Crucial T500 2 TB

[W1zzard]

Crucial's T500 SSD comes at competitive pricing and still includes a preinstalled heatsink and a dedicated DRAM cache chip. It sees strong competition from drives like the Lexar NM790 which are similarly priced, but offer slightly higher performance.

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[kapone32]

The Corsair MP700 is about $10 cheaper than this for the 2Tb version. Looking at most tests it would seem that the best valued SSDs are the Kingston NV2 (still) and the MP 700 for performance.

 

[mechtech]

A good step up on the P5/P5+ I was looking at a 2TB one, but it was $230 cad, and the KC3000 was on sale for $180 cad. So went with the KC3000. On my shortlist of drives though.

 

[Chrispy_]

Yeah, SSD pricing is all over the place, regionally and fluctuates dramatically per region, too.

All we can do is hope a decent review site like TPU has included the models you're looking at so you can assess whether they're worth the current asking price. For a long time here in the UK the KC3000 was double the price of the venerable SN770 but all of a sudden it's on sale for less than the SN770. Likewise, the SN580 is a fine budget drive but is often more expensive than an SN770 despite literally being a cut-down SN770. The SN850X and P5 Plus were always priced terribly but just before the end of 2023 both models seemed to go on flash sale from multiple retailers so I picked up plenty of them.

Pricing of NAND drives makes no sense. That's why we have reviews, thankfully.

 

[Hardcore Games]

Competitive SSD prices are making 2TB rather limited as 4TB models start becoming more common.

 

[Panyamin]

Thanks for this review, I was waiting for it! I was looking for this SSD because this new series replaces the P5 Plus series. I will definitely buy it!

 

[QUANTUMPHYSICS]

I'm so happy to see 2TB and 4TB SSD drop in price so significantly. My next build is gonna have a 4TB main drive. Waiting for the 15900 and new motherboards. 5090 with AIO as well.

 

[vbq7qK68eyYAH4iR]

@W1zzard Any chance of creating an interactive system to compare all the drives you've reviewed, like Anandtech's bench, but current and up to date?

 

[Chrispy_]

@W1zzard Any chance of creating an interactive system to compare all the drives you've reviewed, like Anandtech's bench, but current and up to date?

Bench is dead not just because Anandtech is basically dead now, but also because testing methodologies and changes in storage mean that numbers wouldn't be comparable.

You've got things like HMB, active cooling requirements for newer drives, PCIe versions, Changes to OS over the last decade or so.

The good thing about TPU is at least W1zzard keeps the test platforms around for a good while which means the comparison charts in every review tend to have a huge selection of drives, and you can gauge approximate performance of unlisted drives by looking at the controller and NAND combination instead - those are fairly consistent for most of the field.

 

[W1zzard]

@W1zzard Any chance of creating an interactive system to compare all the drives you've reviewed, like Anandtech's bench, but current and up to date?

These are the last reviews before i switch to a new ssd test system, z790 dark hero, updated apps, new apps, new games etc. i will make sure to include 20 comparison drives though

 

[SundayOverclocker]

What has happened to TLC endurance? Why is the TBW on these modern lower end SSDs the same or nearly the same as QLC?

 

[Chrispy_]

What has happened to TLC endurance? Why is the TBW on these modern lower end SSDs the same or nearly the same as QLC?

It's a valid question and I don't know for sure but I can guess; Back in the early days, drives were measured in PE cycles, and it was 100000 for SLC, 10000 for MLC, and 3000 for TLC.

The problem with that metric is that it doesn't factor in write-amplification which is a stat no longer measured or published, Additionally, all of those metrics were for planar NAND on much larger process nodes. These days with densely-packed, 200+ layers, and much smaller transistor gates, presumably those old numbers for planar NAND are way off.

 

[Ruru]

Nice to see that there's a reasonable priced drive with a DRAM cache for a while. Also the price premium for a heatsink model isn't that bad.

 

[SundayOverclocker]

These days with densely-packed, 200+ layers, and much smaller transistor gates, presumably those old numbers for planar NAND are way off.

That's fair, endurance did get lower over time due to smaller nodes and dense packing, but shouldn't there be about 2x difference between TLC and QLC of comparable process nodes? 500 TBW for a 2 TB model is QLC level. And most inexpensive TLC drives right now still have 1000-1200 TBW typical, but this number seems to be going down over time.
P. S. I remember that in 2019-2020 typical TBW for 2 TB was 2000+, and those drives were more expensive than many 2 TBs today, but not by a lot.

 

[Chrispy_]

That's fair, endurance did get lower over time due to smaller nodes and dense packing, but shouldn't there be about 2x difference between TLC and QLC of comparable process nodes? 500 TBW for a 2 TB model is QLC level. And most inexpensive TLC drives right now still have 1000-1200 TBW typical, but this number seems to be going down over time.
P. S. I remember that in 2019-2020 typical TBW for 2 TB was 2000+, and those drives were more expensive than many 2 TBs today, but not by a lot.

Where are you seeing 500TBW for a 2TB, or are you just talking about the cheapest QLC drives in general?

This 2TB T500 is rated to 1.2PB, so 2.4x difference between it and typical QLC endurance.

 

[SundayOverclocker]

Apologies, my brain malfunctioned after looking at too many SSDs yesterday. Indeed, 1200 is the new norm, and I was asking why only a few years ago it was 2000-2500 and sometimes even 3300 for $240 models, and you more or less explained that. Now it's 1200 TBW at $110 (or sometimes even 90), so it's fair enough.

 

[Chrispy_]

There's definitely this huge, unanswered discrepancy between what NAND used to be able to do and what manufacturers are rating their drives for today.

Endurance of about 600TBW per TB of capacity is only 600 drive fills, which is a far shout from the (outdated) ~3000 PE cycles. Sure, there's wear-levelling and write amplification, but I didn't think it was anywhere approaching a factor of 5. Ancient, dated Sandforce drives were boasting about how their write amplification was half of intel's 1.1x at 1.05x. What went so wrong with NAND that endurance has reduced to 1/5th of what it used to be? My only guess is that voltage drift is now an issue, something Samsung found out the hard way with their 840-series, and now all vendors have to frequently re-write data which uses up PE cycles invisibly.

It would be great to get a manufacturer's reasoning behind endurance, PE cycles of current-gen NAND, and why endurance per TB has fallen so dramatically.

 

[R-T-B]

These days with densely-packed, 200+ layers, and much smaller transistor gates

The gates are actually larger. They are using bigger processes than the planar days, thanks to 3d nand layering.

 

[Chrispy_]

The gates are actually larger. They are using bigger processes than the planar days, thanks to 3d nand layering.

Are you 100% sure that the gates haven't shrunk again?

I know diminishing returns on gate size was why NAND manufacturers switched to 3D layering, starting with Samsung - but that doesn't mean they haven't also reverted to shrinking things in the 12 years since 3D NAND went mainstream. When you have a 3D solution, adding more layers is a linear increase, shrinking gates is an exponential increase. I very much doubt they were able to avoid the temptation in the hunt for better cost/TB to manufacture NAND storage.

 

[R-T-B]

Are you 100% sure that the gates haven't shrunk again?

No, not certain, but I'd be surprised if they needed that given the per chip capacity hasn't risen enough to justify it, especially considering the layer increases.

 

[shaolin95]

Why are the results here so underwhealming compared to other pro reviewers I have seen?
Usually this is likt near the top for gen 4 drives in most areas yet here is usually more like above average