The WD Black AN1500 high-end SSD design for gamers that desire PCIe Gen4 performance. However, it doesn’t have it on their current-generation devices. It combines high-performance with aesthetics and a price to match, thanks to two WD Black SSDs in RAID 0, as well as customizable RGB lighting.
Have an ‘old’ PCIe Gen3 setup that needs Gen4 performance? Are you a huge RGB enthusiast as well? The WD Black AN1500 is most likely the SSD you’ve been looking for. This lightning-fast add-in card (AIC) overcomes the difficulties associated with standard NVMe RAID by offering a simple plug-and-play experience that is completely bootable.
What you will see here?
Design
Even though it’s hidden deep within your PC, the AN1500 is serious business. The robust heatsink encircles the whole gadget, and an RGB strip runs along the top and rear.
This effectively implies that the AN1500 striped data over both drives, treating them as one huge storage pool. The disadvantage of this is that if one of the drives fails, the entire raid will fail and you will be unable to access your data. There is no way to modify this configuration, so if you are concerned about losing your data, you must set up a backup procedure for this disc. The chances of the raid failing are small, and WD has provided a 5-year limited guarantee on the drive to reassure users.
Installation is a breeze: simply insert the drive into a PCIe 3.0×8 slot, load up Windows, and format the drive as usual. You’ll also need to download and install the WD Dashboard software to customize the drive’s RGB settings and monitor temperatures and disc use.
Specifications & Features
The AN1500 is available in three different capacities: 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. Each design has two WD SN730 modules in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities. This isn’t just one drive. These drives’ performance is sent to the PC through a PCIe 3.0 x8 connection via a Marvell 88NR2241 NVMe RAID controller, an Enterprise-class device.
As a result, it may theoretically exploit double the performance of a single WD SN730 NVMe drive by utilizing twice as many PCIe lanes as a single M.2 NVMe slot. Moreover, it gets near to the performance levels of a single PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe. Even though the motherboard lacks M.2 slots, it can accomplish this if it has 8 lanes of PCIe 3.0 accessible and a suitable slot to be installed.
Pros:
- Sequential speeds are excellent.
- The construction quality is excellent, and the RGB lighting is really attractive.
- A PCIe slot is quicker than a single M.2 slot.
- It’s simple to set up.
- It doesn’t require M.2 slots.
Cons:
- There is no disc encryption.
- The RAID 0 configuration is not modifiable.
- Expensive.
- Reduces the bandwidth between the GPU and the rest of the system.
- Power usage is high.
Software & LED
This hardware puts on a light display every time the computer is turned on, which may appear insignificant. This is a rainbow effect that cycles around the edge of the AN1500 by default, and it’s rather nice in a scenario where the internals is visible. For those who desire additional flexibility, WD provides a Windows-only Dashboard program. This program allows them to choose from thirteen distinct LED patterns and colors.
However, this software program may also be used to check the device’s condition, update the firmware, and monitor its performance and temperature. It also includes links to a free version of Acronis that WD offers for cloning an existing disc to the AN1500 and making it the OS boot drive. The software isn’t provided on the disc or in the box; instead, it’s available via the hardware’s support website.
Price and Availability
The WD Black AN1500 SSD starts at 1TB and costs $299.99 (about £235; AU$430; AED 1,100). The 2TB model costs $549.99 (about £430; AU$785; AED 2,019) — there’s also a 4TB model if you need even more capacity.
Even with great read/write speeds, that’s a lot to spend for storage. While charging the price of a graphics card for a storage device is a bit unusual because it aims at gamers and pros. Even WD’s own SN850 NVMe SSD, which is somewhat less expensive, would be acceptable.
Conclusion
Western Digital has added many new products to its WD BLACK gaming range. The AIC SSD, WD BLACK AN1500, is the subject of this evaluation. This drive uses the NVMe interface and promises speeds of up to 6.5GB/s to read and 4.1GB/s to write, as well as up to 4TB of space. The drive achieves these speeds thanks to the NVMe interface, RAID0 over two SSDs (in the 2TB and 4TB variants), and an inbuilt cooling. The SSD comes with the WD BLACK Dashboard software, which can also control the built-in RGB lights.
The main issue is the price; a 1TB AN1500 costs £270/$330, a 2TB model costs £450/$550, and a 4TB model costs £840/$999. When the SN750 1TB is available for less than half the price, the AN1500 appears to be quite the luxury for most PC gamers. Other firms will surely follow with expansion card-based NVMe SSDs, lowering prices as more become available, but until then, the AN1500 is only suggested if you’re desperate for substantial performance without burning a hole in your budget.
