WD Black AN1500 NVMe SSD PCIe card up to 6500MBps read speed

The WD Black AN1500 NVMe, SSD PCIe card, is a new breed of high-performance add-in cards that can reach blistering speeds of 6500/4100MBps read/write if you have the right PC.

Unfortunately, we did not so this can’t be a review, just an announcement of what you can expect.

What is the right PC for the WD Black AN1500?

It uses PCIe Gen 3 x8. There are a few new motherboards from ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI that have this – a full list is here (it is a PDF so check downloads). In brief, it needs the right support chipset (Intel Z390, Z170, B150, H170, H97, Z97) or AMD Promontory X570/470/370 and B350/450.

And there may be issues if the PCIe x16 slot is dedicated to the video card.

It should be backwards compatible but at much slower speeds on PCIe Gen 3 x4. But also remember that it uses eight lanes and that may limit other add-in PCIe cards.

Bottom line – If you buy it from an authorised dealer (not grey market) it has a 30-day money-back guarantee. You may need it.

What is the WD Black AN1500 NVMe SSD PCIe card

It is something you should covet, drool over, must have…

The WD Black AN1500 NVMe SSD PCIe card is a 1, 2 or 4TB PCIe x16 single-slot card in the familiar WD Black faux container design.

It has a programmable 13 pattern 16 LED RGB light strip (Windows only) that integrates with ASUS Aura Sync on Armoury Crate, GIGABYTE RGB Fusion 2.0, MSI Mystic Light, or the Razer Chroma RGB ecosystem.

The Black housing is an effective heatsink, so it is fan-less.

RAID 0 pre-configured

We did not test this, but we understand that there are two WD Black SSDs and a RAID grade controller inside that can do drive mirroring. This is configurable through the WD dashboard app. We also understand that you can only have one of these in current compatible systems.

You can download a Windows ISO image and set it as a boot drive.

Fast Facts

• Website here
• Price:
  • 1TB $399.99
  • 2TB $789.99 (has two x 1GB SSDs)
  • 4TB $1499.99 (has two x 2GB SSDs)
• Warranty: 5 years limited ACL (Australian Consumer Law) compliant
• From WD Online (above) and specialist VAR/resellers like Mwave, Scorptec, SkyComp etc.
• Uses WD 96-layer TLC flash VNAND and has 8GB DDR4 cache
• Marvell 88NR2241 NVMe RAID controller
• For: Gamers, creatives, videographers and photographers that have a spare PCIe Gen 3 x16 slots
   

As we could not review this device, we point you to Storage Review for a complete test

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