At first we would like to thank Crucial for sending a sample of their P3 4TB M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 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:

 

Affordable performance

Upgrade your PC with the performance it needs at a price you want. The Crucial P3 NVMe SSD delivers load times and data transfers that are 6x faster than SATA drives and 22x faster than HDDs.

 

Generous storage

With generous capacities up to 4TB3, the Crucial P3 can hold massive amounts of files, documents, photos, videos, games, and apps, with room to spare.

 

High-quality innovation

Crucial P3 NVMe SSDs are built with high-quality Micron Advanced 3D NAND, tested, and validated to the exacting standards you’ve come to expect from one of the world’s largest manufacturers of flash memory. Want proof? Go check out our award-winning line of SSDs.

 

Optimized security

SSD management software for performance optimization and firmware updates give the Crucial P3 everything you need for security and peace of mind.

 

Ongoing support

We’ve got your back! Crucial offers everything you need to get started and maintain optimal SSD performance.

 

One of the largest memory and storage manufacturers worldwide

Micron has been producing some of the world's most advanced memory and storage technologies for more than 40 years. All Crucial products are developed by Micron’s world-class engineering team to ensure best-in-class quality and reliability.

 

Product Specifications:

 

General tech specs

SSD series: P3

Interface: NVMe (PCIe Gen 3 x4)

Capacity: 4TB

Form factor: M.2 (2280)

SSD Endurance (TBW): 800TB

 

Speed & timing

Sequential Read: 3,500 MB/s

Sequential Write: 3,000 MB/s

 

Warranty & returns

Warranty: Limited 5-year

 

After trying out the 2TB version of the P3 SSD from Crucial, it is now time to also look at the 4TB model, especially now when prices have come down significantly. To be more exact, the P3 we have previously reviewed has went down from 169 Euros (at the time of the review) to just about 103 Euros, while the 4TB can be now had for about 206.71 Euros, so a great time to buy high-capacity Solid State Drives!

 

The drive is shipped inside a compact, cardboard enclosure which is like the one we have seen with the previous SKU; the frontal side does show the rated read speed as well:

 

 

 

On the back side, we are reminded of the Acronis Data Transfer software, the fact that we will find inside an installation guide, but also the drive can have its firmware upgraded. The P3 4TB comes with a 5-year limited warranty and a small cut-out does reveal a QR code present directly on the drive:

 

 

 

Besides the documentation, we will also note that the drive does sit inside a transparent plastic mold, and we will also receive a free mounting screw!

 

 

 

The document will point the user out to different online resources, in multiple languages:

 

 

 

The top area of the drive is covered by a large sticker, which does reveal the full name of the drive, but also includes the Crucial logo:

 

 

 

On the back, we will note a secondary sticker, with the supported bus, the power rating, the internal code name and serial number, the firmware and more!

 

 

 

The top sticker can be easily removed to reveal a central controller, but also four NAND ICs; there is no DRAM cache present on the PCB:

 

 

 

For the controller, we do have a Phison PS5021-E21T, which incorporates an ARM 32-bit Cortex-R5 architecture with a single CPU. For caching purposes, it does use HMB (Host Memory Buffer):

 

 

 

The NAND chips do carry the 3CC27 NY166 inscription, which are Micron 3D QLC NAND (176-layer N48R FortisFlash) with 1TB capacity each:

 

 

 

Test Bench:

The test system did incorporate a AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 6-core CPU, a Sabrent Rocket 2x16GB DDR5 4800MHz C40 memory kit, a PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 5700 video card but also a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0 2TB SSD; all these were connected to the BIOSTAR X670E VALKYRIE AM5 motherboard. As a power supply we have chosen a Cooler Master 850W non-modular and the system was running the latest Windows 11 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

 

HDTach Short Test

Blank SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Blank SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 8

 

HDTune Test Suite

Blank SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 7

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Blank SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Blank SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Blank SSD

CrystalDiskMark

Blank SSD

 

 

 

For continuing with the second test stage, we have had to fill the drive of 50%, while writing continuously to it. The process was monitored carefully, to check out the pseudo-SLC cache behavior as well. The P3 does have reports from two separate sensors, so we can note both NAND and controller temperatures at the same time!

 

 

 

The write speed started at optimal levels:

 

 

 

The controller temp reached about 64 degrees Celsius, while the NAND remained cool at about 48 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

250GB of written data, and we still got good write speeds:

 

 

 

The controller has reached about 69 degrees, while the NAND raised the temperature to about 53:

 

 

 

After 782GB of written data, the drive did still perform admirably:

 

 

 

We noted a 74 degrees Celsius temperature for the controller and 58 degrees for the NAND:

 

 

 

The speed has dropped sharply after writing 1048GB and even if the Windows 11 speed indicator dialog was showing a locked progress, Task Manager was more accurate and displayed the real picture:

 

 

 

 

Till the drive became half-full, the transfer speed remained between 85 and 95MB/s, since the pSLC caching was fully filled; we noted that even under maximum stress, the controller temperature did not pass over 76 degrees Celsius, while the NAND remained at a safe 63 degrees temperature:

 

 

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Filled SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Filled SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 8

 

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

CrystalDiskMark

Filled SSD

 

 

The 4TB variant of the P3 SSD from Crucial is a DRAMless design sporting the Phison PS5021-E21T controller but also four ICs of Micron’s 3D QLC NAND (176-layer N48R FortisFlash), double density this time versus the 2TB SKU. The quantity of pseudo-SLC cache has doubled, hence the speed drop after writing about 1TB, which is excellent for a mainstream drive! The drive temperatures remain decent even in the most stressful environments, so we won’t argue installing it in a laptop to get a combination of good speed and great capacity!

 

The SSD endurance is now 800TB, we get a 5-year limited warranty from the manufacturer, the Acronis Drive Clone software can be used for transferring data from older drives, while the Crucial Storage Executive application will monitor the drive health.

 

In the HD Tune Pro write workload, it is shown how the pSLC cache can help the SSD maintain a steady write state:

 

 

 

At the current state, with the P3 4TB being available for just about 206 Euros, we can say that this paves the way for home computers which won’t feature HDDs anymore, which is not a bad thing at all, since we can obtain completely silent systems and lack of vibration, especially in miniPCs which are entirely passively cooled!

Crucial P3 4TB M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

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