At first we would like to thank Crucial for sending a sample of their P5 Plus 1TB PCIe M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 Gaming 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:

 

Proven Performance

When performance and reliability are critical, build your rig with our Micron Advanced NAND and PCIe® 4.0 NVMe™ technology. Our Crucial P5 Plus is nearly 2x4 faster than our previous generation and boasts read speeds up to 6600MB/s. The P5 Plus is developed, manufactured, and tested with Micron for end-to-end quality you can trust.

Get More Done

With cutting-edge technology and stability, the P5 Plus is perfect for intensive uses like gaming, video editing, content creation, and demanding engineering applications.

Interoperability

The P5 Plus offers flexibility. Whether you need an SSD for a Gen3 system upgrade or a new Gen4 build, the P5 Plus is compatible with both. Experience faster boot ups, apps that open in seconds, and games that load as soon as you're ready to play.

Fully Loaded

Combine performance and durability with the advanced features of our P5 Plus, including industry-leading NAND, innovative controller technology, adaptive thermal protection, dynamic write acceleration, error correction, and encryption capability. All Crucial SSDs also come with our Storage Executive and free cloning software.

Works with PS5™

By installing a P5 Plus with a heatsink in the empty M.2 upgrade slot, PlayStation™ 5 players can expand storage for their game library and quickly run the hottest titles directly from the drive.

 

Product Specifications:

 

SSD series - P5 Plus

Interface - NVMe (PCIe Gen 4 x4)

Capacity - 1TB

Form factor - M.2 (2280)

Sequential Read - 6600 MB/s

Sequential Write - 5000 MB/s

SSD Endurance (TBW) - 600TB

Warranty - Limited 5-year

 

After reviewing the 2TB version of the P5 Plus SSD from Crucial which impressed us quite positively, it is now time to look upon the 1TB SKU as well to see what is different besides the capacity. Of course, we are talking about a PCIe 4.0 drive which packs Micron’s 176-layer TLC NAND, with advertised speeds of about 6600MB/s regarding reads in sequential mode, but also about 5000MB/s regarding writes, also in sequential mode. Since we are talking about half of drive capacity, the SSD endurance is now marked at about 600TBW, while the limited warranty remains the same, 5 years.

 

The product is shipped inside a very compact enclosure, with a box art like what we have seen with all P-series. On the frontal area we will note the total capacity of the product as well:

 

 

The back side is used by Crucial to inform us of the Data Transfer Software in order to migrate info from the previous slow SSD/HDD in our machine, the Installation Guide but also the fact that we can use the online resources to download the latest firmware:

 

 

The drive along with a small screw accessory are carefully packed inside a transparent plastic mold; the documentation was placed separately:

 

 

Inside the leaflet, we will get links to online resources:

 

 

On a first look, the P5 Plus 1TB drive looks identical to the 2TB one; no indication of capacity is present on the large sticker which covers the entire PCB, but we will only spot the Crucial logo and name of the drive in white, on a black background:

 

 

 

The situation changes when flipping the drive; here we will note two extra stickers, one of which informs us of the power rating, internal code name, serial number, firmware version, capacity and more!

 

 

 

After removing the top sticker, we will note the proprietary DM02A1 controller by Micron, which was made to natively support PCIe 4.0 (x4), 3D TLC NAND and offers eight channels:

 

 

 

Near the controller we do have a Micron D8BMZ DDR4 cache with a capacity of 1GB:

 

 

 

 

In the vicinity we will also note a power control IC:

 

 

 

The two storage chips are 176-layer 3D TLC NAND, also made by Micron:

 

 

 

Test Bench:

The test system did incorporate a Ryzen 5 5600X 6-core CPU, two Trident Z RGB 3200MHz 8GB memory modules with 16-18-18-38 XMP 2.0 timings, a PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 5700 video card but also a Patriot Memory Viper VP4100 PCIe 4.0 SSD ; all these were connected to the BIOSTAR B550GTA motherboard. As a power supply we have chosen a Cooler Master 850W non-modular and the system was running the latest Windows 10 OS build as well.

The drive has arrived unformatted, but for testing purposes, we have formatted it NTFS:

 

 

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

 

 

 

The Tests

 

3DMark

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

 

HDTune Test Suite

Blank SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

PCMark 10

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

 

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Blank SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Blank SSD

 

Before starting the secondary part of the test, we went ahead and loaded the drive over 50% to see how it behaves. In IDLE mode, the controller temperature was hovering around 48-49 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

The transfer has started at peak speeds:

 

 

 

During this time, the controller temp has started raising:

 

 

 

After transferring more than 130GB, the temperature has reached 67 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

 

After writing about 185GB, the temp got over 70 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

 

The first drop in performance occurred just a few moments later, when having written about 200GB and the temperature of the controller remained at about 71 degrees Celsius, a sign that the drive was struggling with the remaining SLC cache:

 

 

 

 

Surprisingly, the drive did not show more drops after writing about 300GB, but the controller temps got to about 74 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

 

The next drop occurred after writing about 50 more GBs, but the controller temp remained steady:

 

 

 

 

The biggest drop occurred after writing about 450GB, with the speeds hovering between 400 and 500MB/s, but the drive could also recover for a bit in the meantime:

 

 

 

 

Controller temp got as high as 76 degrees Celsius, while the transfer rate finished at about 450MB/s:

 

 

 

The Tests

 

3DMark

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

 

HDTune Test Suite

Filled SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

PCMark 10

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Filled SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Filled SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Filled SSD

 

The P5 Plus packing 1TB of storage is more affordable and comes with the same Micron 176-layer 3D TLC NAND, 1GB of Micron DDR4 cache for storing mapping tables but also Micron’s DM02A1 proprietary controller. It is a single-sided PCIe 4.0 (x4) NVMe 1.3 drive and surprisingly the controller is not overheating (recorded maximum temps of 76 degrees Celsius) in a well-ventilated case, even if no heatsink is applied.

 

If we will install the drive in a case with a less than ideal airflow in the SSD area, such as the PS5, then Crucial does recommend going with the additional heatsink, which can be purchased separately or as a bundle with the drive.

 

In the HD Tune workload, we can clearly see the speed drop sequences, depending on the remaining SLC cache:

 

 

 

Even if the P5 Plus 1TB does not reach the peak speeds of the drives from Neo Forza, the product is still speedy enough to be considered as a boot drive, on a new computer or as an upgrade from an older PCIe 3.0 or SATA drive.

 

While on the Crucial website the drive is listed at about 159.89 Euros at the time of the review, we have noted that it can be had for even less in some stores (129 Euros), a pricing where it begins to be quite attractive for the end user.

 

Crucial P5 Plus 1TB PCIe M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 Gaming SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

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