At first we would like to thank Crucial for sending a sample of their MX500 500GB 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:

 

Fly through everything you do

Start your system in seconds, load files almost instantly, and accelerate the most demanding applications with the Crucial MX500. Our Dynamic Write Acceleration technology uses an adaptable pool of high-speed, single-level cell flash memory to generate blistering speeds.

 

Store up to 2TB of data

Save massive amounts of photos, music, and videos comfortably and securely. With fast access to your media, creations, and designs, you’re ready to share at the speed of your life.

 

Enjoy the efficiency of next-gen Micron® 3D NAND

Our cutting-edge components are engineered from start to finish for efficiency. As a result, the Crucial MX500 uses only a minimal amount of power and still delivers a high price-to-performance ratio – without needing a financing plan to pay for it. Experience a faster, cooler, and quieter computer in your home or business. You’ll wonder how you ever put up with a hard drive.

 

Upgrade with a drive you can count on

With thousands of hours of pre-release validation, dozens of SSD qualification tests, and a heritage of award-winning SSDs, the Crucial MX500 has been thoroughly tried, tested, and proven. Secure your most important files on a drive with established dependability and the advanced features MX-series SSD's are known for.

 

Install with confidence

For many people, opening a computer and transferring data seems terrifying. That’s why we’ve made it easy in the step-by-step Crucial SSD Install Guide. Check it out before you buy, then install your own SSD quickly with everything transferred over successfully and hassle-free.

 

Micron® quality – a higher level of reliability.

As a brand of Micron, one of the largest flash storage manufacturers in the world, the Crucial MX500 is backed by the same quality and engineering innovation that has produced some of the world’s most advanced memory and storage technologies for more than 35 years. Split-second speeds, lasting reliability, and a decades-long legacy – upgrading with the Crucial MX500 gives you the best combination of quality, performance, and security. It’s worth it.

 

Product Specifications:

 

 

Micron is ready with a new SSD model, the Crucial MX500, which is available with 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities; it uses a Silicon Motion SM2258 4-channel controller, while the NAND packages are 256Gb 64-layer 3D TLC; the drive also comes with full self-encryption (TCG Opal) and partial protection to power loss. The product is shipped inside a small cardboard enclosure, which retains the box art from the previous models; the top cover does also retain the total storage capacity of the received sample:

 

 

 

Some of the product highlights are represented by Micron on the back, along with the serial number and product code name:

 

 

 

A small product guide can be found right after unsealing the enclosure:

 

 

 

Inside it, Micron does also give the user information about online resources:

 

 

 

Moving forward, we will get to see the main product, which is placed inside a black plastic mold:

 

 

 

Since the drive features a 7mm height, the manufacturer has also included a 7mm to 9.5mm spacer to help with compatibility:

 

 

 

Unlike some other low-cost SSDs, the MX500 sports a premium look, by having an all-aluminum enclosure; on the top cover, Micron has placed a large sticker, representing the product logo:

 

 

 

The bottom layer does include an additional sticker with more details such as the internal product codes, the serial number, the supported bus, power rating, the currently installed firmware but also the drive capacity:

 

 

 

The two aluminum enclosure parts are kept together with screws:

 

 

 

On the back, the drive does also hold the usual SATA Data/Power golden connectors:

 

 

 

After removing the four screws, we will be able to easily check out the drive internals:

 

 

 

The 500GB version of the MX500 does hold no less than eight NAND ICs, along with a cache RAM package, but also the controller:

 

 

 

Each 64-layer V-NAND package comes with the 7XA22 NW925 code name:

 

 

 

The included DRAM chip is also manufactured by Micron and holds the D9SHD code name; we are talking about a 512MB of buffer on the 500GB MX500 version:

 

 

 

The SM2258 4-channel controller does also feature SLC caching algorithms in order to get sustained performance from the packages; it is covered by a thermal pad in order to have a better heat dissipation:

 

 

 

Test Bench:

 CPU: Intel I5 4690K Retail @ 4.6GHz

 CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX

 Motherboard: BIOSTAR Z97X Gaming

 RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 4x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)

 Video: HIS RX 460 Slim-iCooler OC 2GB

 Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W

 SSDs: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB + OCZ Vertex 460

 Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840

 

The drive has arrived unformatted:

 

 

For testing purposes, we have formatted it NTFS; here is the total remaining free space afterwards:

 

 

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

 

Micron has also designed an easy to use application for managing your Crucial storage drives; the main menus are placed on the left side, while on the right we do have the details; the System Information tab does show the current occupation of system resources, but will also list details of the installed drives (even if not all are manufactured by Micron). From this screen, we can also perform drive firmware updates:

 

 

 

In-depth details can be checked out from the next section, such as drive usage, current temperature, SN, total bytes written, drive version, firmware version and more!

 

 

 

The S.M.A.R.T. information screen is next:

 

 

 

If newer firmware updates are available for the drive, we can perform different actions in the dedicated section; if the current computer does not have a live Internet connection, we can perform the update anyways by providing the offline firmware update package:

 

 

 

Drive sanitization can be performed in order to safely erase all data:

 

 

 

The PSID Revert option will help return the SSD to its original state if it has been TCG-enabled with a drive password:

 

 

 

Momentum Cache does help boosting the transfer speeds by allowing the user to use up to 25% of the available system memory:

 

 

 

The Flex Capacity option is available only on selected Micron-specific lines:

 

 

 

We can also allocate extra space on the drive for the controller to use; this will also mean that features such as Wear Leveling and Garbage Collection will run smoother:

 

 

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Blank SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

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CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

HDTune Test Suite

Blank SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 7

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

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AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

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ATTO Disk Benchmark

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PCMark 8

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The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Filled SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Filled SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

HDTune Test Suite

Filled SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 7

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Filled SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Filled SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Filled SSD

PCMark 8

Filled SSD

 

 

 

Considering the fact that the MX500 SSD does feature TLC NAND packages, we were expecting a sudden performance drop after the buffers have been filled, but fortunately it was not the case! The drive succeeded to maintain write speeds around 320-360MB/s (small-medium file sizes) even after writing a total of 176GB in one go. The 500GB version comes with a TBW of 180TB, while the MTTF is 1.8 million hours. Crucial MX500 does also feature a 5-year warranty period, which is great!

 

The MX500 500GB drive can be found online for just about 118 Euros, which recommends it for most system upgrades and users which need even more storage space can go for either the 1TB (220 Euros) version or the 2TB (437 Euros).

Crucial MX500 500GB SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

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