NZXT PODCAST - #188 - WD_BLACK! (Ft. Hayley & Jimmy)

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

On this week's episode of the NZXT Podcast... We have Hayley and Jimmy from WD_BLACK to talk about their new hardware! They bring us through some terminology, features, and even an installation tutorial! Check out WD_BLACK's socials: https://linktr.ee/wd_black Catch the replay at twitch.tv/NZXT!

Oh, Nightbod, how much I love you. Everyone, hello and welcome to episode 188 of the NCC podcast, the official podcast of the NCC community. This podcast recorded live every other Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on the official NCC Twitch and is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. My name is Mike, and with me as always is Ivan. How are you doing, Ivan?

How we do, baby boo? I'm doing good. As you can see from my face, I'm still recovering from that wild chinchilla attack from a few weeks ago. Yeah, I'm very excited today. We have two very special guests on here. Before we get into that, though, I do want to make two quick announcements. So, announcement number one, if you are tuned in live right now on Twitch.tv slash NZXT, check out the pinned post there in the chat. You will get a link to win some awesome prizes from our friends at WD Black who are on the podcast today. If you stick around to the end of the

you will get a secret word which will get you a bunch of bonus entries into this giveaway, so hang tight. Announcement number two is if you are also tuned in live right now on twitch.tv slash nzxtee, and you stick around to the end of the show, you are going to get early access to a super awesome Twitchcon giveaway that you do not want to miss. Trust me on this one. It's a huge, huge giveaway. I don't want to spill the bean totally right now but trust me it's a good one and as a thank you for tuning in live we will also give you a secret word for that one so hang tight everyone and without further ado I will introduce our two guests here Haley and Jimmy from WD Black how are you good it's Friday it's also Friday the 13th yeah is

Friday the 13th yes are you guys scared No. I like Friday to 13th weekends because there's like always those like flash sales going on at the tattoo parlors. So yeah, Friday of 13th is actually one of my favorite kind of days. What tattoo are you going to get today? I don't know. I kind of always just go to the shops and I see what flash they like have laid out. And then I see if I want anything. But there's a new shop I'm going to and I've seen their flash online. I think I might get like, it's like a landscape like little circle and it's like has mountains and like the ocean and like it's like the sun. Like it's really pretty. So I'm excited. That's cool. I will save that for the tattoo podcast. Yes. This is the NCXT podcast with WD Black. So I guess before we get into like the actual things we want to talk about, why don't we just introduce you guys? So Haley, we'll start with you. Who are you and what do you do at WD Black?

Yeah, so I'm Haley. I've been with Western Digital. I've just passed my fifth year anniversary last month. So I've been with Western Digital a little over five years. I am the social media manager and the influencer marketing manager for Western Digital Black. So WD underscore Black, I run all those social media accounts. I also run the influencer marketing program we have. I started at Western Digital as an NCG. So I started right out of college. We have a new college graduate program. And it's, like rotational program, you rotate through all the different marketing functions. I ended up really liking social media marketing, and so that's where I ended up. Nice. How about you, Jimmy? Funny enough, I have also been at Western Digital just over five years. I had my five-year anniversary in August as well. Yeah, and what I do is I am a product marketing manager for what we call our client SSDs. So this would be any SSD that you would put in a laptop or your desktop or maybe like a, you know,

a handheld and I specifically focus on WD Black. So we'll talk all about our different internal SSDs is what we call them, WD Black products today. And kind of similar to Haley, I did a, instead of a fresh out of college rotation program, I did a grad school one. So I got my MBA and did a rotational program at Western Digital. So over three years, I did three different roles. And as I was kind of wrapping up my third one, an opportunity on this team opened up.

And I was like, I want to work on WD Black. I've been wanting to work on WD Black. I think at that point the entire time I'd been at the company. So I've been doing it for two years now and it's been really awesome. Nice. And then for those who don't know what WD. Black is, can you explain a little bit about your company? Yeah. So WD. Black is a brand of the company Western Digital.

So Western Digital, they have a bunch of different subbrands underneath them. WD Black specifically is our brand that is purpose built for gamers. So it does tend to be our performance line of products. A lot of our SSDs is kind of like our fastest SSDs that we have. We market underneath the WD Black brand because we know that in gaming, load times are very important to a lot of folks. So we want to make sure that we're putting out the best products underneath our WD Black brand. But yeah, it's just kind of like our fun brand.

It's our little bit like wild brand. I don't know. I just love WD. Black. It's the brand that we're able to have fun with because the gamers, everyone on here is fun. So I just, I have, it's like my child. I feel like sometimes that I talk about WD Black. Yeah, it's fairly new, right? It didn't come into existence until maybe 2018. I think 2018 was when the thought, like the idea came about, but 2019 was like, I think maybe the first product. They launched it. Yeah, they launched it at PACS South in 2019. Because originally, like,

there was like a WD Black like line of products and it was always just like, like, our performance line of products at Western Digital. But then they realized like, hey, like gaming, like we really should just make like a line of products that is like purpose built for gamers, you know, that look a little bit cool, look a little bit sleeker than just like your typical SSD. And so that's where WD Black came around. And you know, they decided like, hey, let's take this brand that we already are making these really great SSDs and HDDs for. Let's turn into the WD Black gaming brand.

And that's kind of how it came about. And they launched with the S&750 at Pax South 2019. I like how Scorp here in the chat says that it's Western Digital's goff, goff baby. Yeah, kind of. Oh, that's awesome. I think it's no surprise that gamers do like to have fun, so I'm glad that Western Digital is allowing you guys to have fun because having fun is fun. Yes. So I'm also curious, how did you two end up working at WD Black in the first place? Um, for me, I joined Western Digital because I really needed a job out of college.

And I really didn't know like what I wanted to do when I left college because I was a psych major. So like I didn't do business or marketing or anything like that. And I realized like I didn't really want to go to more school. So I was like, okay, I just need a job now out of college. And just the idea of being able to try out a bunch of different roles at Western Digital is really kind of like what alerted me to the company. And so then when I got the job, I, you know, in my interviews, I talked about how I'm a gamer personally. You know, I just, I really like that world and I consider myself a part of

that world. And so then I feel like just naturally in my career progression because that is where my interests lie in. And WD and Western Digital, they really have like a focus in growing the gaming market and growing our gaming side of our business. It just kind of worked out that way that because I am a gamer and I was in the marketing side of things, I was able to kind of just naturally fall into doing a lot of stuff with the WD Black brand. I'm going to have to have you psychoanalyze Jimmy now. Jimmy, how about you? How did you end up at WD. Black?

Yeah. So I have definitely a lot longer of a story. And I'll try not to take too much time. But so for me, I studied engineering in undergrad. And I ended up working in, I was a mechanical engineer, I ended up working in the automotive industry. So I worked on like big diesel trucks and engines. And I did that for about five years. So it was like product development.

You know, gaming's always been probably my biggest hobby, biggest passion. But I think when I was in college, I was like, well, I'm not good at coding. So obviously I can't work in games. I have no career path in this industry. I'm just going to keep playing video games. And as I was kind of getting towards the end of like this. journey of being an automotive. I didn't really like it. I was like, you know what? I want to, I want a career pivot. Like, I want to do a huge, how do I like get out of this? And one way to do that

is going to business school or getting your MBA, right, going to grad school. And usually, like, if you're going to do that, you got to go full time. It's, if you do it part time, it's a little bit harder. So as I was looking at different schools, I was like, hey, I really want to, or as a, yeah, different schools slash, like, what could I do with an MBA? I met someone who was basically my role now, product marketing. I'm forgetting, I'm escaping. The studio is escaping me, but it was a mobile company, like a mobile game company. And I was like, oh, what?

You can work in marketing and work on games? And she was like, yeah. Like, I think she came from, like, I think she worked at Procter & Gamble before, did like brand stuff. And then said, like, oh, yeah, no, I do this now. So that's when like the wheels kind of started turning for me of like, this might be, I might actually have an opportunity here to look at the gaming industry now and not, again, have to be on the engineering side of it, but maybe I can be more on the, like,

product marketing. So that's what I'm originally from Chicago. That's what brought me out West Coast and I went to USC for grad school. So what was really cool in grad school was, or at USC Marshall was we have a like student organization called MIGA or Marshall Interactive Gaming Association. So the whole point was try to get jobs in gaming. So it was kind of through this. Unfortunately, a lot of my opportunities to work at like a big game studio didn't work out. But I got to meet Western Digital through some campus events. And I was like, hey, I know you guys.

I have this thing, this WD Passport. Like this is where I store all my stuff. And it was kind of through there. I found out they had this rotation program. And during my summer internship, I learned about oh yeah, we're trying to build this new brand. We're going to call it. We don't know what we're going to call it,

but it's going to be focused on gaming. And it's going to be, you know, it marketed towards gamers and we're going to make these SSDs for different gaming, whether it's a laptop, right? Like, we can get more into that. But it was, that's when it like really started to click for me. It was like, oh, you know what? Like, you know, like EA, Activision, Blizzard.

