Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
As we have seen many different looks to an external solid state drive, Western Digital gave their own spin on the Black P50 Game Drive SSD 1TB with its unique appearances. Compared to other drives, this P50 Game Drive has a military-like look with its striped design that bulges out in even spacing. To me, it also reminds me of a shipping crate, especially with the printed "WD_BLACK" logo and the product name underneath. While it is not really that typical to see the product name directly on the product, I think it still looks really neat and matches the rugged design. However, even though it looks rugged, I should note this drive is not designed with any extra shock, dust, or water protection beyond what you would normally expect from an SSD. It also does not have any ingress protection rating. The drive weighs approximately 113g without its cable and measures approximately 118mm in length, 62mm in width, and 14mm in thickness. The black aluminum does not hide handling marks, but it looks quite clean nonetheless. Aluminum is chosen as it is a lighter but durable metal all around that does not flex or bend under pressure. It also works as a good heatsink to dissipate excess heat and prevent thermal throttling.
Similar to the front, the Western Digital Black P50 Game Drive SSD 1TB has a similar boxy design. However, there are some ventilation points at the back, which means you really should avoid mixing the Black P50 Game Drive SSD with any water or liquid. A series of regulation logos and the unit's serial number is found at the back as well. On the inscriptions, you will see this is the 1TB model and marked as a "Product of China". As we mentioned previously, there are 500GB and 2TB variants of the Western Digital Black P50 Game Drive SSD.
A USB Type-C port and white drive activity light is on the right. The LED shines solidly when it the drive is plugged in, while it shows a breathing effect when there is activity. This way, the light indicates power and activity status. While I did take the drive apart, I ended up not finding out much about the drive as everything inside is sealed tight, including both the drive and the controller. Western Digital has not told us what product is inside either, but I would guess that it is one of their Western Digital Black NVMe SSDs, such as the SN750. What we do know is that there is an NVMe solid state drive inside and it uses the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface, which is also known as the SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps. Naming conventions aside, there are not many devices or motherboards that support the fastest specification of USB 3.2. At press time, neither AMD nor Intel has native chipset support for this speed. In addition, you will either need specific Threadripper TRX40 motherboards or an expansion card. Unfortunately, I had neither of these interfaces, but it is all backwards compatible, so we will be testing on the SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps interface instead. Otherwise, one short USB Type-C to USB Type-C and one USB Type-C to Type-A cable. I think both of these cables are a bit short at 25cm, but I can understand them wanting to keep it this way to keep it portable.
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K @ 3.5GHz (Stock)
CPU Cooling: CRYORIG C7
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170N-Gaming 5
RAM: Patriot Elite DDR4-3600 2x8GB
Graphics: Integrated
Chassis: Fractal Design Era
Storage: Gigabyte UD PRO 256GB
Power: FSP Dagger Pro 650W
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Western Digital Black P50 Game Drive SSD 1TB (Solid State Drive)
- ADATA DashDrive Elite UE700 64GB (Flash Drive)
- Crucial X8 1TB (Solid State Drive)
- Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 64GB (Flash Drive)
- Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G3 32GB (Flash Drive)
- Kingston HyperX Fury 64GB (Flash Drive)
- LaCie Mobile SSD 500GB (Solid State Drive)
- LaCie Rugged SSD 1TB (Solid State Drive)
- Lexar Professional SL100 Pro 500GB (Solid State Drive)
- Patriot Supersonic Magnum 64GB (Flash Drive)
- Patriot Supersonic Magnum 2 256GB (Flash Drive)
- Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 256GB (Flash Drive)
- SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB (Flash Drive)
- SanDisk Ultra Fit 256GB (Flash Drive)
- Silicon Power Blaze B05 64GB (Flash Drive)
UPDATE June 27, 2022
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i5-12600K
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-U12A chromax.black
Motherboard: ASUS ProArt Z690-Creator WiFi
RAM: Kingston FURY Beast DDR5-5200 2x16GB
Graphics: EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti XC3 ULTRA GAMING
Chassis: Thermaltake Core P6 TG Snow
Storage: XPG Atom 30 1TB
Power: FSP Hydro PTM Pro 1200W
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Western Digital Black P50 Game Drive SSD 1TB
- ADATA Elite SE880 1TB
- Crucial X6 2TB
- Crucial X8 1TB
- Crucial X8 2TB
- LaCie Mobile SSD 500GB
- LaCie Rugged SSD 1TB
- Lexar Professional SL100 Pro 500GB
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 6.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
8. Conclusion
