Crucial Announces the M550 Series SSDs

[btarunr]

Crucial announced its M550 series of performance SSDs, succeeding its existing M500 series. Built in 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch SATA, mSATA, and M.2 form-factors, the M550 series offers higher sequential transfer rates, and comes in higher capacities near existing price-points, over its predecessor. It also introduces a handful new features, such as NWA (native write acceleration), RAIN (redundant array of independent NAND), adaptive thermal protection (ATP), and hardware encryption. The drives appear to be based on a Marvell-made controller platform, with Micron-made MLC NAND flash. The mSATA 6 Gb/s and M.2 models come in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB; while the 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s models include 1 TB capacity. The drives offer sequential reads as high as 550 MB/s, with up to 500 MB/s of sequential writes. They're backed by 3-year warranties, and should eventually replace the M500 series from their existing price points.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[ZetZet]

When.

 

[Phobia9651]

When.

They're already available in the NL, for as much as € 425 for the 1TB version, which sounds like a sweet deal to me.

 

[TheDeeGee]

They're already available in the NL, for as much as € 425 for the 1TB version, which sounds like a sweet deal to me.

That's a steal if you ask me.

 

[xaira]

i dont get m.2 ssds, msata is so neat, everything should just use msata if it needs a small ssd, yes m.2 is faster, but why couldnt it have kept the same height as msata

 

[zinfinion]

i dont get m.2 ssds, msata is so neat, everything should just use msata if it needs a small ssd, yes m.2 is faster, but why couldnt it have kept the same height as msata

mSATA has a single form factor. M.2 has multiple form factors which gives manufacturers/integrators more flexibility.

The smallest form factor of M.2 is actually quite a bit smaller than mSATA in all dimensions (height/width/depth), so if physical size is a concern, then M.2 is actually the superior option.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6293/...end-to-proprietary-ultrabook-ssd-form-factors

 

[Jorge]

The real performance gains are in PCIe SSDs.

 

[Hood]

When.

Right now on NewEgg - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148793 - 1TB for $519 - sweet! They're going after the Evo...

 

[buggalugs]

Right now on NewEgg - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148793 - 1TB for $519 - sweet! They're going after the Evo...

I'm in the market for a 1TB SSD, Looking at the M500 or EVO but now I have another option.

 

[Hood]

I'm in the market for a 1TB SSD, Looking at the M500 or EVO but now I have another option.

Looks like the TB war has begun, prices can only go down. I'm curious about how you plan to use that much SSD space. I use less than 30 GB on my 128 boot drive with all programs installed (games are installed on another 128 SSD). Unless I wanted to install a ton of large games, I would only be using the 1 TB SSD for storage, which seems like a waste of money. Sweet rig you built, by the way, very similar to what I'd build if I didn't already have a decent Ivy system. But if I had your system and $500 to blow, I'd be looking at a 780 or 780 Ti before I made the move to all SSD storage.

 

[Phobia9651]

Looks like the TB war has begun, prices can only go down. I'm curious about how you plan to use that much SSD space. I use less than 30 GB on my 128 boot drive with all programs installed (games are installed on another 128 SSD). Unless I wanted to install a ton of large games, I would only be using the 1 TB SSD for storage, which seems like a waste of money. Sweet rig you built, by the way, very similar to what I'd build if I didn't already have a decent Ivy system. But if I had your system and $500 to blow, I'd be looking at a 780 or 780 Ti before I made the move to all SSD storage.

I'm glad I got a 512GB SSD, my games folder is already 289GB, add to that things like Photoshop, Unity, Visual Studio, etc. and you certainly need that much space.