They didn't want me. They didn't want to interview me. But here's an opportunity for me to still be pretty close to the gaming industry. and now I'm on the hardware side. So that was like, and like I said, I did my rotations, and then I kind of worked my way and kind of planted seeds along the way, meeting people that were already working on the brand

and being like, hey, like, I, you know, gaming, I love it, and I want to work on these products because I understand what the use cases are and why people should be getting them. And, yeah, so it kind of like worked my way into getting into this side of the house. And it's been a lot of fun. It's been really cool.

Yeah, that's an amazing story. It's like your whole life, both of you, I guess, ended up completely opposite from what you planned, which is... Yeah. I mean, that's cool. I mean, you guys are talking about earlier about how WD. Black's all about having fun, and, you know, I'm glad you guys were able to, you know, figure out how to turn your lives in a fun direction. Because I think having fun at work is super important, to be honest. Yeah, I think we're really lucky also on the W.D. Black side is that like we all kind of like really know each other, the folks who work on the marketing of WD Black, like Jimmy and I, we eat lunch whenever he's in office. And so it's like we're all like actually like close as well. And so I think it's just it kind of worked out that we're able to have fun at our job because we work with a really great group of people on this brand. Nice. And speaking of jobs, I'm curious to, I'll start with you, Haley. What does your average day look like at work? My average day at work, I spend a lot of time in our basement because I spend a lot of time shipping out products to influencers. So I'd say about 50% of my job is working with like influencers, influencer contracting, influencer content review, sourcing influencers, you know, just trying to find who I think would fit really good with our brands.

I talk to a lot of different agencies and they kind of show me their talent rosters and I go through them. I spend a lot of time on TikTok and I am on TikTok for work, not for pleasure. And so a lot sometimes my 4U page gets a little wild because of the stuff that like I'm searching for very specific creators. So I spend a lot of time on that. And then I also do our social media feeds and our social media curation. I do it for both WD Black and then I also do it for our WD creators brand. So I spend a lot of time just kind of looking at our social media feeds, looking through all the content that we have, figuring out, what content that we need, what products like we need more photos of, what's going to look good

curating our feed. So I spend some time on that. I do community management as well. Then I also help with our partnerships team. Sometimes I'll join calls with them. If you guys know, another one of our sister brands, Sandisk, they just recently released, like, the Pokemon cards. So I do also work closely with, like, Nintendo and on our Sandisk gaming, those kinds of lines

of products like the Nintendo Switch cards. So I spend a lot of time doing that as well. And that's probably like what my day-to-day looks like. If you're looking for someone to sponsor, I do have a chin fluencer here in the chat. A chin fluncer. NZC Chinchilla is looking for sponsorships at the moment if you're interested. Oh, okay. Contact info after the stream.

Yeah, definitely. Jimmy, how about you, man? What's the typical day look like? Yeah, it all kind of depends on if I'm getting ready to launch a product, that day will look like, okay, like my primary focus for, you know, the months leading up to that is everything about the product. So like first and foremost, like, what's the box going to look like, right? What are we going to say? What product are, you know, what's the image going to look like?

What's on the back? What do we want to highlight? And then when we go from packaging, then we think of like our product pages, right? So when you go to whether it's Amazon or our Western Digital Store and you look up one of our WD Black products and you're reading, you know, the bullets, okay, what's important or the paragraph? What is important about this product? That's something that I'm writing to try to like really hone in on, okay, what do I know you care about, right? Like what is important to you as somebody who's like, hey, maybe I need a new SSD because I want to, you know, I'm running out of space. I need to put a new one.

I have an extra slot on my motherboard, or I'm building a new PC, and I have a budget of whatever many, you know, however many dollars, and I'm looking for what's maybe my best option for my storage, right? So it's what pictures do we use, what photos do we use, what's the messaging? And then, so that's one part of it. So when, like I said, when we have like a new product coming out, so like we just recently launched 8,000. terabyte capacity points for 850x and 850p. And I know we'll show those a little bit later. But so this whole summer, like a lot of my time was just making sure like, okay, do we have what we need? Does that like, does our sales teams know what's going on?

Does Amazon team have everything they need? What does the web team need to make sure our website looks okay? So it's a lot of that stuff. But then when I'm not actively working on a new product launch, it's kind of like maybe sustaining materials. So every quarter, like, there's still, what's unique about our products is, yes, it's very consumer focused, but there's also a business side to it. So if you think, like with you guys, right, like we were selling you our drive, so then you can put in your PCs that people are buying. So then I'll be doing calls with like our business customers and partners just to let them

know, which I can't tell you guys on this stream, but right, like what's coming, right? Okay, like this quarter, we're going to have this product. This quarter we're going to have. have this next product. Here's what's important about these products. What's what's cool to know about it. And then I guess lastly, just kind of what's going on in gaming, right? So I know Haley's like, I'm on TikTok a lot. I'm actually on YouTube a lot because I'm just seeing what new games are coming out, right? I'm listening to other podcasts to have an understanding of what's going on in the game industry, right? Like, and you know what good or bad things are happening, right? What maybe trends are we going towards or are we not going towards technology-wise?

So it's like in that stuff I want to look into anyways. So now I don't feel as bad when I'm at work. And I'm like, yeah, I'm interested because I want to know as a gamer, but I also need to know for my job. Million dollar product idea for you, Jimmy. Put a belt on an SSD and call it the WD Black Pro. And it only works with the PS5 Pro. do it man there we go there we go

all right last question for y'all before we get into talking about the products here all right i'll start with you haley what is the favorite thing about what is your favorite thing about working at wd black my co-workers 100% i think that they really make the job what it is i'm really grateful to be with the group of folks who just want to grow the brand and better the brand and really just kind of like release the best products possible and making sure that our launches are as cohesive as possible and that we're able to do as much as we can.

So I think really my favorite part about my job is the people I work with. What about you, Jimmy? Yeah, I would say definitely the people we work with, but also like getting the opportunity to do stuff like this, right? Whether it's, you know, doing a podcast episode or if it's doing how to videos, right? Like doing, these are things. I never would have had an opportunity to do as a product development engineer building diesel engines, right? Like, so it's like it's a cool mix of, you know, I'm still getting what I need to do or like I'm still getting the fulfillment and learning of like how do you launch a product, what's important, understanding kind of consumer mentality.

But then also being able to do fun stuff like this or go to TwitchCon answer questions, right? It's, that part is something that I didn't really get to experience, you know, early, right out of undergrad or even earlier at WD. Nice. That was the correct answer with this podcast. Oh, thank you. All right, Mike. So for those in the chat here, yes, Nightbot is dead.

So check the pinned chat at the top. I believe it's still pin, right, Mike? Yeah, I'll pin it back again. but, yeah, Nightbot is having an outage actually right now. So I was just, I spent like, that's why I was so quiet. I was like, I'm just trying to work on it. Nightbot is an outage right now. So expect it, maybe come back in about five to ten minutes.

Friday the 13. It's Friday the 13. Yeah, that's what got us. So I'll go ahead. Now I'll Aji speaks now that I'm just going to let Nightbot kind of hopefully come back. So you guys have a couple products you guys want. discuss right so um first i wanted to go into terminology because i know there's some people here that kind of they know that ss are good to like load games on or like having external hard

drives great to have extra space on but they don't know like the actual like specifics into like what this terminology means so i was gonna have you guys kind of go into a little bit of this so number one There's an HDD and an SSD. What's the difference between these two things? Jimmy, I'll let you take these questions. Yeah, I was like, do you want me to do it? Okay, so not to get like two in the weeds, but effectively, the best way to kind of think of it is HDDs have spinning disks, right? So it stands for hard disk drive.

And this was kind of like just thinking of technology and going back to like the 80s and 90s, right? These were the first devices that, besides like floppy disk that we were storing memory on. So if you think of like just last gen consoles, right? So PS4 and Xbox one, right? Those had HDDs in them. So HDs are really good as far as I want like storage per price. Right. Like, hey, I want like a 8 terabyte.

Okay, maybe it's like I don't think it's 100 bucks. But like either way, it's a lot cheaper to get a, HDD because those spinning disks, like we've gotten to the point now where like everyone knows how to manufacture those very effectively. But the only downside is they don't go very fast, right? You're kind of limited by how fast can these disks spin and then your computer being able to figure out where the memory is. I'm doing this because as they spin, there's like heads and they go like that and that's all they're reading your data. So that would be your HDD. And then when it comes to an SSD, right, like the big.

jump in performance is because now you're using what we call NAND flash, right? So when you hear of like wafers and silicon and this like that, that's because those like big, those fabs that are usually kind of like APEC area or Japan, whenever you go in, you got to be in like a full hazmat suit because you can't have any dust or anything in there, right? This allows us to give you like very fast performance. So like you can think like an HDD will probably max out at like five 560 megabytes per second. Where now, like, our highest performing SSD that we sell, it maxes out at 7,300.

So 7,300 megabytes per second, right? So it's not even a comparison. And then if you think of your PS5 and your Xbox series right now, they went from being on HDDs. So again, like maybe 560 megabytes per second. and now they're at 5,000 megabytes per second. So both of those consoles, I think their SSDs are about, they both go about that speed. So they're not like maxing out what they could be,

but they're still really fast. So that's probably the, and then SSD stands for solid state drive, right? So like I know a lot, I think before we used to just say, yeah, your hard drive, your hard drive, your hard drive. Well, now it's like, well, it's your storage, right? Like, because there is a difference in kind of performance. What is an m.2?

