The Crucial MX500 1TB SSD Review: Breaking The SATA Mold
by Billy Tallis on December 19, 2017 8:00 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.
The Crucial MX500 turns in the best average data rate score on the Heavy test that we've seen from a 1TB-class SATA drive. When the test is run on a full drive, the MX500's performance falls below that of the Samsung 850 PRO and 850 EVO.
The average and 99th percentile scores of the Crucial MX500 are typical for a good SATA SSD. The MX500 doesn't set any records here, but at least the latency doesn't climb out of control when the test is run on a full drive. This is a notable improvement over the MX300.
The average read latency of the Crucial MX300 is fast by SATA standards, but it doesn't quite match the Samsung 850 PRO. When the test is run on a full drive, the average read latency suffers and the MX500's score is merely average for a mainstream 1TB drive. The average write latency is slightly below average in both cases, but not to a degree worthy of concern.
The 99th percentile read latency of the MX500 falls in the middle of the pack, though running the test on a full drive has a bit more of an impact than for most drives. The 99th percentile write latency is reasonably low whether or not the test is run on a full drive.
The power consumption of the Crucial MX500 on the Heavy test is significantly higher than the record-setting MX300, but the MX500 certainly doesn't qualify as power-hungry compared to the broader field of competitors. The Samsung 850 PRO and EVO drives require much more power on this test than the MX500.
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peevee - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
"SMI controllers tend to be more popular for budget products"... "Silicon Motion has been working to improve their controllers and move toward the high end, but the MX500 isn't even adopting the newer SM2259"... "but they're not as large or numerous as on previous MX series drives"race to the bottom.
MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Did you look at the improved performance numbers? I'm not sure how that supports a race to the bottomWolfpup - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Ugh, is EVERYONE using TLC now? I was uncomfortable enough with MLC.I'm not crazy about switching away from Marvell either...though I suppose as long as it works and the software Micron writes is good...
I really want a higher end MLC (or SLC!) drive from Crucial/Micron.
My main system is still using a 2012 Crucial drive though. It literally launches programs in maybe 1-2 seconds MAX, so who the heck cares if it were 42x faster? (Literally the only time I've ever see it take any actual time to respond to anything was when I was doing something else while running TRIM on it for no real reason.)
But my next drive I'd like to be MLC Crucial/Micron too...
MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
BX300 is your best betsmilingcrow - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Don't waste your time with SLC but look at Optane.MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
That's another alternativevalinor89 - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Optane is a first gen product... I think I will pass this round and watch for the next generations .Also, Optane is not in the same price range as "conventional" SSD.
extide - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
It's a bit higher but not outrageous by any means. It's FAR cheaper than several of the early SSD's I bought in terms of $/GB. Frankly for its performance, I think it's priced pretty aggressively, TBH.DanNeely - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
SLC is dead in anything except very non-mainstream products (eg low capacity embedded flash built on a process so large that even doing ECC is optional), at only 1/3 the density of TLC per chip it's nowhere near cost competitive. The same factor is killing off MLC as 3d TLC improves. I suspect over the next year or three MLC flash will gradually fade away too.If they can get the total write count up high enough, QLC will start displacing TLC over the next few years. That number was only a few dozen writes a few years ago; I haven't seen any updates since then. OTOH over similar timespans TLC write endurance has climbed from a few hundred writes to a few thousand; if QLC has been able to improve equally we might start seeing it soon in entry level products.
jjj - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
You seem to have a negative opinion on 3D TLC for no good reason while also not requiring much perf.If your current drive is from 2012, a Crucial m4 that was fashionable back then, has 72TB endurance while the this MX500 has 360TB for the 1TB version and 180TB for the 500GB.version.