PCIe x8 speed

Based on other user recommendations I recently purchased a Sonnet Tech m.2 4x4 PCIe x16 card and paired with 4 x Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB sticks. This configuration can do a theoretical 11,700MB/s under RAID 0.

With your own PCIe card, you can start with 1 stick and expand to 4 as your budget allows. Plus you can select your own NVMe stick.

 

[Nellopop]

The OP posted that it works under Mac OS and he also tagged his post with 7,1 - so he is stating it will work on a Mac and also works on the 7,1.

The drive isn't a compelling purchase for me:

- My Samsung 970 Evo Plus in RAID 0 at 2 x 2TB tests at over 3,000MB/s in both READ and WRITE.
- The WD is limited to 2 NVMe SSD sticks and cannot be expanded to 4 total.
- Therefore the WD cannot do RAID 0 at 4 sticks.
- PCIe x8 speed

Based on other user recommendations I recently purchased a Sonnet Tech m.2 4x4 PCIe x16 card and paired with 4 x Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB sticks. This configuration can do a theoretical 11,700MB/s under RAID 0.

With your own PCIe card, you can start with 1 stick and expand to 4 as your budget allows. Plus you can select your own NVMe stick.

Thank you for the advice... I'll go for the Sonnet card with two wd sn750 1tb x2.

 

[Average Pro]

I'm a big fan of WD. I'd like to see more testing results.
Price comparison:
(1) Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCI ($399.99) + 2-each Samsung 2TB 970 EVO ($579.48) = $979
(2) WD Black 4TB = $1,000

 

[LeonPro]

I'm a big fan of WD. I'd like to see more testing results.
Price comparison:
(1) Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCI ($399.99) + 2-each Samsung 2TB 970 EVO ($579.48) = $979
(2) WD Black 4TB = $1,000

You mean the WD AN1500 PCIe SSD? Based on their theoretical read/write speeds it's a PCIe 3.0 x8 card. It's half the speed that is theoretically achievable by the Sonnet m.2 4x4 PCIe card which is x16. Plus you get to select and replace your own sticks down the road for longevity.

 

[Average Pro]

You mean the WD AN1500 PCIe SSD? Based on their theoretical read/write speeds it's a PCIe 3.0 x8 card. It's half the speed that is theoretically achievable by the Sonnet m.2 4x4 PCIe card which is x16. Plus you get to select and replace your own sticks down the road for longevity.

I'll need help tracking those numbers, because I find most quoted speeds on the Sonnet is under a RAID 0 configuration. Where would you recommend finding a direct comparison of these two without RAID 0?

 

[LeonPro]

I'll need help tracking those numbers, because I find most quoted speeds on the Sonnet is under a RAID 0 configuration. Where would you recommend finding a direct comparison of these two without RAID 0?

What do you mean by direct comparison? You want to compare the WD AN1500 at PCIe x8 which all is doing is RAID 0 with 2 of their sticks to a Sonnet m.2 PCIe x16 with only 1 stick installed? What kind of comparison is that?

All you need to do is check what’s inside the WD and you’ll see they are using two sticks in RAID 0. If you want a direct comparison then just check the single speed of their NVMe SSD bare stick and pit that against any other manufacturer bare NVMe SSD stick.

Google is your friend...

WD_Black AN1500 AIC SSD Review

The WD_BLACK AN1500 has a pretty significant read boost that should translate into less time waiting and more time playing.

www.storagereview.com

 

[Average Pro]

OK, maybe I'm having a mental lapse moment. When someone says they load (for example) a Sonnet m.2 with 4 X 1TB sticks and configure to RAID 0, I consider that 1TB (of usable/storage memory). And of course it's going to provide fast transfer speeds. Up to this point, when I see speed results, I figure the numbers are based on RAID 0 configuration as stated above.
When I look at the AN1500, what is the usable/storage memory for the 4TB model? Are the numbers quoted above achieved by configuring it as a RAID 0?

 

[LeonPro]

RAID 0 is striping two more disks. When you are putting 4 x 1TB sticks in RAID 0, that's creating one 4TB of memory and you're essentially relying on the transfer speed of BOTH the sticks AND the PCIe interface card.

In the case of the Sonnet m.2 PCIe 3.0, that speed will be x16. So if you have selected high performance read and write sticks, then you can get closer to the theoretical speed which is 16,000 MB/s (rounded up).

At the same time for the WD AN1500 x8, when you select the 4TB model you are basically having them load 2 x 2TB sticks in there in RAID 0 configuration. That's how the brand is able to achieve their stated 6,500 MB/s read and 4,100 MB/s write performance. A PCIe 3.0 x8 is able to achieve a theoretical 8,000 MB/s performance (rounded up).

If you want to measure the speed of one stick only then that isn't using RAID 0. That's just the speed of one stick which is usually under 3,000 MB/s for write and a bit over 3,000 MB/s for read.

For the OP speed test, I don't know what kind of Mac he's using and it looks like an old Mac unit as that's definitely not what I'm seeing with my 2 x 2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus in RAID 0 with the Sonnet m.2 PCIe card. I have 4 sticks in there but I separated them into two different RAID 0 setups. I don't need the full speed of all 4 sticks.

 

[Average Pro]

Thank you Leon. I had my RAID configurations mixed up. As for my set up, my 7,1 is on its way and I'm preparing to install SSDs where I can load and work on video projects.

 

[LeonPro]

Congrats on the purchase. I work on video editing. Depending on the software you use, I recommend investing in a couple SSDs down the road. It will help not only speed up and organize your workflow, but it will also help the health of your SSD.

Here's my internal NVMe SSD setup:

- Macintosh HD: 2 x 2TB Apple SSD for OS and apps
- Production HD: 2 x 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus RAID 0 for all multimedia files
- Production Mirror: 2 x 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus RAID 0 to clone Production HD
- Scratch Disk: 1 x 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus to serve as scratch and cache dump of all multimedia software

Then I have a redundant back up of specific projects:
- G-Drive Mobile: removable SATA SSD to backup a specific project
- Promise Disk: HDD that exists solely as a Time Machine backup

 

[ondioline]

looks like an old Mac unit as that's definitely not what I'm seeing with my 2 x 2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus in RAID 0 with the Sonnet m.2 PCIe card.

It literally says the configuration in the op. It's a new MP

 

[LeonPro]

It literally says the configuration in the op. It's a new MP

You're right. You tagged the post as 7,1. I only read MP and with the resulting slow speed didn't think it was a 7,1.

Your speed test for the 2 x 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus is exhibiting poor performance than what they are capable of as you can see in my own test of the same card type and capacity.

 

[radug]

For anyone finding this via search, works fine in cMP 5,1 as well.
Grab one if you find it as a bargain.

more info & benchmarks here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pcie-ssds-nvme-ahci.2146725/post-32436605

 

[dia3olik]

Nice! Slight OT, I have 2x 4TB AN1500 drives I'm selling in EU for a fair price! For details just PM me ;-)