M.2. So m.2 is the form factor of an SSD. So I have one right here. So what you'll see is m.2 like 2280. So what the 22 means is it's 22 millimeters wide. So like this way. And then 80 means it's 80 millimeters long. Right.

So sometimes you'll hear like a 2230. So that means it's 22 millimeters wide. but only like 30 millimeters long. So it's a lot shorter. But yeah, so M.2 also has to do with like, how do you plug it in? So one of the reasons these SSDs are a lot faster than an HDD and even a SAT SSD is because of the,

and we'll show you how you plug it into your motherboard. It's because of how you plug it in. Right. Now, there's no cable. You're actually just like, you're plugging this straight into your motherboard. And then this is allowing it to talk faster to your CPU. I see DJ

Logic in the chat says that their mind is blown, that everything is making sense now, so thank you for those explanations. I didn't even know that about like the numbers. I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense actually. So

speaking of numbers, there's transfer rate and read and write speeds. Can you go a little bit into that? And then after that, everyone, I just want to make sure you guys got a tutorial first before we go into the actual specifics of the hard drives. Yeah. So, like, I guess when you think of, like, read and write speeds, so I feel like transfer

rate and read and right speeds are similar in a sense. So, like, when, you know, when you look at one of our products and we say, hey, the sequential read speed is 7,300 megabytes per second. So what this means to you or what this, like, really means to you is like, when you load up a game, right? When you open a game, think of it like, okay, you're saying like, hey, I want to play call duty. So your computer's like, all right, I'm looking for the file, and I need to open it. So it's reading the file all in a row. So that like 7,000 megabytes per second is to help load it. Right. So if you think of like, I think a really good example is,

let's say like you're playing a game on an HDD and then you play that same game on an SSD. And you're just like, hey, I'm loading the game. Maybe it's a single player game. And I'm just, I want to, you know, I'm loading the game to just start playing. Your HDD will probably take like a minute, maybe even longer. Where like, depending on how fast your SSD is, it could be like 10 seconds, right? Like I know, like when we think of the current console generation, that was the big thing that had, look how fast, look how fast.

And, and yeah, that, that's what the like the sequential read speeds are. When you think like transfer rates, like, okay, I'm going to copy a folder over. or when I'm doing a, you know, I'm on Steam and my game has an update. So you'll notice, right, it'll show you the blue bars and that's how fast is your network, right? So it's actually downloading the patch or whatever. But then you'll see that green line. So that green line is your storage device, right? And so as that is increasing, what it's really doing is, hey, I just downloaded all this stuff.

Now I need to write it. I actually need to write it to the folder where your game is. So that's kind of when you're seeing that green line going up, that's your SSD kind of working. Right. And so when we have like, I think for our highest product, it's like 6,600 is megabytes per second is the right speed. So that's a similar thing. Hey, I just download a bunch of stuff. And now I need it to, or I'm copying a folder from, or I'm copying something from one folder to another.

And then you're seeing the performance go. That is what the right speeds are. So, like, read speeds really matter when you're gaming, and in write speeds matter more, like, downloading updates, maybe saving files, copying stuff over. That's where, like, those really come into play. You hear that DJ Logic in the chat? I hope you're learning. All right, let's get into the actual nitty-gritty here of these products that we want to talk about today. So, Mike, please pull up the first one.

The first one we're going to go over is the SN770 internal SSD. So Jimmy, tell us a little bit about this one. What are the features of this drive? Yeah. So the SN770 is like what we call or like what we kind of look at internally. Like we kind of look at it as like our mainstream. So meaning and like I would consider myself in this category like gaming is your hobby, right? Maybe it's your biggest hobby, but it's not your job.

Like you're probably not a, well, most people, like, you're not a streamer and you're not doing a bunch of content. You're not, maybe you don't need the fastest performance, but you still want something fast, right? So if you think of, like I was saying, the new consoles now are going about 5,000 megabytes per second. So game developers are building their games to go like that fast. So this drive, that's in 770 goes, 5150. So 5,150 megabytes per second read speeds. So it really kind of puts you in that good window of, hey, you know, as new games are coming out,

this drive will be able to handle it. So one thing to note is, like, we don't offer a heat sink because it's not, it's not, it doesn't generate a lot of heat. It's not, so it's not like our 850X product, which goes a lot faster. But it is, it's like a great drive for, hey, you know, maybe a limited budget, right? I don't want to spend a ton of money on an SSD, but I still want a good one.

Right. So that's where we really feel like 770 fits in the play. Or maybe like, hey, I have two M.2 slots on my motherboard. I'm running out of storage. I need a new secondary drive. That's actually how I use my 770 is I have it as my secondary drive. It's still really great, right? Like with Steam, you can always say, hey, yeah, put it on this SSD or any of your other game clients.

And yeah, it's going to work just fine. you won't even notice any sort of like it'll be faster than HDD, don't get me wrong, but it'll still be like a very smooth performance. Ben Shishin Tully in the chat says it's actually pretty cheap and quirky O2 is saying two terabytes for $120. Dang, which we had these prices in Europe. Yeah, for two terabytes, I mean, that is pretty cheap. Yeah, that's pretty good.

No, I'm not going to lie. I'm showing my actual, my Steam drive that I use is an S-770. And I can tell it's so filled with everything. Like, I think I have, let me see how many games I have in my library. I have all these games here, and it still runs perfectly fine. Two terabytes of games you've never played, Mike. Yep, a lot of games I've not played yet. Yeah.

All right, let's get into the next one. the S well, what's the difference between the SN 7070 and the SN 70M? So the 770M and I apologize, I thought I had one. I have the box, which is not helpful. I thought I had the actual product. So I could just show you guys how much smaller it is. But yeah, essentially the 770M is the same product as the 770, but in that smaller form factor.

Right. So as I said, when I say 2280, it means 22 millimeters wide, 80 millimeters long. But this one is 2230. So it's 22 millimeters wide, 30 millimeters long. So the reason we came out with this product is because of the new kind of emerging handheld market. Right. So any of you who have a steam deck and maybe you got like, hey, I don't want to spend, you know, whatever, I can't remember how much the higher capacity points were.

but I just want like the base one. Well, you could buy this. You could buy two terabyte here. And then now all of a sudden you have two, two terabytes of storage in your steam deck. Or in an Asus ally, not the new ally, but the original ally or like the MSI claw. So we've kind of starting to see that these like first handhelds that came out, you know, over the past couple of years, they were opting to use this smaller form factor.

So like you couldn't use a 770 because it's too long, right? like it wouldn't fit in the handheld. But this gives you the same performance as a 770, just in the smaller form factor for more of these handhelds. And then it could also use, and there's some laptops, right, that only take these small form factors. Like I think Microsoft Surface laptops,

like they only have the 2230. So it's more of just to kind of give people an option, again, like, hey, maybe my original SSD is almost full. and I want something new because I want either better performance or I need more storage. That's where like this product fits really well. It looks so so tiny. Oh, it is so small. I'm like I'm actually mad at myself.

I knew I thought I had the product with me. So I apologize. It's okay. You just ruined the entire podcast. Yeah. The next two products we want to get into, we're actually giving away. So if you are tuned in live,

Check out the pinned message there in the chat. You can enter for your chance to win it. The first one is the SN850X. Let's talk a little bit about that one. What's this one all about? Yeah. So the 850X is like our flagship, right? Like this is our top tier performance, right?

So if you're looking, so I guess one thing I forgot to say with the other two, and with NVME or m.2 SSDs, you have your different PCIE generations. I'm forgetting exactly what PCIE stands for, but just think of it as like, hey, this is how the SSD can communicate to your CPU so quickly. And there's different generations. So like, you know, I think our original WD Black product, the SN 750, was PCIE Gen 3, meaning that the fastest it could possibly go is 4,000 megabytes per second. And then now we're in PCIE Gen 4. Gen 4. Gen 4, doubles. So the fastest you can go is 8,000 megabytes per second. And then Gen 5, it goes to 16. So with 850x,

our drive goes 7,300 megabytes per second, which is getting pretty close to that 8. I don't think anyone will actually be able to get to 8. I think the fastest drive is like 7,450. So like 150 megabytes faster.

But this will be like, hey, I have a PCI, Gen 4, motherboard or setup and I want the fastest thing I can get. So that's where SNA-50X comes into play. So right, it's like 2,000 megabytes faster than a 770. Obviously, like pricing-wise, it's a little bit more expensive, but at the same time, you also can get a heat sync version. So, right, like I have, I have a heat sync version with me and we have like a little LED light.

So you can change the LED. you can kind of get it to either do rainbow or certain colors and maybe match whatever is in your in your desktop or in your tower. And that's usually where like this will come in as a really good option. But yeah, this one you could use as like, you know, your primary drive, meaning your operating system is also on this drive. Or if you wanted to put it as a secondary drive, right, like this will be not only our fastest, but our highest capacity. Right. So you can get a four terabyte or like I just, I mentioned earlier, an eight terabyte. And that's where like this product comes into play.

