Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've owned this drive for about two weeks now. It's wicked fast, but has several drawbacks: 1. It uses 2x NVMe SSDs in RAID. This means the chances of failure is TWICE as high as a normal NVMe SSD because if one of them goes, the drive is no longer functional. Whether or not you can just replace these SSDs and rebuild the RAID array remains to be seen. 2. The write endurance is pitiful. Only 400TB. The 2TB Samsung 980 Pro is $150 less than the 2TB version of the WD and the write endurance of that drive is 1,200TB. That's almost on-par with a low end Enterprise drive. WD markets this as an enthusiast drive, but I doubt it will last me more than a year or two as a professional. This drive will last your average computer user 7-10 years, but they don't market this as a device for the average computer user. 3. HOT, HOT, HOT! Did I mention hot? This thing is so freaking hot that I had to add a fan that goes into the PCI bay right below it and even then this drive idles at 45C. By comparison the 980 Pro idles around 30C. Under load without the fan the WD reached 60C and beyond. At those temps this will burn out very quickly. I was able to get it to stay around 50C under full load with the fan, which is better, but still not ideal. Under full load the 980 doesn't go past 42C and it has no fan or even a heat sink in my build (if it's not obvious by now, I have both the 980 Pro and this WD drive in the same machine) If you have PCI Gen 4 then this drive is actually slower than the 980 Pro in most instances. The only reason you should get this is if you want the best possible speed out of your drive and you don't want to pay to upgrade your motherboard to Gen 4. This was my case. I have a very expensive motherboard and CPU so it made sense to pay the $150 premium for a genuinely worse experience vs. spending $1,500+ upgrading my motherboard, processor, and memory to something that's on the same budget level as what I bought before. If you either have or can upgrade to Gen 4 without spending too much money then skip this drive. and go with the 980 Pro. Message to WD: Shame on you for marketing a drive with 400TB of write endurance to enthusiasts. Get a better cooling system. The rainbow lights are cool, but aren't necessary. I'd much rather you put that money into a built-in fan or better materials that draw away heat. When this low-end drive dies you bet your biscuits I'm filing a warranty claim. I'm betting you'll have to replace it 3-4 times under the 5 year warranty. Wouldn't it just make more sense to use higher quality drives and materials? I'm sure you don't want to affect sales of your enterprise class drives by making this too good a deal, but I would expect at least 800TB of write endurance from a product marketed to enthusiasts. Enterprise customers aren't going to consider a drive with only 800TB of write endurance even if it is 1/3 the price of an Enterprise class drive. You didn't have to make this such a dud product just to avoid cutting into your Enterprise sales, so my only conclusion is this is deliberate price gouging. You're betting a lot of average computer users will buy this just because it looks cool and those drives will last the 5 years, and you're right, but professional users like me will kill these drives very quickly. Had I known the write endurance was so low (a fact that you conveniently leave out of all your marketing materials and even the specs listed on your website), I never would have bought this. Unfortunately I'm using this drive for a project that will take months to complete. I can't turn my computer off during this project, so I'm forced to keep this. So yeah people, stay away from this drive unless your circumstances are identical to mine. It's a ripoff. If this thing were $300 instead of the $550 I paid OR if the write endurance was 800TB+ I wouldn't be complaining so much, but at $550 it really doesn't make sense for 99% of users. When you can get a drive that's 20% faster for $150 less with 300% more write endurance, why the heck would you choose this?