It’s not an uncommon issue… you’ve been waiting for a new game to be released for years, you pre-ordered it months ago, and the day has arrived. You fire up your PC, only to find you’ve run out of space and can’t install it. Now what? Sure you could delete some other games, but the same issue is only going to rock up again later down the line. Your best bet? Go and grab a bit more storage, the faster the better, and get that game rocking in no time at all.
The problem there is choice – there’s a bewildering array of different NVMe drives out there, all claiming to be amazing, all claiming to give you the best value for money out of all the options, so how do you know what to go for? Well I’ll tell you – if you want extremely good performance for the price, this Western Digital SN7100 is the way to go.
I’m not going to break this drive down into all of its technical stats and figures, there are plenty of reviews out there that will give you all of that. Instead I’m going to focus on what’s important to us, and that’s the impact it has on your games and your gaming experience. A lot of gamers remember the time they upgraded their old magnetic hard drive to an SSD, how games that took minutes to load were ready in seconds. If you’ve already got an NVMe drive in your PC you won’t see those same levels of improvement here, but there’s a very real chance you’ll easily notice an improvement if you have another averagely-priced drive currently sat in your computer. At around the £70 mark for the 1Tb version there are far more expensive options, but let’s see how this compares to other mid-priced NVMe drives.
We tried a few games out, and for all of them having moved the game files from our primary drive onto the SN7100, saw a noticeable difference in loading times and certain in-game smoothness in terms of textures and suchlike.
On Fortnite there were a few weird ongoing issues that were improved by the new drive. On our PC there’s often a bit of initial frame rate stutter when dropping into a game, and the first few seconds after landing could be a bit hit and miss as well. The SN7100 seems to have really helped with this, giving us a much smoother entry into the fight and a quicker settling of the frame rate as well. Flicking between screens on the home screen seemed a little snappier as well, and the lightning fast transfer rates of the SN7100. So far, so good.
Meanwhile, Spider-Man’s loading screens have never exactly been lengthy with fast-travel being 3 or 4 seconds on a slow day, and the SN7100 maintains that rapid speed without making a massive and obvious difference over our cheaper NVMe drive. It did chuck a thought into my head about how your intended use might impact whether or not you’ll need to slot a speedier NVMe into your PC… if you’re only playing these games such as this or Ghost of Tsushima that already have insanely speedy load times, you might have a harder decision to make. However, if you’re playing something that’s taking a little longer it might make the decision for you. And speaking of longer loading times…
No Man’s Sky. A bewilderingly brilliant game, but one that really relies on the quality of your kit when loading into your games or warping to a new star system. In this occasion, the increase in read speeds on the SN7100 were more obvious, trimming an obvious and clear amount of time off the loading. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still only talking about 3 or 4 seconds difference, but that’s still a noticeable improvement if you’re doing a lot of start-hopping over the course of an hour or more.
This picture of small-but-noticeable gains in pretty much evident in every gaming application we threw at it. Which leaves un an interesting position… is the SN7100 good enough to buy? Definitely, if you’re building a new system or upgrading from an SSD to an NVMe. This really should be at the top of your wish list, unless you’re planning on splashing out on a larger drive (this only goes up to 2Tb). But if you’re already rocking an NVMe, the idea of a total replacement for this is a harder idea to justify. It’s a brilliant drive, and the speeds are genuinely incredible for a drive costing £70 for a terabyte, but I’d see this mostly as a must-buy for anyone buying an additional drive or building a new PC.