So we're looking at it like hardcore, you know, quote unquote, hardcore gamers, right? I'm going to be, I'm going to be doing a lot on this drive, right? I'm going to be constantly using it. Or the kind of secondary use case is a PS5, right? So PS5 has certain requirements. You need a heat sink. You need to be, you know, it has to be at least go 5,500 megabytes per second. So this is another great option to put into your PS5.

if you're running out of storage and instead of deleting, you might as well just expand. And I'll show you guys a little bit later how easy it is to expand in your PS5. But yeah, that's kind of our main focus for this product. Don't worry, Jimmy. Eorza and Joyer gave us the definition for PCIE, and it's short for PCI Express. So thank you, Eurza, Joyer. Thank you. All right.

The last product you want to chat about before we get into some more stuff here is another one we're giving away. The WD Black Pink P10 Portable HDD. This one's actually my favorite, so we saved it for last. What's this one all about? I'll let Haley take that one. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to get too much into the technical side of it. But this one is about because I would talk off the ears of everyone who works in product marketing. at Western Digital for the past five years I have been here saying when are we releasing a pink drive when are releasing a pink drive

I would show them pictures of my PC I'd like do you see my pink PC I would show them my keyboard do you see my pink keyboard I would show them my chair do you see my pink chair like I would just tell them over and over again we need something pink gamers love pink like it is in like I love it and so I just kept pushing and I kept saying like, hey, are we going to release something pink? And finally, Mr. Scott, he told me like, hey, we are going to be releasing a pink P10 drive. He used to work at Razor, so obviously he knows how important pink is. And so, yeah, we released this about a month ago now. It's been a little under a month since the pink P10 has come out. But the response has been awesome. I love it. It's beautiful. I wish I had a

have one but it's like I'd have to get out of my chair to grab it but I wish I had it by hand but yeah it is beautiful you can see by the photos it looks a little bit dark in the photos it's definitely like a little bit lighter in person if you look at the photos on social that's kind of how I would say it looks really good yeah like the product photos that's how it looks but it's beautiful I love it and you know honestly six terabytes for a hundred and ninety bucks like it's a great drive to kind of have if you have clips that you want to save it's better to offload games and the completely delete them and have to read download them from the internet um so it's like if there's some games that you know you're

not really playing that much anymore but you don't delete them off your PC having an external storage drive is a really great place to kind of put them yeah pink is my personal favorite color so i'm definitely going to take your entire stock and i there's like a comment here in the chat Christmas 26 says, it's so cute. Orky O2 says, I love the pink. Sage the plug says WD Black Pink. Yes, thumbs up. So yeah, I think everyone here can agree.

If you make anything pink, it'll make your setup like infinitely better. Yeah, I agree. You guys kind of answered this a little while ago, but I'm also curious. why in the world, for those, I guess we don't know really much about these drives, why would anyone want a faster hard drive or SSD? Probably for like game load time, but Jimmy, you can get definitely more into the nitty-gritty of why an SSD would be better for gaming versus a hard drive. Yeah, I would say, I guess it's two things.

So one, yeah, like shorter, like you're going to be able to, to have those faster load times. But I think the other one that's really important is that we're four years into this current console, Jen. And we just heard about the PS5 Pro. I'm assuming there's gonna be some sort of Xbox series pro announcement before the end of the year, right? Like there's no way Xbox is gonna let Sony

and take all the brain space for people. So with that in mind, right, I said, these consoles go 5,000 megabytes per second, which means that the game developers now want to make sure that their games are asking your computer or your console to go that fast. So they're building their games to go that fast. So if you have anything slower than that,

it could kind of make things look a little choppy, you know, longer load times, right? And you're not really going to be able to experience the game the way that you want, right? Like the whole point of building your own PC is because you want it to perform better than a console. So if you're still running on like a SATA SSD or if you're running on a bigger internal HDD,

you're now going to get to the point where it's going to start feeling really slow, right, especially compared to consoles. And like, you know, let's say there's a new, you know, the PS6 and the Xbox whatever in like four to five years from now, and they're on, you know, like I said, our products are PCI Gen 4. There's a really good chance that those new consoles are on PCI Gen 5, and that is double, right?

So now those games would probably be trying to go like 10,000 megabytes per second or 10 gigabytes a second. So the longer you kind of wait to maybe upgrade to that point, like from a gaming perspective, you're just going to be kind of sitting there like, man, why is this game taking so long to load? Well, you know, like this new call dude is going to be, 300 gigabytes to download.

So you're imagining, like, just me all these shaders and all these audio things and all this stuff to load your game. So the slower your storage is, the longer is going to take you to kind of get into the game. Right. Or I think another good one is, you know, maybe you're playing like Eldon

Ring or some kind of Souls game and like, you just keep dying, right? You just keep dying. I can't beat this boss. It sucks when you have to wait 30 seconds to a minute for that boss fight to reload. versus five seconds or even faster, right? So that's where you can kind of think of it is, okay, hey, I'm a gamer, why should I?

Well, games are only going to be getting faster now because consoles are getting faster, right? That's why I was like really excited. We're kind of leaving HDs in the past and we're jumping to like the SSD generation when it comes to games. So it's like, okay, cool. Now I'm just waiting for us to get even faster, right?

Like that's where like I kind of get excited about this. but this is like, you know, someone who has a, whether it's a gaming laptop or, you know, your own, your own PC, like this is why you should care or why you should start thinking about it. I remember the good old days of, uh, turning on my PC. It's going to take like three minutes. I go.

Yeah, you walk away. Go use a restroom. Come back. I remember all that days. You're like, oh, is, is XP, Windows XP loaded yet? No, no, yeah, no, yeah, I don't know. That. So, I guess one of the things that, you know,

we talked about, which is like, you know, installing an external drive, installing an internal drive. I guess do we want to kind of show how easy it is? Because some people, I get questions about this all the time. I'm like, oh, is it hard to install an SSD? And I tell them, like, it's probably one of the easiest things, in my opinion, to put into, like, a console or a PC.

So I was wondering if you can actually show some of these people how easy it is to kind of install these things. Yeah. And before, before I, like, jump off to switch cameras, I will say like if you're building a PC I think the SSD is the easiest part right the CPU is like oh I don't want to mess this up your graphics card right like some people are too scared to push it in

and then it's like why isn't my GPU working and it's like oh you got to like get it in there but yeah I will be right back so I can switch to my different camera and I'll see you guys in a second all righty so I'm gonna we're still here we're just going to swap over to the new camera quick just so that you guys can see how easy it is to do it so enjoy to seal while we uh get the cameras all set up but yes i i have to agree doing the sSD is probably one of the easiest things honestly

it's actually kind of fun because it's like you kind of come in at an angle click it down you screw it in and it was just like so easy hey heyley would you get an sSD tattooed on yourself um no probably not an SSD tattooed on myself but I did get an SSD body pillow. Yeah, that's probably the most I would get for an SSD. It was that. You should consider it today. They might be on sale. There might be one yeah on the prior to 13th sale. I should look and see and I should ask the artist like hey do you think he could do this SSD for me? Or you can get SN 70-70 on your knuckles. That's another one. Oh, my gosh. I should just get like, no, I should just get like WD Black on my knuckles,

so whenever I talk about the brand. For those of you in the chat asking if we're going to answer the questions you all have been asking, the answer is yes. We will get to them shortly right after Jimmy walks us through this installation. There he is. All right. All right. What have we got going on here, Jimmy? Okay, so what I have here is just this is actually kind of an older motherboard, but it was what we had laying around that would be really easy for me to kind of show you guys what's going on. So obviously you don't see a lot of other stuff here, but this is where your CPU would go, this is where your RAM would go, like this is where your GPU would get installed.

But right here you can see like this is where an M.D would go. So like I'll even bring this up to the camera a little bit more. So you can see even like right here it says NVME, PCI, Gen 3, you know, by 4, and it's telling you all the different kind of dimensions. So as I mentioned, right, like 2280 versus 2230, right? So this one could support like a 110 and 80, 60, 42. 2280 is like the most common SSD form factor that you would see. You did not even realize that because all the SSCs I always do.

It's always the at one screws. Exactly. I always wonder what the other screws are for. And I know. Yeah. So, yeah, like what you would do, right? Let's say that, you know, this is actually in your tower. And I, you know, this motherboard only has one slot.

If you have probably a newer computer, you'll have at least two. And if you start building your own PC in like the next year or so, you're going to probably have like three, maybe even four of these slots. So the best way to do this is new screwdriver. You don't need a sand disk one. But if you have one, awesome. So what you would do first, just kind of take this screw out. Right, and these M.2 screws are really small.

If you can kind of see like this is a super tiny screw. And luckily your motherboard will always give you, like if you're going to build your PC by yourself, they'll give you like a bunch of these or you just go to like a microseenter or go to some PC store and you'll be able to buy more of those M.2s. So in this case, you can kind of see like this is already screwed in. But this would be like what we call like the standoff, right? So this is like what your SSD is going to sit on top of. So I'm not going to move it.

