At a look

Expert’s Rating

Pros

• Excellent PCIe 4.0 efficiency
• Very reasonably priced for an NVMe SSD with DRAM
• Up to 2TB of capability
• Available with low-profile heatsink

Cons

• Very gradual when secondary cache runs out
• 600TBW-per-1TB score is merely common

Our Verdict

The T500 is among the quickest PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs I’ve examined. It’s reasonably priced for its ilk and obtainable with a low-profile heatsink for one more $10.

Price When Reviewed

500GB: $90 I 1TB: $120 I 2TB: $170

Best Prices Today: Crucial T500 NVMe SSD

Crucial is at it once more, delivering a PCIe 4 NVMe SSD with glorious efficiency at an reasonably priced worth level. Of course, it’s not the equal of the PCIe 5.0 T700, however it’s extremely aggressive with the most effective of the PCIe 4.0 SSDs that I’ve examined.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs to find out about competing merchandise.

What are the Crucial T500’s predominant options?

The T500 is a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2, 2280 (22mm extensive, 80mm lengthy) NVMe SSD using a Phison PS5025-E25 controller and 232-layer Micron TLC (Triple-Level Cell) NAND. It additionally employs 1GB of DRAM per terabyte of capability for main caching duties.

We’ve seen quite a lot of good-performing HMB (Host Memory Buffer) SSDs not too long ago, however they’ll’t match DRAM cache for the quickest random entry and 4K efficiency. Translation: DRAM makes your working system livelier.

How a lot does the Crucial T500 value?

The T500 is out there in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities for $90, $120, and $170, respectively. That’s with a easy warmth spreader. A bigger, low-profile heatsink is out there with the 1TB and 2TB fashions, which raises these costs $10, to $130 and $180.

Jon L. Jacobi

How lengthy is the T500 guarantee?

Crucial warranties the drive in opposition to failure for 5 years, or 600TBW (terabytes that may be written) per terabyte of capability. That is, the drive permits you to write as much as 600 terabytes for each 1TB of NAND with none drop in capability, or going into read-only mode because of cells carrying out.

How quick is the Crucial T500?

Short reply: The Crucial T500 may be very quick. It didn’t fairly match the wonderful Solidigm P44 Pro general, however it wasn’t far behind and bested that rival in a number of particular person exams.

Note that the Solidigm P44 Pro and Kingston Fury Renegade are each PCIe 4.0 SSDs with DRAM cache. The Lexar NM790 proven on the charts beneath is the quickest of the host reminiscence buffer (HMB) drives I’ve examined.

The T500 carried by its glorious CrystalDiskMark 8 efficiency within the 4K exams.

The T500 did fairly effectively with our real-world 48GB transfers (proven beneath), solely really falling off the tempo of the Solidigm and Lexar NM970 in writing the 48GB group of smaller information and folders.

The T500 truly set a brand new document (even besting PCIe 5.0 varieties) in our 450GB write; nonetheless, that’s to not say the drive is the most effective we’ve seen at sustained writes. Writing one other 500GB to the drive exhausted its secondary cache and the pace dropped to lower than 150MBps solely about 100MB into the method.

After a while off, the drive recovered properly, and regardless of having solely round 200MB of capability left on the 2TB drive, it wrote one other 48GB at over 3GBps. Put one other method, you’ll be able to’t write greater than 600MB earlier than write speeds drop, however the drive will nonetheless carry out effectively even when practically full. Obviously, the slowdown will happen sooner on the 1TB mannequin.

Should you purchase the Crucial T500?

If you need glorious PCIe 4.0 efficiency at a great worth, the T500 needs to be in your tire-kicking checklist. And due to the onboard DRAM and its fast random efficiency, it’s additionally an important drive to run your working system off of.

How we take a look at

Internal drive exams at present make the most of Windows 11, 64-bit working on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence complete). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch exams make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking over 58GB of the 64GB of complete reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB which additionally runs the OS.

Each take a look at is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency will lower because of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we have been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can fluctuate by capability because of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND obtainable for secondary caching. Vendors additionally sometimes swap parts. If you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.