Crucial MX500 SSD Review | RelaxedTech https://www.relaxedtech.

com/reviews/crucial/mx500/1

Crucial MX500 SSD Review: The

New Go-To Drive For System Builds
Author: HP Date: 9 January 2018

Introduction

Crucial has two consumer SSD lines, the BX series which is their
entry-level line and the MX series which is their mainstream line. The
BX line is a stripped down version of the MX that does not have
features like hardware encryption or dynamic write acceleration. Now,
since the BX series is their entry-level line, you would think that
Crucial would use TLC flash to keep the cost down and use MLC flash
on their MX series but that's not the case here. Entry-level SSDs
typically utilize TLC flash because it is cheaper but a couple of months
ago, Micron released the Crucial BX300 which utilizes MLC flash and
offers excellent performance at an affordable price and it even
outperforms its MX series.

Recently, Crucial expanded its MX line with the addition of the MX500
SSD which is the successor to the Crucial MX300 that was released
about a year and a half ago. The MX500 series range in capacities of
250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB, and come in two form factors: either
2.5” or M.2 but the 2TB version is for the 2.5” form factor only.

Crucial has released the pricing and specifications of all of their

MX500 models and today we are reviewing the MX500 1TB and

2 de 14 10/3/2022 22:23
Crucial MX500 SSD Review | RelaxedTech https://www.relaxedtech.com/reviews/crucial/mx500/1

500GB models which retail for $260 and $140, respectively. The other
modelsReviews
Home come in at $80 for the 250GB and $500 for the 2TB model and
Interviews
they
Termsall& feature a five-year
Conditions Awardslimited warranty.
Twitter Contact Us
Copyright © 2013-2021 RelaxedTech.com. All rights reserved. All trademarks used are properties of their respective
owners.

The MX500 comes with Micron's new 64-layer 3D TLC NAND and
utilizes the Silicon Motion SM2258 four-channel controller backed by
Micron's low-power DDR3 memory. Crucial advertises the MX500
series with sequential read speeds of up to 560 MB/s and sequential
write speeds of up to 510 MB/s for all capacities. Random 4K write
speeds for all capacities is rated for up to 90K IOPS and 95K IOPS for
random 4K read speeds.

Pricing & Endurance

Crucial's 3D-NAND technology is built to endure 100TB (TBW) which
equals to about 54GB per day for 5 years for the 250GB model. The
500GB model can handle up to 180TB (TBW) and 360TB (TBW) for
the 1TB model. This equates to 98GB daily read/write for the 500GB
model and 197GB for the 1TB model for 5 years. The 2TB model on
the other hand can endure up to 700TB (TBW) which equals to about
383GB per day for 5 years.

The main competitor of the Crucial MX500 is the Samsung 850 EVO
which is why Crucial has increased their warranty from 3 years to 5
years to match that of the 850 EVO. Price-wise, the MX500 series are
significantly less expensive than the Samsung 850 EVO series. The
MX500 1TB is about $40 less than the 850 EVO 1TB while the MX500
500GB is roughly $10 cheaper compared to the 850 EVO 500GB.

3 de 14 10/3/2022 22:23
Crucial MX500 SSD Review | RelaxedTech https://www.relaxedtech.com/reviews/crucial/mx500/1

Not only is Micron beating Samsung in price, but in write endurance

too. Samsung's 850 EVO 1TB/500GB can only endure 150TB TBW
(Terabytes Written) while the MX500 1TB more than doubles that with
up to 360TB TBW. Even the MX500 500GB beats the 850 EVO 1TB in
write endurance with up to 180TB (TBW). The difference in write
endurance increases even more if we compare the 2TB model. So we
are looking at up to 700TB for the MX500 2TB compared to 300TB for
the 850 EVO 2TB.

Features
The MX500 supports many advance features such as Thermal
Monitoring technology which dynamically adjusts storage component
activity to help keep your system cool and minimizes the risk of
damage caused by overheating. It also supports Self Monitoring and
Reporting Technology (SMART) which basically is a monitoring
system used to perform an analysis of the drive for problems with the
intent of anticipating hardware failures.

Most SSDs utilize SLC Write Cache to boost write performance which
is normally a fixed SLC cache size but the MX500 uses Dynamic Write
Acceleration (DWA) which dynamically shrinks or grows the SLC
cache size depending on the amount of data stored on the flash.

The Silicon Motion SM2258 controller comes with support for

Opal/TCG encryption which you can use to keep your personal files
and confidential data restricted from hackers and thieves with AES
256-bit encryption. It also supports a new feature called Power-Loss
Immunity which is a built-in feature of the NAND that protects your
data if your system suddenly shuts down.

These are all the advanced features the MX500 supports:

• Dynamic Write Acceleration

• Redundant Array of Independent NAND (RAIN)
• Multistep Data Integrity Algorithm
• Adaptive Thermal Protection
• Active Garbage Collection
• TRIM Support
• Self-Monitoring and Reporting Technology (SMART)
• Error Correction Code (ECC)
• Device Sleep Support

4 de 14 10/3/2022 22:23