But if we needed to move it, I would also unscrew this and then screw it in there. Oh, one last thing I forgot to say, I know I'm doing this as motherboard's not connected to anything. But if I was actually doing this in my PC, you touch something metal beforehand. You don't want to have any static electricity because then that could like short out your motherboard. And then you're going to be like, you know, Jimmy's told me this was easy and now my PC doesn't work. So I don't want to be, I don't want to steer you guys the wrong way. Is that why you're barefoot, Jimmy, so you don't? Yes, yeah, yeah. That's why I'm grounding myself.

So I'll show you guys really quick. So whether it is a, so here I have a 770, right? So there's no heat sync on this device. And what you would do is, you know, just make sure your pins are going to go into this connector. So you can just, when you put it in, you might hear a click. And when you see your SSD do this, that's actually how you know it's actually connected. So this is how you know it's in right. And then you just like kind of gently push down and then you would screw the screw back in.

So I'll also show you in this case, like with this motherboard, there is no pre-built heat sink. So with something like this, I would recommend having a heat sync version, especially if you're going to be gaming a long time or like kind of more intense intense sessions and then again pulled it down take your screw screw this bad boy

back in don't over torque it how hot do you get by the way oh man I'll say that if your SSD gets hotter than like 85 degrees Celsius

so I forget how much that is in Fahrenheit that's bad, right? But I would say like normally these things will probably get to like 50, maybe 60 degrees Celsius, which is still pretty hot. So like not something you'd want to touch. But that's not a bad thing. That's kind of like your normal operating temperature.

That just means that the drive's doing what it needs to do, right? Whether it's loading up the next scene, downloading a game, anything like that. Yeah, that's basically it, right? You've got to find your slot. Make sure you put it in, right? Like when you see in this one, like because the heat sink's a little bit heavier, it kind of drooped right away. But with the with the non-heetsink drive, like you saw it,

it was kind of like 45 degree angle. And then you just gently push it down. And then you would boot up your PC and kind of go from there. Right. We have other videos on like on our WD black side of like, hey, I need a clone. I don't want to get in all that. That's way too complicated. Courtney in the chat asked, so you talked about booting.

up after you do it. Should you turn your PC off before doing an SSSW? Oh, yes, yes. Absolutely. Yeah. So what you would do is like before you want to install anything on your motherboard, completely shut the computer down, you know, maybe even if your power supply has like an on-off button, I would turn that off. I'd even unplug the power cable. Like do everything you can. And let's say you were just using your PC, like even let it cool off, right? Like whenever I've done an SSD swap, it's kind of like the first thing I'd do that day. Like, I make sure my PC's been off and I don't want to touch anything that's been hot

or anything like that. So, yeah, completely power everything down, unplug the power cable. Like I said, touch something metal so you don't have any static electricity in your body. And then you can start with the install. I had no idea. Wow. So that's what you would do for, like, a desktop. laptops, I don't have a laptop, unfortunately, but it'd be very similar.

Like, you flip your laptop over, you unscrew it, and then you would find where the slot is, and then you would do the same thing, like take the other one out, or if there's an extra slot, put the new one in. For a laptop, you definitely don't want a heat sink. It's not going to be able to close. Like, you would use something like this so that it fits in there. Ben in the chat says that Jimmy is totally right, that they actually electrocated themselves once. Oh, wow.

I'm sorry. Okay. So any other questions from the chat on like motherboard? Because I also want to show a PS5. No, we have a million questions for you actually, but let's get into the PS5 installation. Sure. I think that's interesting. Okay.

Let me put this to the side. And then bust out my PS5 or the one from the office. So this is a slim. So you can kind of tell. And the pro will probably be very similar. We'll have to wait and find out. So again, completely unplugged, right? You want to make sure this thing's powered off.

And you actually want the PlayStation logo facing down. So I'm going to flip this towards me. And what's really nice about the slam is that getting to this spot is super easy. Like you just put your fingers underneath and you pull it back. The original PS5 is a little bit harder. It feels like you're going to break it, but you're very unlikely to actually break your plate.

But yeah, with the slim, it's just you pull it back and now this is off. So for the PS5 gamers, right, like what you're trying to get to is this slot. Right? So the first thing you'll do, unscrew this. And then you're going to, oh, don't lose the screw. Also, don't let it. it fall in here because it'd be really pain, really big pain to get it out of the fan and then you pull back this like plate. So you put those both to the side and then here it kind of looks similar right to like what I just showed you on the motherboard. So you have all the different like positions the where you plug in is going to be down here and then this is where like the current

screw is. So I don't know why I've tried to ask Sony they need to do this differently. But whenever you open this for the first time, they put the screw all the way at the back. So this would be at like your 110 spot and nobody makes an M.22 110. Like it's very like no one does that. So you take all this out. And then this is probably like the most important step with the PS5 is this little thing here. So we call this the standoff. I want to make sure it's on camera.

Yeah, so this thing, you need to make sure that you put it in the right spot. So in here you want to put it in the 80. But this is like the first thing you need to do. You don't do this last, you do this right away. Because I'm going to show you guys, so this is our PlayStation branded product. This is called the SNA850P. So it's PlayStation brand and it's got a special heat thing just to just to design for the PS5.

So when we put this in, right? It falls right on top of that standoff. Right? Like I've seen people do the wrong thing, which is they plug it in. And then they try to put the standoff on top. If you do that and then screw this in, you're going to break your drive. Like just straight up, like you'll break it. You won't think you broke it, but then all of a sudden you'll be playing or you're transferring a game.

And then it's like M.2 expansion storage failure. Failure. And you're like, what did I do? It's because you broke your drive. Does that happen a lot? It doesn't happen a lot because we've been trying to be very clear, especially like with our videos or even Sony's videos, like you need to move this thing. But I have seen it happen before where someone's like, my drive broke.

And then I saw the picture of how they installed it. And I'm like, well, you broke it. Yeah, bad times. So yeah, after you have the drive. in and that standoff on the bottom you take your screw again get there we go and then just screw this bad boy in again don't over torque it and then you're basically good to go Nice. That was quick and easy. Yeah. Put it back on.

Screw this back in. Oh, so if you have like a magnetic screwdriver, that's even better because then you don't have to worry about the screws flying all over the place. So screw that back in. Get the plate. So with this, it's kind of like you have these ridges that they slide in here. I can get this right. Pop it back in. Wow. Now you plug it in and then you'll just follow the prompts on your TV. And now I think, you know, you can, you know, one terabyte, two terabyte, four terabyte, eight terabyte, right? Like, now you're good to go.

Not going to allow. This actually makes me want a PS5 even more now. I've always, I don't have one. I've always wanted one. Just I can play one specific game that's not on PC. Yeah. So I think you just sold one right now. I think I'm going to go buy one after this podcast now.

Sweet. I remember before, you know, like I had the old Xbox 360. And like, I remember people trying to add in more store. And it was like the most, it was like the most painstaking process of all time. And now it's just like, oh, yeah, open this, unscrew this, put it in. You're done. I'm like, wow. Yeah.

I was just years ago when I wanted to add in my storage. But it's okay. It's okay. we do have several community questions for y'all but we'll wait for jimmy to go back to his other cam before we yeah yeah cool thank you jimmy for that very very educational we appreciate it yeah i mean gosh uh you know i think is showing people that an s s d takes like almost no time that means that for those that have like two to three minute load times or you know you're the hair you're the hair hamster, you know, the hamster in your PC is kind of running a little tired.

I think you guys can probably upgrade. And they're not that expensive compared to like other parts in a PC. I think it's definitely worth doing. All right. I'm still staring at that seal. I was like, oh, you know, because then we're going to change our camps. I can't have our cameras on it. I was like, what would be something that people can just look at?

I was like, oh, I remember it at the seal. All right. First question for y'all from Mustang fishing. Where would one get info about working at WD Black? And do you need to be in the office? It depends on your job function. But I would say we are hiring a lot right now. I don't think specifically for WD. Black,

but Western Digital in general is doing a lot of hiring right now. LinkedIn is going to be your best friend to find all of our job postings. LinkedIn and then also I think it's jobs. Western Digital.com. It's our jobs. dot Western Digital.com or careers. orgernedital.com. One of those sites will also take you, if you want to just apply directly on, like, our

website. That's also a way that you can apply. Mike, just drop those links in the chat. Oh, yeah. You guys have a ton of jobs available right now. Yeah, we have a lot. Like, we're hiring a lot. A lot of them are based in the Bay.

We're actually hiring for my team right now. There is a social media specialist role available. and Irvine. And so that would be on Bitesy. But yeah, there's quite a few jobs that are available right now. So if you want to apply,

now is definitely the time to apply, I would say. Yeah. While the ideas, Mike, please don't leave me. I know you're sick of me. I mean, I think this is the time.

This is the opportunity I can take out of it. Yeah. All right. Next question from Moral. What are your thoughts on artificial intelligence? So everyone loves AI, and that's why if you own Nvidia stock, you're rich now.

But I will say that, and even like Sony, right, like they just said something about AI for the pro. I'm actually really interested to like see how they really implement it because, and this is mostly my opinion, but right now when it comes to AI, it is more like in the cloud, right? Like when you're using chatGBT, you're not really using your PC storage. right, you're using the cloud, right? So it's more has to do with like your internet connection. But I have a feeling that it's like one of those things that, you know, the next few years will be implemented more or maybe better, like on your actual computer.

