At first we would like to thank Crucial for sending a sample of their BX200 TLC SSD for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About Crucial:

 

“Looking for computer memory or a new storage drive? You've come to the right place!

 

Crucial is a global brand of Micron Technology, Inc., one of the largest memory and flash storage manufacturers in the world. We make computer memory upgrades (DRAM) and solid state drives (SSDs), and offer more than 250,000 upgrades for over 50,000 systems. For 17 years, we've sought to provide the Crucial Difference — award-winning products, outstanding support, and a team of memory and storage experts who explain complex lingo in everyday terms. We're here to help improve the performance of your system.

 

Crucial memory and SSDs have been qualified and approved by major original equipment manufacturers, and every single module that leaves our doors has been rigorously tested at the component and module level. That's a big deal in the memory industry, but it's not all. When it comes to our SSDs, each drive undergoes over a thousand hours of prerelease validation testing and hundreds of qualification tests to ensure optimal reliability and performance.

 

To find upgrades in just a few clicks, our award-winning Crucial System Scanner or Crucial Memory Advisor™ tool will identify compatible upgrades for your system, and if you order on Crucial.com, we guarantee compatibility — or your money back. With fast and free shipping, outstanding tech support, and an exhaustive library of articles, videos, and install guides, we make it easy to find and install the right upgrade for your system.

 

Let us be your memory and storage experts.”

 

Product Features:

 

Up to 13x faster than a typical hard drive

 

Accessing your data on the Crucial BX200 is like flipping a light switch – it’s almost instant. The Crucial BX200 delivers true 540 MB/s sequential reads on both compressible and incompressible data, which allows you to access files and apps almost as soon as you click on them. Stop pulling your hair out waiting for your computer to catch up to you. Life moves fast – your computer should too.

 

Up to 40x more energy efficient than a typical hard drive

 

Since SSDs access data on cutting-edge flash memory chips rather than on outdated spinning platters, they consume significantly less power than hard drives. Enjoy the ability to do more with longer battery life and experience a cooler, quieter system. Increase your laptop’s portability, worry less about finding an outlet, and boost your productivity.

 

More durable than a typical hard drive

 

Since SSDs don’t use moving parts that wear out over time, your photos, music, videos, and everything on the drive is less susceptible to a crash. Dropping a laptop with a hard drive may damage the small mechanical parts it uses to read and write data, and could cause the hard drive to fail. SSDs can sustain more physical trauma since they don’t rely on these mechanical parts.

 

Better value than a typical SSD

 

The Crucial BX200 leverages proven flash memory technology that’s been thoroughly vetted and engineered to extensive Micron quality standards. Upgrading to an SSD is one of the best ways to improve your system’s performance, and now the price per gigabyte makes it a great time to ditch your hard drive. Start getting more out of your storage.

 

Product Specifications:

 

 

In our test lab we have recently received the BX 200 SSD from Crucial, which does also employ TLC NAND as the OCZ Trion 100, but this time a Micron 16nm 128Gbit NAND; the product is rated with a sequential read speed of 540MB/s, write of 490MB/s, random read IOPS at 66K and random write IOPS at 78K. BX200 is offered by Crucial inside a tiny cardboard enclosure, with an opening technique which we have found only with this company and the top cover also lets the user know the total storage capacity of current model:

 

 

 

The bottom area shows the box contents, the link where we will be able to download several resources, the supported standards but also the product serial number on the plastic seal:

 

 

 

After lifting the top cover, we will be able to check out the BX200, which is placed inside a plastic mold, but also wrapped inside an anti-static bag:

 

 

 

Besides the main product we will also receive a spacer which increases the product height from 7mm to 9.5mm (compatibility purposes), but also one Acronis True Image HD software activation key; this software makes migration of data from the older drive a breeze:

 

 

 

Crucial saw fit to include the same design of the enclosure and top sticker as they have done with the BX100 we have reviewed some time ago:

 

 

 

On the bottom we do get to see another sticker which shows the product serial numbers, factory code name, power rating, installed firmware but also total storage space and supported standard:

