SSD by stefan @ 2024-06-09
The new T500 2TB mainstream drive from Crucial does integrate a Phison PS5025-E25 controller, 2GB of DDR4-4266 for caching the mapping tables but also two Micron 232-layer 3D TLC NAND modules and is able to sustained a good transfer rate unless the pSLC caching is fully filled.
At first we would like to thank Crucial for sending a sample of their T500 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD with Heatsink for testing and reviewing.
“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.”
Crucial T500 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD with heatsink
Fuel your system performance with the Crucial T500 Gen4 NVMe SSD. Experience faster gaming – perfect for PS5 upgrades. Amp up your creative potential with solid state storage that moves as fast as you need it to. Heavy tasks are no problem with better performance to power efficiency, and our heatsink gives you quiet heat dissipation in a sleek design.
Lightning Gen4 performance from Crucial
Speed up boots, loads, and saves with 7,400/7,000MB/s sequential reads/writes — the Crucial T500 PCle 4.0 NVMe SSD is more than 2x faster than Gen3 SSDs and 12x faster than SATA.
Power up your PS5
As a PS5 diehard, you get faster load times and powerful storage for all your favorite games. With our integrated heatsink and powerful Gen4 engineering, the T500 exceeds PS5 requirements for the ultimate gaming experience.
In-game gains
Store more games with up to 2TB of storage. With Microsoft DirectStorage, render faster and enjoy more detailed game textures.
Performance to power ratio
Get more done in less time with the T500’s power efficiency. With up to a 40% higher performance to power ratio, the Crucial T500 PCle 4.0 NVMe SSD helps keep your computer working faster with less power.
Quick and easy install
Crucial’s online tutorials, how-to guides, videos and free Acronis True Image cloning software help you install your SSD, set it as your boot drive and migrate your data.
General tech specs
Interface: NVMe (PCIe Gen 4 x4)
SSD Endurance (TBW): 1200TB
Form factor: M.2 (2280)
SSD series: T500
Capacity: 2TB
Speed & timing
Sequential Read: 7400 MB/s
Sequential Write: 7000 MB/s
Warranty & returns
Warranty: Limited 5-year
Another mainstream PCIe Gen4 SSD has reached our labs, this time from Crucial and carries the T500 model name. This model is available in two separate SKUs, one only with the drive and also one with an integrated heatsink, for optimal cooling in less than ideal environments. Our sample has arrived with the heatsink version, carrying the CT2000T500SSD5 code name and was shipped inside a compact cardboard enclosure, with the usual Crucial box art:
On the side of the box, we will note the product serial number and code name:
The opposite area does show again the complete name of the product:
The back area includes some of the main product highlights, in multiple languages, but also links to online resources:
After removing the top cardboard cover, we will note that the T500 drive is additionally protected inside a transparent plastic enclosure:
The integrated heatsink looks great and does not add a lot of weight to the drive construction. Underneath, Crucial has installed a Phison PS5025-E25 controller, with a 4-channel design, a dual-CPU architecture with built-in 32-bit microcontroller and built on TSMC’s 12nm process. The caching is assured by a D8CSD Micron DRAM chip, which is a DDR4-4266 component; the NAND is composed of two ICs, Micron 232-layer 3D TLC:
The back side of the PCB is also covered by a metallic frame, and two stickers offer some extra details on the drive, such as the operating voltage, internal code name, serial number, firmware version and more!
Some more documentation is offered in a leaflet format:
The test system did incorporate a AMD Ryzen 5 7900X 12-core CPU, an ANACOMDA Eryx Tataricus RGB 2x16GB DDR5 6000MHz memory kit, but also a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0 2TB SSD as a system drive; 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:
Quick System Drive Benchmark
Blank SSD
Quick System Drive Benchmark
Blank SSD
Blank SSD
Before starting the second stage of the tests, we needed to fill the drive over 50%; during this time, we also monitored transfer rate to check how the caching system does perform. Before writing continuously to the drive, we noted a very good temperature reported by the sensors, about 41 degrees Celsius; the room ambient where the test machine was located measured 26.5 degrees Celsius:
The write workload started at optimal speeds:
We noted a small speed drop to about 3.2GB/s after having written about 205GB of data:
During this time, the temperature was still in very safe margins, at about 50 degrees Celsius:
A sharp speed drop was observed after having written about 695GB of data, which is quite impressive for a mainstream drive! What is not so impressive is the speed the T500 runs with the pSLC caching fully filled; while the initial drop was quite big in terms of performance, the drive quickly recovered but the speed remained under HDD levels, between 50MB/s and 125MB/s:
The maximum temperature we have recorded while testing the drive was 66 degrees Celsius, so we cannot talk about throttling, the integrated cooling system doing an excellent job:
Quick System Drive Benchmark
Filled SSD
Quick System Drive Benchmark
Filled SSD
Filled SSD
Filled SSD
The new T500 2TB mainstream drive from Crucial does integrate a Phison PS5025-E25 controller, 2GB of DDR4-4266 for caching the mapping tables but also two Micron 232-layer 3D TLC NAND modules and is able to sustained a good transfer rate unless the pSLC caching is fully filled. Considering we are talking about TLC NAND, we were surprised to see write rates under 100MB/s, but we need to say in the drive’s favor that this scenario happened after only writing over 690GB, so this should not be taken into account as a negative for most users.
In the HD Tune Writes workload, we could note the intermediary phase the drive passes through before writing directly to the TLC:
In terms of temperatures, the preinstalled heatsink does a really good job, not allowing the drive to throttle, while the low height permits installation in PS5 consoles as well.
For the 2TB model, the durability is good with a rating of 1200TBW, while the drive is also backed by a 5-year warranty.
The T500 is a bit more expensive versus drives based on Maxiotech MAP1602A + YMTC 232-layer NAND which usually integrate much less SLC cache, at about 175 Euros.
We would like to thank again to Crucial for making this review possible!
