WD Blue SN5000 4TB NVMe SSD vs WD_BLACK SN8100 SSD

Buy the WD Blue SN5000 4TB if you want a big, cheap-feeling Gen4 drive for a game library or media archive and your board tops out at PCIe 4.0. Buy the WD_BLACK SN8100 if you have a Gen5 M.2 slot and move huge files or run AI and video workloads where its roughly 14,900 MB/s reads and TLC NAND with DRAM cache pay off. The SN8100 is the faster, better-built drive with hardware encryption and an optional heatsink; the SN5000 trades speed and QLC endurance for capacity. Owners of the SN8100 rate it highly, while the SN5000's QLC NAND and 0.16 DWPD make it the weaker choice for heavy sustained writes.

• Choose the WD Blue SN5000 if you need 4TB on a PCIe 4.0 system and mostly read data: games, media, backups.
• Choose the WD_BLACK SN8100 if your motherboard has a Gen5 M.2 slot and you write large files often or want the fastest drive available.