 

 

 

Also here we do get the SATA Data/Power ports:

 

 

 

As we have seen with the previous model, BX200 comes with a screw-less design, which means that the top and the bottom parts snap together and it is quite difficult to take them apart:

 

 

 

While the bottom area of the 480GB model is blank, on the front we will get to see eight NAND chips, along with the DDR3 memory buffer and also the controller:

 

 

 

Here is a close-up of the Micron 16nm TLC NAND:

 

 

 

As buffer, we do get a D9SDD 512MB DDR3 Micron memory chip:

 

 

 

The main controller is different from the one found on the BX100 so we are dealing with a Silicon Motion SM2256, which does support Active Garbage Collection but also TRIM. For the 480GB model, Crucial does also use SLC cache in a quantity of 6GB which speeds up the initial transfer speeds until this one fills up:

 

 

 

Test Bench:

CPU : Intel i5 3570K Retail

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14

Motherboard : ASRock Z77 Extreme6

RAM :GeIL PC3-17000 2133MHz 8GB EVO Leggera

Video : Sparkle X560 Calibre

Power Supply : Cooler Master 850W

HDD : OCZ Vector 150

Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840

 

The drive is shipped unformatted:

 

 

Here is the total free space reported by Windows:

 

 

With the help of AIDA64, we could extract more information regarding the drive:

 

In order to access extra information about the drive and to run certain processes, we can always install the Storage Executive software, which Crucial places to our disposal for free; the application opens up in a browser window and the menus are located on the left side; from the System Information tab, we are able to check out PC information, but also some info on the installed drives:

 

 

 

By accessing Drive Details menu, we will be told more information regarding the BX200 like drive usage, current temperature, serial number, total bytes written and more; here we can also check if the latest drive firmware has been installed:

 

 

Advanced S.M.A.R.T. details can be looked at from the next menu:

 

 

The Firmware Updates menu is in charge of the firmware update process:

 

 

Drive sanitization must be made when we intend on discarding the drive in order not to recover data from it or sometimes can be made to bring it to factory settings:

 

 

PSID Revert process can be enabled only on encrypted drives:

 

 

We can enable Momentum Cache feature from the next menu of Storage Executive:

 

 

Finally, we can set the Over Provisioning values:

 

 

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

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Filled SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

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Filled SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

HDTune Test Suite

Blank SSD

Filled SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 7

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

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Filled SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

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Filled SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

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Filled SSD

 

As we have seen with the Trion 100, Crucial is also settling into the affordable and high-capacity SSD market with their BX200 by incorporating Micron 16nm 128Gbit TLC NAND, a Silicon Motion SM2256 and also DRAM cache which varies in size depending on the total capacity of the drive. When writing up to 6GB files to the drive, the SLC cache takes up the effort and we are able to see good read/write speeds all over the board; however, if we are planning on working with very large files most of the time, the cache will fill up quite quickly and we will be forced to perform read/write operations directly to the TLC NAND, which is considerably slower.

 

For exemplifying this type of behavior, we have first erased the partition from the drive and ran a write test with HD Tune Pro:

 

 

 

We will get to see that the drive starts writing at 364.7MB/s but as soon as the SLC portion is filled up, the TLC will deliver around 55.2MB/s.

 

 

 

For a more real-life usage situation, we have transferred no less than 164GB of files from our OCZ Vector SSD (the files were both big and small) and before the end we have seen that the write speed has been stabilized at about 81.7MB/s.

 

As we have seen from the test results, the BX200 is able to sustain transfer rates a tad higher than the Trion 100, but it falls behind when the SLC portion is filled up.

 

BX200 is available in three flavors: 240GB, 480GB and also 960GB; while the 240GB is available online for about 64 Euros, the 480GB version can be picked up for about 118 Euros, while the 960GB variant can be bought for about 240 Euros.

 

Crucial 480GB BX200 TLC SSD is Recommended For:

 

We would like to thank again to Crucial for making this review possible!