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WD's latest addition to their Game range of external drives is the Black P40 Game Drive. It combines an NVMe PCIe Gen 3 SSD with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 (20Gb/s) interface, all housed inside a durable and shock-resistant enclosure which – of course – also has RGB lighting. We test the 500GB model, hitting the market at £93.99.
Currently, the WD Black P40 Game Drive line-up comprises just three capacities; the entry-level 500GB drive (the drive we are looking at here), 1TB and a flagship 2TB model.
Internally the drive uses a WD SN560 M.2 NVMe drive along with an ASMedia bridging controller. WD quote Sequential read performance across the drive range as up to 2,000MB/s with the 1TB and 2TB models rated as up to 2,000MB/s for Sequential writes while the 500GB model gets by with 1,950MB/s.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 1TB.
- NAND Components: Inhouse 3D TLC.
- Interface: USB Gen 3.2 x2 (20Gb/s).
- Form Factor: External.
- NAND Controller: WD.
- Dimensions: 106.98 x 50.82 x 13mm.
- Drive Weight: 78.5g.
- Firmware Version: 3001.
The WD Black P40 Game Drive comes in a sturdy box with an image of the drive on the front along with the regular WD Black branding. Under the right-hand side of the image, we see the drive’s capacity and read speed in both English and French.
The back of the box has a small image of one end of the drive, the end that has the USB Type-C connector. To the left of this image is a box contents list and the drive compatibility options, again in both English and French along with logos informing users of the 5-year warranty and that the SSD inside the unit uses 3D NAND.
One side panel of the box has a life-size side view of the drive.
The WD Black P40 Game Drive design follows the same look and feel of other recent WD Game devices as it looks like a mini modern-day weapons storage case, the type you'll find scattered throughout any decent FPS game. WD claims the shock-resistant enclosure can survive a drop of up to two meters.
Using the CrystalDiskInfo utility we find that the drive inside the P40 is recognised by the CrystalDiskInfo utility as a WD SN560E drive, details of which are very thin on the ground at the time of writing this review.
Along the top and bottom, outer edges of the base of the drive are the two plastic strips that cover the LEDs for the RGB lighting feature. These strips run for around 80% of the length of the drive.
The drive uses a USB Gen 3.2 Gen 2 x2 (20Gb/s) interface.
Bundled in with the drive are USB Type-C to Type-C and a Type-C to Type-A adapter, along with a Quick Install Guide.
WD’s SSD Dashboard (v3.7.2.5 supports the Black P40 Game) is one of the best and about as comprehensive an SSD management utility as you’ll likely to find. It displays information on drive temperature, life remaining and a whole lot more including a live performance monitor. There isn’t any cloning utility incorporated into the dashboard but Acronis True Image WD Edition which can download from WD’s website.
One page of SSD Dashboard is dedicated to controlling the RGB lighting system which has 13 basic pattern effects with options to tinker about with the colours being used. It is also compatible with the most common motherboard RGB systems out there; MSI’s Mystic Light Sync, Asus’ Aura Sync, Razor Chroma RGB and Gigabyte’s RGB Fusion 2.0.
For a look at the RGB lighting, see the below video:
Out of the box, the P40 Game Drive is formatted in exFAT. We re-formatted the drive to NTFS so we could run some of our benchmarks.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure the theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSDs. We are using V8.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems' performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously.Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturer's RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
WD's official Sequential speed ratings for the 500GB version of the Black P40 Game Drive as up to 2,000MB/s for reads and up to 1,950MB/s for writes. We could confirm both official figures with the CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark with the best test read result of 2,081MB/s and a best write result of 1,951MB/s.
In our throughput tests both read and write performance peak at the end of the test (16MB block mark). Reads peak at 1,840.16MB/s while writes peak at 1,874.15MB/s, both figures are short of the official figures of 2,000MB/s reads and 1,950MB/s writes.
Although the peak read throughput result of 1,840.16MB/s is a little way off the official maximum figure, the 500GB WD Black P40 Game Drive is the second fastest drive we've seen to date when it comes to Sequential reads. Kingston's XS2000 drive sits in the top spot.
When it comes to Sequential writes the WD Black P40 Game Drive is the third fastest we've seen behind Seagate's FireCuda Gaming SSD and WD's own Black P50 Game Drive.
The PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark has been designed to test drives that are used for storing files rather than applications. You can also use this test with NAS drives, USB sticks, memory cards, and other external storage devices.
The Data Drive Benchmark uses 3 traces, running 3 passes with each trace.
Trace 1. Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, in to the target drive (write test).
Trace 2. Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
Trace 3. Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test)
Here we show the total bandwidth performance for each of the individual traces.
WD's Black P40 Game Drive handles the rigours of the PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark very well indeed. It's the second fastest USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 2 drive we've seen to date, beaten only by Seagate's FireCuda Gaming SSD in the overall bandwidth figure and all three test traces.
To test the real-life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of drive reading from & writing to a 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO.
- 100GB data file.
- 60GB iso image.
- 60GB Steam folder – 29,521 files.
- 50GB File folder – 28,523 files.
- 12GB Movie folder – 24 files (mix of Blu-ray and 4K files).
- 10GB Photo folder – 621 files (mix of .png, raw and .jpeg images).
- 10GB Audio folder – 1,483 files (mix of mp3 and .flac files).
- 5GB (1.5bn pixel) photo.
- BluRay movie.
In our real-life file transfer tests, the WD Black P40 Game Drive averaged 379.61MB/s for the thirteen transfers when writing data was being written to the drive. The fastest write performance was the 543MB/s for the 5GB image. Reading the data back, the drive averaged 417.69MB/s, the fastest transfer being the 12GB Movie Folder.
To get a measure of how much faster PCIe NVMe drives are than standard SATA SSDs we use the same files but transferred to and from a 2TB Kioxia Exceria Plus drive:
Switching over to reading and writing the data to another NVMe drive saw, as you might expect dramatic leaps in performance, particularly when it came to reading the data from the drive,
The latest drive to join WD's Black Game clan of external SSDs is the P40 which marries an NVMe Gen3 SSD with a USB Gen 2 x2 (20Gbps) interface, oh and it has RGB lighting as well. The Black P40 Game line-up consists of the same lower capacities as the previous Black P50 Game; 500GB, 1TB and 2TB but at launch, it tops out at the 2TB capacity whereas the Black P50 has a 4TB flagship model.
Looking identical in appearance to the previous Black P50 Game drive, the P40 is actually smaller and lighter than the P50, measuring 106.98 x 50.82 x 13mm and weighing in at 78.5g, compared to the 118 x 65 x 14mm and 115g of the Black P50 Game.
Apart from being smaller and lighter than the previous drive, the Black P40 Game has another trick up its sleeve – RGB lighting. The LEDs are housed under two very thin plastic strips on each side of the base of the enclosure which run for around three-quarters of the enclosure's length. The thirteen lighting effects are controlled via the WD SSD Dashboard management software.
Internally, the drive uses one of WD's own Black SN560E M.2 NVMe SSDs which has an in-house controller and 3D TLC NAND and there is an ASMedia ASM2364 controller handing the USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 bridge. All three drives in the range have the same up to 2,000MB/s read performance rating. The two largest drives in the range are rated up to 2,000MB/s for writes while the 500GB drive has to make do with up to 1,950MB/s.
When tested with the ATTO benchmark we couldn't hit either of those official maximum figures for the 500GB Black P40 Game (2,000MB/s reads, 1,950MB/s writes) but got pretty close with a read result of 1,930MB/s and writes at 1,720MB/s. However, using the CrystalDiskBench v8 benchmark we could confirm both official figures. The fastest test result of 2,081MB/s came when we used the Peak Performance profile test (using compressible data). When it came to writes, the best result, 1,951MB/s came from the default CrystalDiskBench test.
Overall, WD's Black P40 Game Drive is fast performing external drive but as with all USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 devices, the trickier part of the equation is to find a device which supports the interface.
We found the 500GB WD Black P40 Game Drive SSD on the WD Digital store for £93.99 (inc VAT) HERE.
Pros
- Sequential performance.
- Design.
- 5-year warranty.
Cons
- Needs a USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 interface to get the best out of it.
KitGuru says: Another fast-performing external SSD from WD's Black Game Drive stable. Smaller in stature than the Black P50 Game Drive, the Black P40 has an additional feature in the shape of RGB lighting. On the downside, you need to find a USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 supporting motherboard or add-in card to tap into its full potential.