But like right now there's like nothing real. Like maybe co-pilot like Windows co-pilot, but I know I don't think that's like really available to everybody. And like if you look at like an AI, PC, I think they just scratched out gaming and replaced it with AI because it's like 32 gigabytes of RAM, you know, 2 terabyte SSD that goes this fast, 4090 GPU. And I'm like, am I building a gaming PC or am I building an AI PC? Right. So it's it's one of those where like I think there's still some way to go with it. But like right now it, I'm curious to see like when it comes to games, right? Obviously you have like your NPCs and how smarter they, but what are they going to do? Like, how will they utilize AI? Maybe it's to help with graphics or whatever.

But, yeah, or maybe like what game developers, right? I could see AI really helping them with, hey, like, I, like, give me a jungle background, right? And it just does it so then they can maybe do quicker spin-ups of potential levels or something like that. One day, it could play Despacito, too. Oh, my gosh. All right, this is kind of two-parters from two different people, but they kind of ask the same thing. So Aves on Vi bot and Irvozu, they're wondering what the future of storage looks like. And I know you can't divulge any company's secrets, but they're wondering if you're working on any wild in all caps projects.

wild I think like when it comes to like this segment right like our client SSDs I mean the first and foremost not just a Western digital thing but anyone who makes SSDs like they're going to get faster right so I'm sure someone has asked

in the chat like where's your PCIE Gen 5 drive I can't tell you but we are working on it right so it's one of those things where you can expect as the technology gets faster, right, these drives are going to get even faster. But where I think will be more important is, all right, cool, like my drive, you know, used to go 7,000 megabytes per second, now it can go 15, so doubles in speed. That's always awesome. But I think where we need to work on and maybe just the industry in general is like,

okay, well, give me other features that will matter to me, right? like something that will it make my games load even faster, right? Will it help with my patch updates? Like something that will be really tangible and more beneficial to your everyday kind of experience, right? Whether or even if you're someone who's like a content creator and you're doing a lot of graphics or like a lot of Photoshop, a lot of video editing, things like that, you want your SSD to like maybe have a little bit of some kind of benefit. it. Like, oh, yeah, it's faster doing this, or like, we actually built in a feature for, like, these heavy type of use cases. But I think that's where we're kind of getting to where, and I'd be totally understandable from a market, a consumer perspective, like, okay, cool,

it's faster, but what else? Right. I think that's where we need to work towards the what's the what else, because obviously faster will probably mean more expensive, so then how else do you kind of differentiate. The correct answer was making it pink, Jimmy. OrkyCube asked, how long can data remain on an SSD without power in a drawer? Whatever that means, drawer.

Maybe their SSD is in a drawer. In a drawer? I think that's what they mean. Yeah, that's a good question. I'll say this. So like if you think of whether it's like a portable drive or not, one downside to a portable HDD is if it's on and you drop it, that's really bad, right?

Because I mentioned like it's spinning disks. So if something is spinning and then you drop it, you might break it. Where like SSDs don't really have that problem, right? Because there's nothing spinning. Like you saw, honestly, it kind of looks like a stick of gum, right? This is where everything is stored, like this thing right here. So I haven't heard of any issues of like, hey, I've just had, like, maybe it's an external or maybe it's a drive like this.

I have a bunch of stuff on it and I've just been kind of sitting to the side. It should be fine. I'm not aware of, like, data degradation for just a drive that's not broken. Right? If it's broken, it's broken. Like I always tell Mike when he asked me questions that I don't know the answer to. There's only one way to find out, Mike. Yeah, plug-up again.

Prime. Sorry, this is from Stompyburb. What's a good storage device to use for backup, similar to the original WD-Red HD-HDs? Oh. I feel like the W-D-Rads are still good for backup. Yeah, I was about to say those W-D-Rud HDDs are really good. I think maybe like I'm thinking of it two ways. So you could have right like this is the this is the P40.

So this would be our external SSD. And this would be a good way to like backup of like have a bunch of files that I want to put on something. Then like this can be kind of your external backup. But yeah, like I'll admit like I have an HDD in my tower. but it is for like pictures and photos, right? I don't run any games off of it anymore. So that's always a good backup. But we do also have, similar to WD-Red HD HDDs,

we do have WD-RED SSDs. And like the biggest differentiator with those products is what we call endurance. So endurance is like, how many times can I completely fill up this drive and then completely delete it and then completely fill it up again? So I think our 4 terabyte for that one as an endurance of 5,100 terabytes.

Right? So like you could write 50, like you could completely fill it up and delete it and fill it up again up to like 5,100 terabytes. Right. So like that's a lot, that's a lot of storage. Sorry, that's a lot of endurance.

So that one's another good backup play of like, hey, I need to make, and that's where like what we call network attached storage or NAS, right? Like those types of devices are really good of like call it like your mini home server right like so wd red whether it's an hd or an sSD are really good um for those types of stuff okay the next question is from quirky oh two and i actually have the same question myself i'm very curious about this answer where does the choice of numbers come from like 7070 850 etc does it indicate a specific

measurement or is it just a bunch of randomly chosen numbers? I'm trying to think of. So it's not completely random. I can probably tell you at least a little bit of it and I'm not really giving away trade secrets. But so SN, so S stands for SSD. Right. And I actually don't remember what the N stands for.

Does it mean N VME? Yeah, actually, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because if it was SAT, our SATs are SSDs are S-A and A for SATA or SATA. Or SATA. I know some people call it SATA, whatever. But yeah, the N is for NVME. But so, yeah, the like 770 part is more of like an internal thing for us, but it's like the first number is like kind of the tier for us. So like eight is our highest performance. like seven is just below, then we have five and then three.

So that like for us, it's kind of like how, what can you expect from a performance perspective? And then the last two numbers are like just kind of like, okay, again, like for us internally, like, okay, what kind of NAND are we using in this product? Is this like the first generation or maybe the second generation? So like we have a new product in the blue that's called SN5,000. Right. So it's like this is like a new, it's our newest NAND. It's like a new product. So we're kind of like resetting the amount of digits that we're going to have with some of our SSDs.

So it's not completely random. So there is a little bit to it as far as like what swim lane do we consider the product and then some other stuff. Nice. Thank you for that explanation. Next question is from Kare Banag Rabbit. They ask, is there any engineering reason that 2-2-30 form factor can't have dedicated DRAM, especially with the higher density of flash chips? Yeah.

I know what they're talking about there. Yep, I got you. It's too small. That's it. That's the engineering reason. So I got an 850x. Oh, there's a label on it. But maybe the best here.

I'll try to think of the best way to kind of show this to you guys so you get an understanding. So this is a 770. This has no DRAM on it. So like this is the NAND where everything is stored. And then this is what we call the controller. So kind of think of it as the brain. When you tell your SSD, put this here, put this file in this folder. that this thing is processing that.

So if your drive has DRAM, it goes right here. Well, a 2230 is this big, maybe even smaller. So you have to have the controller and the Nant. There's no room for DRAM, right? And you're not going to put it on the back because there's, why would you do that on a 2230? The point of that form factor is there's nothing on the back. Right.

So that's the engineering reason. It's too small to put DRAM on it. So that's why you don't do it. And it's also another reason why there's no 4 terabytes in that form factor, because no one has NAND that can, no one can put four terabytes worth of NAND in something that's small. As of right now. Don't quote, well, in five years, maybe that changes.

I don't know, maybe 10 years. I don't know how much farther away it is. But that, that's why. You can't fit it on there. Science has not yet gone that far. All right, last community question for you before we get into my favorite part of the show, which is where Mike asks you both a bunch of random questions. This is from Electric Yoshi, who Electric Yoshi has won a bunch of prizes on our Discord server recently,

one of them being a Pucci plush, which is a little NZHX mascot, so I'm sure that's why they're asking this question. So Electric Yoshi wants to know, will WD. Black ever have a cute mascot to represent the brand like the NZXT Pucci or maybe even a pink chinchilla? I've wanted one. That's another idea. I am currently pitching to the marketing team. A lot of times they look at me and they're like, we're an SSD cup. We don't need a mascot and they walk away from me. But you know, one day in the future, if you see them, mascot come out just know that I have been pushing for a mascot for the past five years as well there you go it's like Intel Intel is chippy you guys that have a little uh SSD one right does have chippy i'm going to use that as my next my next argument is that Intel has chippy so we can also have something yeah why not a little heat sink plushy that'd be cute yeah I think of it would be a good one I'm sure you guys.

I was going to say. You just, you added another thing to our list, our to-do list. Or to-do list. Push for a plushy and a mascot. I also have, as I just thought about it, since we talk about heat sinks, you guys should make like a heat sink hoodie. I don't know how that will work, but that would be kind of cool. Not like an actual one, but it just looks like a heat sink.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, like our design. Yeah. Age the plug just came up with the perfect name for a WD black mascot. Sinky. Sinky, yeah. I think that's a little bit too close to stinky, though. I feel like people call it stinky then. Sinkster.

Tinky's a good name. I like Sinky, though. That is a good one. Yeah, that's a good one. All right, Mike, let's get into ask away your little questions here, ma'am. All righty. So they got some fun little questions. So Haley, we'll start off with you and then Jimmy.

