Photos and Features
Black on black on black is the theme for the packaging on the WD Black SN770. The box has a flat black background and over that, they have printed gloss black dots and the WD Black brand across it. Then in front of that, they have a picture of the SSD across the front. The top left repeats the WD Black brand with the model number below that in a smaller white font. Then down in the bottom right corner, they have the drive size which ours is a 1TB drive and they designate that this is a PCIe 4.0 drive with the Gen 4 below the capacity. They also highlight the drives read speed below that as well. On the back of the box, there is another picture of the drive and they repeat the read speed as well as list what comes in the drive. The only important information back here is a small shield that shows the 5-year warranty and the window in the middle that lets you see the drive itself inside to scan the serial number and so you can confirm and make sure the drive size is correct.
Inside is the same setup as we saw with the WD Blue 570, the SN770 comes in a clear plastic tray that locks in its place. There is then a clear plastic cover over top of that. There aren’t any accessories and just the one thing for documentation which is a paper with information on the warranty and a list of contact information for technical support should you have any trouble.
So with the drive itself, just like with the SN570 the drive doesn’t look anything like the picture of the SSD on the front of the box. That isn’t to say I don’t like the way the SN770 looks, but when there is a picture of the product on the box and for that matter on Amazon and Newegg you expect it to look like the pictures but the SN770 doesn’t. The pictures show a sticker the full length of the drive but like the SN570 the SN770 has a smaller sticker on the center of the drive and the components exposed. The drive looks great though. The PCB has a nice flat black finish and the sticker in the center is black with the WD Black logo and the SN770 branding as well as your model and serial numbers printed on it.
The back of the SN770 doesn’t have any components on it. It does have the black PCB but on this side, you can see that it is the black PCB which looks a little glossier on this side. I’m not sure if the front has a different coating or it is just the PCB playing tricks on my eyes. The back has all of the certification logos printed in a bright white and they also have the full Western Digital branding back here where they stick with the WD Black brand on the front and all of the packaging.
Back on the top side, the SN770 has a similar layout to the WD Blue 570 where the controller is up near the M.2 slot with the resistors below that then the NAND down at the end. Only for the SN770 the NAND isn’t as far down the drive, there is a half-inch of space beyond it before you get to the end of the drive and the resistors below the controller are moved to the center slightly. That does mean that the SN770 is a DRAMless SSD like the SN570. This is a change from the SN750 and the SN850 as well which both had DRAM to be used as a cache on the drive. For the controller, the SN770 has a SanDisk branded in house made controller with the model number 20-82-10081-A1, which isn’t far off from the controller on the SN570 which was the 20-82-10048-A1, but being a full internal design there isn’t too much known about the controller other than it is a 4 channel design and that obviously it supports PCIe 4.0 and can be run DRAMless using HMB in place of the cache. This also means that the SN770 isn’t ideal for the PS5 which doesn’t support HMB so keep that in mind as well. For the NAND there is just one chip on the only possible chip location. This is also SanDisk branded and has the model 001397 1T00 etched into the top and what we do know is that this is 112-layer BiCS 3D TLC memory and the 1T in that shows the drives 1TB capacity. The SN770 can also be found in 250GB, 500GB, and 2TB capacities. Those drive sizes will change the overall TBW or drive endurance with the 2TB at 1200, the 1TB here at 600, 500GB at 300, and the 250GB only 200.
