Crucial is one of the biggest player in the SSD market, thanks to their ability to use their own NAND chips, which are manufactured by their parent company Micron. The Crucial BX500 SSD was announced just a few weeks ago, and everybody expected it to use the new QLC flash technology.
This isn’t the case though. The Crucial BX500 is built around Micron TLC flash, and a Silicon Motion SM2258 controller in the XT variant.
BX500’s special feature is that it does not use a DRAM chip, which reduces component cost significantly, to reach new price points that were previously impossible, even with TLC-based SSDs. Of course the lack of DRAM comes with a performance hit, but since BX500 is targeted at a market where every dollar counts, this shouldn’t be much of an issue for consumers looking for an affordable entry-level SSD that will deliver better performance than any HDD out there. For more demanding users, Crucial has the MX500 in their lineup, which is our favorite when you’re looking for a good mix of price and performance.
The BX500 comes in capacities of 120 GB ($29), 240 GB ($48) and 480 GB ($80), which is the version we are covering in our review today. Warranty is set to three years for all these models.
We recently reviewed the Mushkin Source, which is a similar design: competitively priced, using the same controller and no DRAM, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Crucial BX500 does against that.
| Specifications: Crucial BX500 480 GB | |
|---|---|
| Brand: | Crucial |
| Model: | CT480BX500SSD1 |
| Controller: | Silicon Motion SM2258 XT |
| Flash: | Micron 3D TLC MT29F1T08EMHAFJ4 (NW913) |
| Endurance: | 120 TBW (total bytes written) |
| Form Factor: | SATA 2.5″ |
| Thickness: | 7 mm |
| Capacity: | 480 GB (447.1 GB usable) 32 GB additional overprovisioning |
| Interface: | SATA 6 Gbps |
| Device ID: | CT480BX500SSD1 |
| Firmware: | M6CR013 |
| Warranty: | 3 years |