Just, you know, you can go into it or you can just rattle off the first thing on the top of your head. So the first question is, do you guys game in your in your off time? Haley? Yes. Yes. I game a lot. And then Jimmy? Yes. Okay.

So both of you guys are yes, which is great because when did you start game? I think for me it was probably. when I was like seven, eight years old, I just remember my mom gave me a PS2 and a GameCube, and those are my first consoles. So I'm like 10 years older than Haley, so my first console was a Sega Genesis, and I was probably like four or five,

so I can't say I played, I knew what I was doing, but I was playing like Sonic 3D, like Tasmanian Devil Games. But I feel like N64 was like my first, like in playing Zelda Ocarina of Time. That's when it like clicked. I'm like, oh, this is awesome.

And that game specifically, like, I think as a kid I would just replay it like every year. Just like, I'm going to go play Ocarina again. I want to, like, I know what to do. I know this is, I had a lot of fun doing that. Oh, well, I guess going leading into that, what is your favorite game of all time? Ooh.

My favorite, this is probably, a hot take has to be League of Legends. I am a yeah, okay, yeah, see that face. I am a huge, huge League of Legends fan.

I looked at it the other day, because there's a site where you can see how much time you've wasted on League. Oh, yeah. I have spent 90 days on League of Legends. I have enough hours. I have been on League for 90 days. Wow.

I don't even know what to say about that. Yeah. 90 days oh my gosh that's 90 day straight too that's that's insane yeah the night day straight exactly three months I love league um I don't play it was much more more of a valerant player now but league is probably my like number one my little thrush guy here I was about it was like it's that thrush yeah that's awesome all right Jimmy favorite game of all time So this is kind of a random one, but the story behind it is, so the answer is Zelda Majors Mask. And this is the original, like, the player's guide, right?

You can tell, like, this was from the 90s. This was, like, the first game that I bought and got a guide and, like, read through the guide to understand how to play the game. Right. So, like, 11-year-old Jimmy was, like, how to, you know, what is this? Right. And so like it was like probably my my favorite accomplishment, right? Because the big thing with this game, obviously, you have three days and then you always got to restart three days of game time. And then there's all these masks, right? In order to get the, what is it, the fierce deity mask, like the best one in the game, you got to do all this stuff. Right. So it was just like maybe my biggest accomplishment as a kid, my first like real gaming one. So like that's why I've kept this. Like it's like one of those where. I think when they re-released it on 3DS, I was like, I'm buying. I like bought a 3DS just to play that. Right.

So it's definitely kind of like a throwback game for me that just has like a lot of like, what you're called? Like a lot of special sentimentality for me. Harley Hart makes a good point here in the chat. Dude, you couldn't even play the game without that guide. I agree. That's a confusing game. All righty.

And then I guess now what are, well, I guess Haley, we kind of know. what games you're playing right now. Do you have any other games you're playing? Or is it, is it is, Lig and Valor are probably my main. I'm playing also. I play Fortnite also.

I love Fortnite. No build. Specifically like all the not, yes, no build. I don't do building because people will like build like circles around me and I'll be like I'm, I can't do that.

But I like Fortnite in terms of like single, I don't really play too many single player games anymore. Now I'm like mainly like multiplayer online. Gating sort of thing. I really want to get Baldur's Gate 3, though. I haven't played that yet, and that's a game I really want to play. For me, right now, I, like, kind of hopped back into Diablo 4, as I know that the new expansion is coming out in, like, less than a month now, I think, right?

Like October 8th, I think, is the date. So I've been playing a lot of that more recently, but kind of opposite to Haley, I tend to play a lot more single-player games. Like Diablo is probably like one of the few multiplayer games I really play right now. But see, I've been playing Diablo 4. I just like booted up, what is it called? Hellblade 2, Senuas, whatever. The like real creepy game where like you play with headphones and then just whispers in your ear,

like do it. You're going to die. If you play it at night, it'll be a really good game to play tonight. I'm not going to lie. I was like my one meeting with Mike. Oh my gosh. But yeah, so like that's why I'm playing on PC right now. There's really nothing on console.

I've been interested in playing. But we'll see. And then I guess for the final gaming question, if you could remake a game, what game would that be? And would you just want to like update the graphics on? Or would you like change things up? I would remake Final Fantasy.

and I would remake it so that they would make, I can't remember their names, but they were like the space pirates. And when the game was originally supposed to be developed, they were supposed to be the main characters. And then they switched it to, I can't even remember his name, whoever that guy was. But the space pirates, they were supposed to be the main characters. Final Fantasy 12 would have been an amazing game if the space pirates were the main characters. So that's a game I would change. Yeah. Very passionate about that.

Yeah, like that's just like I always think about it. Like one of them was like a bunny girl and the other one was like the like pilot and they were supposed to be like the main characters. And it's just something I always think about. I'm like how cool would that have been for them to be like the main people? I like that. Passion is real, y'all. Yeah. No, I'm like kind of I'm stuck.

I'm trying to think of what's something that I really enjoyed. You know, I think there's there's a new game that's coming that I'm excited. excited because it's, I think it's made by the same developers that made Bioshock. So like, I really like that series. And I think they did a remaster, but still, like, I think it would be cool to see that, like, running really on next gen and adding more kind of like the capabilities that controllers now or even, like, you know, your keyboard and mouse have. And, and just making that, like, an even more immersive, like, semi-horror game. I'm leaning into this Friday the 13th today.

But that that's a series that, like, I was kind of sad that just kind of died, just kind of, like, ended. And I know, like I said, I think that that studio kind of got revived and they're making a new game, and I'm blanking on what it's called. But that's something that, like, I always like those kind of, like, single-player first-person shooters that are more than just, like, here's a six-hour campaign because you're going to play 100 hours of multiplayer. like no something that's like a little bit more

I'm always into like kind of the fantasy sci-fi like you have powers type deal let's see oh what is something that you wish you were good at or what to be better at I wish I was good at crocheting that's like something

I've been thinking about a lot lately I really want to learn how to crochet I bought myself a beginner's crochet kit. The correct answer's legal legends, Haley. League of Legend. Oh, actually, I do wish I was better at League of Legends. This is even the worst part. Okay, I'm going to make my 90 days worse here for everyone who plays league.

Almost all 90 of those days have been spent in A-RAM. Yeah. It hasn't even been Summater's Rift. Like, I am an A-Ram, Andy. Like, I just run it down. I listen to EDM. I'll just like with the beat drops I'll be like okay I'm going in I'm diving like I don't care it's a ram based yeah so I I am an a ram enjoyer I think baby I played like 20 games 30 games of summoners rift not a lot like I don't play summoners rift I am an aram andy

but I won't learn how to crochet that's I just the league coming up like I have to you know make my 90 days on league worse. I agree. Like who needs to learn wave management? No, I want to fight. I want to fight. Yeah, I think when it comes to like video games, I wish I was better at first person shooters.

Like I think when I was younger, I was like decent, but I was never the best out of my friends. And that's why I fell off, which is like I was like, you know, brutal KD ratio. I'm just like, why do I even play these? I'm not having fun. And back in 2010, 12, when I was in college, like, those were not good times to be on the internet playing call of duty. So, yeah, like really fell off of that. I feel like that hinders me at times.

Like, I know, like, a lot of people, I think I even tell that you had Deadlock, right? Right? Is it Deadlock the new? Yes. Like, Mova, right? And I played a little bit, and I'm like, ah, like, I just like, something about shooters. where like I enjoy them, but then when I get too into them, I'm never any good. So then I just fall off.

So I wish I was better at shooters. But in like, I guess in I are all in in real life, I wish I was a better cook. I've been like trying to do trying to learn a little bit more and expand kind of my, my repertoire. But yeah, that's probably one thing. I was kind of like your classic college boy of like, yeah, just put in a pizza or like. pizza rules oh yeah

and like never really learning out of cook stuff you're to you're like I watch a lot of like cooking shows like British bakeoff and stuff like that but like God how can you not do that correctly and I'm seeing my little dino nuggets in the corner

yeah come on God I feel I feel like you on that oh do you guys have any tips on anyone that wants to work in your guys's industry I would say go to like your career fairs.

Western Digital does have like, and a lot of tech companies, we do attend like the career fairs at like your local university. So if you're a university right now, just go ahead and attend those. And a lot of people in industry, like we know each other.

So if like you're saying like, hey, like I'm looking for a job, like a lot of times like if you're not right fit for them, like they might be able to pass the overturn to another role and just keep networking at everyone that you meet. I don't have a LinkedIn. So this is like hypocritical, but at everyone that you meet on LinkedIn.

And, you know, really make sure that you build that network of people and just, you know, keep applying, keep pushing, reach out to the hiring managers of the jobs that you're applying for to make sure that they look at your resume and just really, you know, be persistent, be annoying. That's how I would say it's the best way to get into this industry. Yeah. Like, and, you know, if you're an engineer, right, like, obviously we have a lot of engineering roles. it's going to be more technical, but, you know, being someone that uses our products will kind of give you a leg up. Like, hey, you know, like whether it's our internal IDs or external SDs, our USBs, our micro SD cards, right?

