The MX500 is Crucial’s first SSD with flashy new 64-layer 3D NAND reminiscence. This implies that the information storage cells inside are stacked on prime of each other, 64 deep. In comparability to 2D NAND, which solely has a single layer of cells, 3D NAND has a lot greater storage density. This opens the door to doubtlessly enormous storage capacities, in addition to making the NAND itself cheaper to supply for a sure capability.
But why, it’s possible you’ll ask, am I reviewing Crucial’s newest SSD tech in an old-school 2.5in SSD? Wouldn’t an NVMe drive’s sooner interface give the NAND extra of an opportunity to shine? In quick, sure, it will. But not everybody has a motherboard with the requisite NVMe-compatible M.2 slot. After all, motherboards with M.2 slots solely began showing lower than three years in the past, and so long as my nearly-six-year-old gaming PC can nonetheless play The Witcher three at 60fps, it ain’t going wherever. So let’s see what the brand new Crucial MX500 is able to, and whether or not it will probably upset our beforehand established checklist of Best SSDs.
For these of us with out an M.2 slot on our motherboards, a SATA SSD like the two.5in mannequin of Crucial’s MX500 is our solely possibility. If you’re counting on a mechanical arduous disk, becoming an SSD is the most effective improve you’ll ever make, however even in the event you’ve already gone solid-state, an improve could possibly be a good suggestion. You might need a bit more room for more and more enormous AAA video games, or fancy a velocity increase: this new Crucial SSD is 4 instances as quick in sure duties than my outdated gaming PC’s 2012 Sandisk Extreme.
Crucial despatched me the 500GB model of the SSD to evaluation, and, at £115 / $135 (23p per GB or 27 cents per GB) it seems to be very effectively priced. The Samsung 850 Evo is £23 more / $46 more for a similar capability, and the brand new 860 Evo (which Katharine is nearly to check) is £25 more or $35 more. The 250GB and 1TB variations of the MX500, in the meantime, are available in at 27p per GB and 22p per GB – once more, nice worth.
Crucial make it painless to improve your system with out having to reinstall Windows, because of the included cut-down model of Acronis True Image. This reboots into its personal mini working system, then clones your present system disk to the brand new SSD. It labored flawlessly for me.
I used a few artificial benchmarks to check the SSD. My check rig is an AMD Ryzen 7 1800X PC with an Asus Prime X370-Pro motherboard and 16GB of Crucial Ballistix Elite DDR4 RAM, so ought to be fast sufficient to not maintain up the SSD. The first check was AS SSD, which performs various file switch exams to examine totally different points of a drive’s efficiency. I used to be most within the Sequential and 4K Random exams.
Sequential transfers 1GB of knowledge to and from adjoining areas of an SSD’s storage, and is a best-case situation with regards to measuring SSD learn and write speeds. It additionally produces the outcomes closest to the ‘claimed speeds’ you’ll see on an SSD’s specs web page. In this check, the MX500 learn information at 514MB/s and wrote them at 498MB/s. These are wonderful outcomes, making the MX500 faster than the Samsung 850 Evo’s 498MB/s and 453MB/s, and some MB/s sooner than the top-end Samsung 850 Pro. Both Samsung drives have simply been changed with the 860 Evo and Pro, nonetheless, and the brand new fashions are apparently slightly faster than the 850 vary, however Katharine could have them in for testing quickly.
The AS SSD 4K Random benchmark once more takes 1GB of knowledge, however this time splits it into 4KB chunks and reads and writes it to random places over the SSD’s floor. This check is an try and mimic an working system’s behaviour, which depends on studying and writing all types of small information all over. The MX500 impressed on this check, too: 37MB/s when studying information and 73MB/s when writing is considerably faster than what the 850 Evo managed, however round 30% slower than the costly 850 Pro within the writing check.
This is a high-performance drive, so I needed to topic it to a strenuous check. The CrystalDiskMark benchmark has a variation on the 4K Random check, referred to as ‘Random 4K Queue 8 Thread 8’. This makes an attempt to simulate the type of workload a drive may see on a server or on a high-end workstation. The MX500 excelled on this strenuous check, studying information at 398MB/s and writing them at 372MB/s. This is as fast because the Samsung 850 Pro, and blows the 850 Evo out of the water.
I additionally did a few (much less scientific) recreation loading exams, utilizing a stopwatch. With the MX500 fitted, my check PC might load a spherical of Plunkbat in 7.88 seconds, in comparison with Eight.12 seconds for the Samsung 850 Pro. Such a small distinction is more likely to be human error. I additionally timed loading an Eight×Eight-player map in Men of War: Assault Squad 2, with one human participant and 15 bots. The MX500-equipped PC was able to play in 16s, however I needed to wait 19s for the 850 Pro.
The MX500 is a wonderful SSD, which is quick throughout the board and good worth, too. If you went out and purchased it now, you’d be joyful. However, we’ve but to check the most recent SATA competitors: Samsung’s 860 Evo and 860 Pro, which, though costlier, might effectively even be sooner than Crucial’s effort. If you’re on the lookout for the final word in efficiency, it’s possible you’ll wish to await the decision on Samsung’s new drives earlier than you dive in, however the Crucial MX500 continues to be a wonderful SSD in its personal proper.
