The Crucial BX300 (480GB) SSD Review: Back To MLC
by Billy Tallis on August 29, 2017 9:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here. This test is run twice, once on a freshly erased drive and once after filling the drive with sequential writes.
When the Heavy test is run on an empty drive, the Crucial BX300's average data rate is not quite as fast as the drives using Micron's 3D TLC with large SLC caches. The situation is very different when the test is run on a full drive: the ADATA SU800 and Crucial MX300 are far slower, while the Crucial BX300 retains almost all of its performance and ends up placing right behind the Samsung 850 PRO and EVO.
The average latency and 99th percentile latency of the BX300 on the Heavy test are slower than most of the other drives in this bunch except the BX200. It is again very clear that the Micron 3D TLC drives have serious problems when the drive is full, but the BX300 handles that situation fine.
The average read latency of the BX300 is faster than the Crucial MX drives and the Intel 545s, while the BX300's average write latency is slower than those, though not to a worrying degree. Samsung comes out ahead for both reads and writes, though the ADATA SU800 is competitive provided the test isn't run on a full drive.
The 99th percentile read latency of the Crucial BX300 is a bit slower than the Samsung 850 PRO but clearly faster than any other Crucial drive and is also ahead of the Samsung 850 EVO. The 99th percentile write latency of the BX300 is about twice as high as most of its competition, though when full the MX300 and ADATA SU800 show even higher latency.
The Crucial BX300 is tied for second place with the Samsung 850 EVO for power efficiency on the Heavy test. The MX300 uses substantially less power when the test is run on an empty drive, but significantly more power when the test is run on a full drive.
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khon - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
I don't get the point of this product. If you care enough of performance to get MLC NAND rather than TLC NAND, why would you get a SATA SSD ?bill.rookard - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
Sometimes it's just form factor. You may have a laptop that only has regular SATA SSD's or are upgrading to a SSD from a spinny-disk (which are decidedly awful in laptops). Or - perhaps you have a NAS or server which uses 2.5" SATA drives, or a desktop that doesn't have an M.2 slot.There are lots of reasons to have a SATA option.
nathanddrews - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
True. I have a couple pre-NVME computers that need an upgrade, so that's why I go SATA.eek2121 - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
1) Buy M.2 adapter card.2) Use clover to boot from NVME
3) ???
4) PROFIT!!!
Alexvrb - Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - link
The cheapest and easiest way to upgrade a conventional SATA-equipped system to an SSD is with a SATA SSD. Also M.2 is a form factor, not an interface. A lot of the entry-level / affordable M.2 drives are SATA-based. The added costs and complexities to get something substantially faster than SATA might not be worth it. Meanwhile a sub-$100 Evo drive can help revive an older system for cheap, it's the same price as competing products and it's somewhat better.Also, if you're talking about using Clover/Tianocore with a legacy non-UEFI bios, it's kind of a mild nuisance. Especially if you're doing it for someone else on a budget. Plus you still need to use the existing mechanical clunker SATA drive (well you could add a USB stick I guess) for the BIOS to boot and load Tianocore.
Last but not least if you're talking about an older laptop, you might very well be stuck with SATA or mSATA. So might as well make the most of it. There are a lot of OEM systems with decent enough processors, saddled with horribly slow HDDs. Easy and cheap way to rev them up.
leexgx - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link
he thinks the laptop is a PC :PMajGenRelativity - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
People also have concerns about life expectancy of their hard drives. As far as performance, SATA is still cheaper than PCIe, so cost plays a factor as well.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
Although I'll probably NEVER hit an endrance wall with TLC NAND, since the prices for TLC and MLC in are disturbingly close at this point, I see no reason not to purchase MLC. In fact, I just bought two 240GB and one 480GB SATA SSD two weeks ago and all of them were 3D MLC because there was no difference in price. I think it might be more reasonable to ask why anyone would bother with TLC in SATA or any other form factor given the current state of the market.littlebitstrouds - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
Really it's quite easy... If MLC is better for endurance, and we can't find SLC anymore, without going full enterprise, anyone who engineers systems for stability will inevitably take a MLC nand storage device over a TLC, all other parts being equal. Just because you can't see a reason, doesn't mean there isn't a market for it. I guarantee you don't understand every aspect of every engineering problem that exists, which means you may not understand why a company, with shareholders, would devise such a product.sonny73n - Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - link
Seriously, you said it's easy to see the reason why but you kept ranting on without giving us a reason why they keep producing TLC and selling them at the same price with MLC.