The Crucial/Micron M500 Review (960GB, 480GB, 240GB, 120GB)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 9, 2013 9:59 AM ESTPower Consumption
The M500 supports the new Device Sleep standard which will see platform support with Haswell this year. Crucial claims DIPM enabled idle power as low as 80mW, however even with DIPM enabled on our testbed we weren't able to get anything south of ~1W at idle. I'm digging to see if this is a M500 issue or one specific to our testbed, but Crucial is confident that in a notebook you'd see very little idle power consumption with the M500. Supporting DevSleep is important as that'll quickly become a must have feature for Haswell notebooks.
Load power looks excellent, which gives me hope that Crucial's idle power is indeed as good as they claim. The M500 is a direct competitor to Samsung's SSD 840 Pro when it comes to power consumption under load. Given how power efficient the 840 Pro is, the M500 is in good company.
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Mr_RXN - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
I was planning to get a Cruical M4 128GB for making a custom Fusion Drive.So I shall just stick with my original plan rather than change to M500 120GB?
Thanks : )
meacupla - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
I think you would be better off with the M4, if only for it's great firmware support.beginner99 - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
Well kind of a disappointment given the hype. IMHO a small OS drive should be good at random reads / writes while a large drive like the m500 should be good at sequential stuff. A 940 (Pro) would probably offer noticeable better level load times in games and if you don't need 480 GB...Then the high idle power consumption isn't ideal too for laptop use. It's over 3 times higher than the 940. All in all it is a compromise and doesn't invalidate all older ssd's.meacupla - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
You get what you pay for. These are on the cheaper side for SSDs. The fact it uses TLC flash should give you a hint. What is nice about this series is the speed of the 480GB model. Before this, the fastest drives in any series were 240GB models, but now 480GB is also a viable alternative... If you can pay for it.dilidolo - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
Where did you get it's TLC?It's clearly said in the first paragraph it's 128Gbit MLC NAND with 3000 PE.
meacupla - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
I don't know either. I must not have had my morning tea.Tjalve - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
Is there a reason for there not being any pictures of the front of the drive? With the controller and the NAND?Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
There are some on page 2http://images.anandtech.com/doci/6884/DSC_0093.jpg
Tjalve - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
Great stuff. Btw. rae thoose small capaictors there in the upper right corner?Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
I've got more photos I'll be posting, just wanted to get this out asap :)