At first we would like to thank Crucial for sending a sample of their MX500 4TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-inch 7mm 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 4TB 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 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

Backed by thousands of hours of pre-release validation, dozens of 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 MX500 SSDs 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.

 

Product Specifications:

 

General tech specs

Interface: SATA (6Gb/s)

SSD Endurance (TBW): 1,000TB

Form factor: 2.5-inch (7mm)

SSD series: MX500

Capacity: 4TB

 

Speed & timing

Sequential Read: 560 MB/s

Sequential Write: 510 MB/s

 

Warranty & returns

Warranty: Limited 5-year

 

After checking out the 250GB M.2 2280, 500GB SATA and 1TB SATA MX500 series, it is time to take a look at the highest capacity offering, the 4TB SATA model from Crucial. This SKU comes with a speed rating of 560MB/s regarding reads and 510MB/s when talking about writes, the form factor is 7mm 2.5-inch and also includes an adapter for older systems.

 

The drive is shipped inside a compact cardboard enclosure, with the usual Crucial box art; in the frontal area we will note the manufacturer mentions the total drive capacity, but also the product name:

 

 

 

On the back, we will be informed that the drive is backed by a free Data Transfer Software from Acronis, which is downloadable from Crucial’s website, the fact that an installation guide is included, and that the firmware is user-upgradable. Through a small cut-out we will spot the current drive firmware version, but also a QR code:

 

 

 

The drive is secured inside via a transparent plastic enclosure:

 

 

 

Besides the drive, we will receive the adapter and a small leaflet:

 

 

 

The 9.5mm adapter can be easily installed since it is provided with adhesive:

 

 

 

 

The leaflet does include instructions on how to get to the online resources:

 

 

 

Unlike many other 2.5’’ drives we have reviewed before, which have had a plastic chassis for cost reduction purposes, this one is from aluminum; the top area comes with a large MX brand sticker:

 

 

 

On the bottom plate, we will note a smaller sticker, with includes lots of information such as the product internal code name, the serial number, the supported bus, the total capacity, firmware version and more!

 

 

 

The SATA Data/Power connectors are also available here:

 

 

Two small screws are placed on each side, which hold the chassis together:

 

 

 

After removing the top cover, we will learn that the drive PCB is quite small, occupying less than half o the total space; this is held secure with two additional screws on the bottom plate:

 

 

 

We have removed the board from the plate and discovered two small thermal pads, which assist with heat dissipation:

 

 

 

The top area of the PCB does come with the controller, the DRAM cache but also two NAND ICs:

 

 

 

The Silicon Motion SM2259 is a quad-channel controller meant for cost-effective storage solutions, with a single core and built on a 40nm process:

 

 

 

The DRAM cache is a Micron D9SHD IC, with an operating frequency of 1866MHz (DDR3) and a capacity of 512MB:

 

 

 

The NAND ICs do carry the NY135 code name and are B47R FortisFlash from Micron; to be more exact, we are talking about 176-layer TLC chips:

 

 

 

On the back side of the PCB, we will note the remaining two NAND Flash chips:

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

In order to continue with the second stage of the tests, we needed to fill up the drive over 50%, while writing continuously to it. In IDLE, the drive has reported excellent temperatures:

 

 

 

The starting write speed was good as well:

 

 

 

After writing about 130GB, the speed remained about the same:

 

 

 

The controller temperature reached 42 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

433GB written and we still got good transfer speeds:

 

 

 

The controller temp has reached 46 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

After having written about 600GB, the transfer speed has lowered to about 330-350MB/s:

 

 

 

The controller temperature dropped a bit during this stage:

 

 

 

After a while, the speed has recovered:

 

 

 

The controller temp has jumped to 45 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

Even after writing about 2TB of data, the speed rarely dropped under 400MB/s:

 

 

 

The maximum controller temperature we have noted was 46 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

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

 

 

After checking the performance of the Crucial MX500 4TB, we can clearly note that it works best as a secondary storage device, where speed is less of a priority, but the user will mainly be more interested in price per GB. The drive succeeds to maintain a rather high transfer speed even after the pSLC cache has been filled up thanks to the 176-layer TLC ICs, but also the DRAM for caching purposes. The use of TLC does also enhance the overall durability, the drive being guaranteed for 1PB of total writes during its lifetime.

 

The HD Tune write workload does show how the drive can maintain a sustain write speed, drop a bit when the pSLC gets filled up and then recover quite quickly:

 

 

 

We did really appreciate that Crucial did continue to use an aluminum chassis for this particular model, paired with small heat pads in order to keep the temperature load on the controller, but also the frontal NAND ICs, and this really shows, the drive never exceeding 46 degrees after writing more than 2TB of data continuously to it.

 

The drive has had a recent drop in price lately, being available for about 190 Euros, being one of the least expensive TLC SATA drives on the market.

 

Crucial MX500 4TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-inch 7mm SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

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