Sandisk launches WD Blue SN5100 SSD, touting 30% higher performance than predecessor — PCIe 4.0 DRAM-less drives start at $54

WD Blue SN5100.

Sandisk has announced the release of the WD Blue SN5100, the successor to the WD Blue SN5000, which was introduced last year. The newest SN5100 is still a PCIe 4.0 drive, but it incorporates updated hardware that Sandisk says provides performance enhancements of up to 30% compared to its predecessor.

The recipe for the SN5100 closely resembles that of the previous SN5000. Sandisk integrates its proprietary PCIe 4.0 SSD controller with Kioxia NAND in a design that is devoid of DRAM. While the SN500 incorporates 112-layer BiCS5 TLC NAND (with a 162-layer BiCS6 QLC variant on the 4TB model), Sandisk adopts a differing strategy with the SN5100, employing QLC across the board. As a result, the SN5100 utilizes Kioxia's BiCS8 QLC NAND.