Like just having, like understanding what the product is, what it does, and how it works. You know, again, that can be more for your technical folks. But like if you're not technical, right, again, like you like Haley said, everything Haley said absolutely. And in addition, like just read more. about the industry, right? Like, you know, storage doesn't always seem very, right? Like when you're talking about, hey, I'm going to build a new PC, no one's really asking what SSD is. What's your graphics card? Right. Like, so, but it is good to understand, you know, who are the players in this space? What are they doing? How are they, you know, do they have products that are geared towards

what I'm interested in? Right. So it's just like kind of doing your research and, and like Haley said, like going to career fairs looking at our, you know, what our opportunities are and reaching out to people. I know like it took me until I was in grad school, but I kind of wish I did it when I was younger, just like not being as afraid to like, you know, kind of maybe sending that cold LinkedIn message or going up to somebody and just saying, hey, I'd really love to learn more about what you do. And people love talking about themselves. So like it's usually, you usually kind of have a good success rate. every now and then you'll meet a jerk

that doesn't want to respond. But yeah, that's kind of, it's a good way to kind of get used to that as you're trying to get into this. Like that. All right. My favorite stupid question as to end off on the rapid fire questions.

How many seagulls would it take for you to start thinking someone is bringing the seagulls into your house? Because like one single you're like, okay. And then like the second sequel, you're like, okay, this is a little weird. Would it take like the third, the fourth? How many? How many?

I think by the first single, I'd be like what is happening. Because I don't live close to the beach. And so why would there be a seagull like near my house in the first place? Like it wouldn't like. So I think it'd be by the first one. I'd be calling up like my closest friends and being like which one of you? like got a Seagull whisperer to put this in my house. I'm like, I'm like, I think I'm less than five miles from Venice Beach.

So like I too would be like, huh, a little kind of far. You're kind of far from where. So maybe like three. If I say, you know, things, when things come in three, it's like, okay, this is a pattern. Something is wrong. Someone, there's a reason they're here. And I need to figure it out. I like how the first.

one, obviously it's like, oh, must have let the window open. Second one, you're like, I wonder how they're getting in. Then the third one, you're like, all right, something's up then. Something's going on. I like that. How many would take for you since you're kind of closer to the beach? I think I'm the first one, honestly, because I'd never see a, I never see seagulls around my house.

So if I saw one, I'd be like freaking out, like, what the heck of this thing doing here? Who, who left us on my doorstep? So I think it'd be one before I start freaking out I like quirky thing One is an accident, two is coincidence Three, it's a battered Yeah I agree

I agree How much From your guys's actual Twitch Twitch account How much storage could you attach To a Siegel though How many how many SSDs do you think

Could you could you If we put like a little vest on him You know I'm pretty sure Quite a few Quite a few SSDs go on there I don't know if they would work. I don't know if it would expand his brain capacity

but he could wear him. Like a nice little, nice little accessory. I mean, if you guys have the WD Black SN 777770 M, you guys have put a lot of them available with 5001 terabyte and 2

terabytes. Just saying. It would fit a lot on a single. And they're very light, so it wouldn't even weigh it down. It would not. All righty. I think that's it on the on the rapid fire. I guess I'll go to announcements. And then I think we have a couple special announcements from you guys at the end.

So let me get through a couple announcements and we'll get to the fun, fun stuff. So for us, we have some PCs available at Best Buy. So you guys take a look at our Player 2 and Player 3s. You can do Exclamation Point Best Buy or just look at Best Buy. Or just look at Best Buy.com and look up N60 PCs. We just launched our brand new H5 Flow, H5Flow, H5, RGB, and Cracking, and elites you take an estimation point new stuff in chat or nccc.com we have a flex subscription service which very weird but it's actually kind of cool you can get a pc for as little as like

fifty nine dollars a month you basically can just rent the pc for a little bit it comes with a warranty you can upgrade every two years and you can cancel at any time no no you know weird stipulation or anything like that so you can look at ncccccccc or thank you sage for estimation for flex Also, I wanted to point out, thank you, Nightbot for coming in at the end of the stream. Like, literally randomly comes at the end of the show. I'm like, thanks, thanks, man. You couldn't have been here, you know, an hour, hour and a half ago. But that's totally, take your time.

Take your time, Nightbot. We got some cool things going on. We have a Discord wallpaper itself contest. If you guys joined that, you can win Apucci. And if you guys have a poochie, which is our plushy, aka Haley, you need to get on to Poochie. I do. I do. I do. If you have a Pucci, you can join our Pucci photo contest and win a $25 Steam gift card. And then you guys have some fun announcements coming up, correct?

Yes, I think the next place that will be is we're going to be at TwitchCon. So we will be at TwitchCon. We are in the streamer workshop area, but Jimmy and I personally will be at TwitchCon working the booth. So please make sure that you come on by. We're going to be right next to which rivals land area. Won't be too hard to miss us. We're going to have a bunch of activations in our booth. If you're a fan of Pokemon, you're going to want to stop by our booth.

I'm just going to say that. Because there's going to be a lot, yep, there's going to be a lot of real stuff going out at our booth. We're super excited about all the activations we have going on. We will have an NZXT PC. on display at our booth and we're able to is it already live or I believe that's a great question hey Lee just built the beans we are dead I don't we're gonna be having a PC on display we also decided to give it away because we don't want it so this

It is the NZXT Player 3 AMD edition worth over $3,000 featuring WD Black SSD in there. It's awesome. And because y'all are tuned in live right now to the giveaway, we will also give you a secret word for it. And that secret word for that TwitchCon giveaway, which has not even gone live yet on NZXT social media, We are going to post about it later today,

but you will be the first ones to get access to it. I just dropped the link in the chat. The secret word for that one is NZXT black. So type NZXT black in the secret word field there. On the giveaway, you will get 500 extra bonus entries. And for those of you who are going to be at TwitchCon, all you got to do is walk up to the... up to the WD Black

booth and ask ask them for another secret word, which I'm not going to give you here. You have to actually go up to the WD black booth. You have to tap Haley's shoulder, tap Jimmy's shoulder, ask them, hey man, what's the secret word here? I want the thousand entries.

Go to their booth and ask them. I'm not going to let you guys know it, but I will give you the podcast one. The podcast one is NZXT Black. And like I said, I just dropped the link in the chat there so you guys can answer there. And if you're not tuned in live, we will post this giveaway later on NZT social media and I'm sure WD Black will share it, right?

Yes, we will. 100%. I am the social media manager and so I can say we will share it. And also I guess I'll give up the other secret word since I just gave out that one. So for the other secret word is for the WD Black hardware giveaways. We're giving a way three stories drives. The secret word for today's podcast giveaway is Mike, and your drum roll. I don't have the drum roll emoji. I think you.

You have it good. The secret word for that one is WD Purple, WD Purple. So if you are entering the podcast giveaway, the secret word is WD Purple. Yep.

So just wanted to double check. there is the SSDs that we're giving away that code is WD Purple the TwitchCon one and make sure I see some people in chat or not typing it correctly you guys have to put it in the right section

there is a podcast code which is the NZC black and then there is another one if you guys are at TwitchCon that one you guys have to learn from Haley and Jimmy at the booth and it's not stinky It is not stinky

By the way I just got a notification from our Influencer specialist here at NZXT that those are rookie numbers Haley Our boy

Has 3666 days No No He has over a year And this is over a year What's that brother Yeah

I'm gonna need him to join the next marketing call we have because I need to do a little bit of cycle analyzing because I thought I had whoa that's my numbers are rookie numbers there he is there he is in the chat there he is one loser yeah my numbers are rookie numbers

he has he has over a total of playing time 8,795 hours he is 18,000 in the world. World. He is 18,000 in the world. That's insane. I wish I would have known that before

we sent him the job offer. I'm sorry. Hey, I was in Diamond for a record, but I think God Carsey, I think, is a perfect way to end this thing, is who hurt you. Who hurt you, bud? Who hurt you, man?

Because that is insane. Rudy, come on, man. That's insane. I don't think I've even done anything for that many hours. I don't think I've ever done anything that long. That is crazy. Yeah. Being alive.

Yeah, breathing. Gosh. Well, I guess that's it. Do you guys have any last minute things you want to say before we go ahead and end the podcast? No, just we're at WD underscore black on all socials. We stream on Twitter. as well so if you haven't tuned into our wd black stream we stream every single week at 5 p m pst on thursdays um so make sure you come and check it out we give away d's on our stream every single week also um and yeah i think

that that's it we'll see you at twitch gone next week hopefully anyone who's coming by yeah uh i guess that's it so thank you guys for joining us and we're tuned in live every other friday or any Fridays because we're switching things up a little bit at 10.m. Pacific Standard time on the official NCC Twitch. Don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. If you have any question for us, send an email to podcast at ncc.com or tag at NCC on social media platforms. Go ahead and follow WD Black on social media platforms. We just posted their link tree in the chat. Join. Good luck to everyone on the hard drive and SSD giveaways for the podcast and the TwitchCon PC giveaway. Good luck to everyone. And I, uh,

I will make sure to rig it so that I win it. So good luck, y'all. Good luck. But thank you guys and enjoy. Have a safe weekend. And good luck to everyone. And don't cry when I win. See you guys.

Thank you guys.