![]() ![]() Undercuting most mainstream and some budget SATA drives Crucial seems without worthwhile competition to the MX500. The MX500 is good, almost too good for how it’s priced. Considering that it outperformed it’s SATA bretheren and even gave NVMe drives a run in a few edge cases this makes the MX500 an easy decision if you’re considering 2.5 inch drives. However at the time of this wirting in every segment outside of the 256GB capacity the MX500 is coming in at a price equal to or below any other drive we’ve tested. I’d love to belive that any of these prices will be accurate for more than the next 24 hours however with the holidays being what they are that’s little more than a pipe dream. It even beat out both NVMe drives which looked like they had SATA devices beat outright. That high floor is enough for the MX500 to set a new record for our consistency calculation. It seems that the MX500 sees the floor drop in a few discrete steps while keeping things above 10k iops during it’s stable periods. The initial filling of the drive(possibly aided by SLC cache) dropping to a bi stable operation after a period of time. This scatter plot looks familiar it’s because it’s the operation we’re used to seeing on silicon motion controllers. It does leave the question what the IMFT nand used in the MX500 could do if it wasn’t held back by the use of SATA. The MX500 comes out swinging in AS SSD as well with the only drives holding a real advantage having moved to the NVMe interface. This is a huge improvement over what we saw on the BX300 so lets get to a comparison. ![]() ATTO 3.05Ītto shows a rapid ramp up for the MX500 likely thanks to an SLC caching layer. ![]() With that out of the way let’s see what the MX500 can do. The firmware used here appears related to the BX300 which used the same controller. This is our second glimpse at micron specific firmware on a Silicon Motion controller. What we do see is working TRIM for this drive. SSD-z is still having issues with 3d nand and newer controllers, if someone has an alternative to it(or can contact ) we’re open to suggestions. 64Gb and 128Gb drives are all but gone from the market today. As density increases we see the minimum viable size increase. We should take note that the smallest MX500 listed is 250GB and this may be the last generation for that as well. the MX500 does impress with a 5 year warranty and staggering 700TBW endurance especially on the massive 2TB model. Capacity 250GB 500GB 1TB 2TB Controller SM2258 SM2258 SM2258 SM2258 Firmware M3CR010 NAND Micron 2nd Gen 256Gbit 3d TLC Micron 2nd Gen 256Gbit 3d TLC Micron 2nd Gen 256Gbit 3d TLC Micron 2nd Gen 256Gbit 3d TLC Sequential Read 560 MB/s 560 MB/s 560 MB/s 560 MB/s Sequential Write 510 MB/s 510 MB/s 510 MB/s 510 MB/s 4k Random Read 95,000 IOPS 95,000 IOPS 95,000 IOPS 95,000 IOPS 4k Random Write 90,000 IOPS 90,000 IOPS 90,000 IOPS 90,000 IOPS Temperature range 0-70☌ 0-70☌ 0-70☌ 0-70☌ Dimensions 7mm X 69.85mm X 100.5mm 7mm X 69.85mm X 100.5mm 7mm X 69.85mm X 100.5mm 7mm X 69.85mm X 100.5mm Endurance 100TBW 180TBW 360TBW 700TBW Warranty 5 years 5 years 5 years 5 yearsĪll the performance numbers are where we expect them to be at this point with everything rated at “up to” the interface limit. An aluminum shell and included thermal material should make for an interesting comparison to the last time we saw an SM2258 with TLC in operation in a plastic enclosure. The SM2258 in use here is a four channel controller and this configuration ensures operation in a two die per channel configuration. Although we only have one side populated on the 500GB model the 1TB and 2TB models will use the empty pads. We see a double sided PCB contraining a total of 8 packages. Opening up the drive brings a few suprises. The drive continues to include a 7mm to 9.5mm plastic spacer although I have never seen the utility of this to date. The packaging of the MX500 is in line with what we’re used to seeing with sata SSDs. ![]()
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