Update - 31/10 10:30 (CET): We're currently looking into a potential firmware issue with the T500. Apparently, some others had reported issues with post-SLC performance, mentioning speeds can drop to 300MB/s in sustained writes. Our (two) drives didn't show any issues in the last few weeks we've had them, and part of testing is copying two sets of 500GB to the SSD, which it handled perfectly, three runs in a row. Similarly, PC Mark 10 Consistency pushes close to 30TB through the drive, and it did all those runs perfectly as well. SSDs with poor base level (once pushed through dram/slc cache) performance always show issues there. Update 12/12: First off, sorry it took a while to update on this. We've been extremely busy the last few weeks for various reasons. Crucial has been pushing to discuss the firmware topic since day 1, it's not because of them this took a while. Anyway, we've spoken with them since and talked about what we're seeing and what other reviewers are reporting, and they've been very open in talking about why some of these things are happening. The short version of it is that Crucial decided to push for as much SLC caching and as much "real world" performance as possible, at the cost of worse sustained performance when you dorun out of SLC space. But this really only happens if you don't give the drive a chance to clean up (SLC -> TLC) at all, so you basically have to write 1/3rd of the capacity without any interruptions for you to see that drop. So even when copying two sets of 500GB, with a little break in between, we didn't see that in early testing, and neither did we see that with PC Mark 10 Consistency which does push ~27 TB through the drive (and runs various tests with the drive nearly full), since it has some interruptions which allowed the T500 to clean up. I'm happy we got this cleared up, and they did say they are looking into a possible firmware update in the future to improve post-SLC performance if possible, but if you ask me I really don't think the current situation changes anything for most of you, nor is it even a bad design choice for the majority of SSD buyers who end up with a larger SLC buffer with the T500 than with most other drives. If you really need an SSD just for constant file transfers of 100s of Gigabytes, maybe consider something else, but for everyone else, I stand by my opinion that the T500 is one of the top tier SSDs to consider, especially now that prices in most regions already seems very competitive. Let me know if you have any questions!
In the last 3 years I've needed 6 or 7 SSD's for various builds. Nada has steered me in the right direction every time. No need to look anywhere else for NVME info. Nada is the queen
I am very happy/pleased that Crucial decided to push for as much SLC caching and as much "real world" performance as possible at the cost of worse sustained performance once the SLC space is depleted! That is true performance! I'm tired of seeing "performance" ratings and reviews that have nothing to do with how I, and the greater majority of other users, actually use the drive! When a gen 5 drive runs at 15,000MBps, what good does that do me when it can't even do Q1 random r/w speeds of the best Gen4!
Great review, the information is so clear I don't know a lot about computers but I learn what I need for the new main SSD that I'm looking for. Also I really liked that you explain what the different bench marks are for instead of just throwing graphics and numbers like other channels do And your audio, voice and tone make it so easy to follow because english is not my main language
Great Channel Nada. I give your reviews as much weight as any of the other channels with a million or more subscribers... you deserve more for sure. With regard to the T500 2TB model. I purchased a pair to run in a RAID0 in my 3rd Gen ThreadRipper system as I had already used a pair of 500GB WD SN850's for the very same purpose for two years now. MUCH to my surprise, putting together a 2nd - 3rd Gen ThreadRipper system together (even better MoBo) and the pair of T500 NVMe resulted in no better performance than the OLD SN850 NVMe. I WAS expecting at least a 60 percent improvement and at VERY least 30 percent ... but it amounted to pretty much nothing. Everything triple-checked and up-to-date, clearly Crucial drives are NOT a good candidate for RAID configurations. I'll go to a pair of modern day 2TB SN850x NVMe instead. It seems the pinnacle of the T500 performance IS to use them in single drive mode and make SURE you enable the Performance Cache mode in the Crucial Storage Executive software. FYI, it was not enabled by default and in single NVMe mode, performance was also less than "great".
Interesting. I wonder if it's just raid, or if something is very different on AMD / Threadripper systems? I know some older systems definitely impact SSD performance in general. Curious if the SN850x raid setup is going to perform much better?
Thanks for mentioning their temperatures... Iam looking at this model but 4gb.. Iam owner of older P5plus 1 and 2 tb drives and really like these... After 2 years around 95% in crystal diosc !! Love Micron !! :)
TCG Opal 2.0 encryption appears to be supported as per LinkedIn post by crucial/micron. Another really good review for us, awaiting the launch of T500 at decent pricing in India
Great review, impressive product. I also thought Gen 4 was at its limit but this is a notable improvement. I completely agree with your conclusion that this should be top recommend SSD for nearly everyone assuming pricing will be competitive. That being said, I am a little sad my SN850X lost the Gen 4 gaming crown.
My current pc is about 7 liters and has 2 NVME drives on the motherboard. And a 2Tb SATA drive. The M.2 drives are also 2 Tb but are gen 3 drives. Haven't been tempted to replace those until this review. I think I will definitely be looking at a couple of these early next year. The 4TB versions will be tempting if the price is good. Time to start saving my nickels! Thanks for the excellent review!
I just bought 2 - 2TB T500s for $145.99 each and that is awesome! I love the price to performance this has and it beats almost anything out there! Thanks for the recommendation Nada!
I already what you recommended long back, the Kingston KC3000 . It is an awesome drive. Now I wanted to buy a second drive, and there you are recommending another best. I just know that what you recommend is always the best.👍👍👍
But the price/performance ratio for the KC3000 is much better. KC3000 2TB ~ €103,-, T500 2TB without heatsink ~ €195,- . And the TC500 is not almost twice time faster.
@@alexmercer3001 All new mainboards have a onboard heatsink for min. 1, the better ones for 3 or 4 NVMe SSDs. In a case with normal or good airflow the temps are fine. For a laptop or PS5 the T500 make sense. But in the most laptops, the other components are slower. So you don't need the "fastest" SSD.
Thanks for your review. I bought this to replace an HP FX900 Pro that is on my HP EliteBook 840 G5 due to firmware issues, lack of support, and having 3F0 error.
This is certainly a drive I will be keeping my eye on. Thank you very much for the review, and those speeds and temps are impressive. This would make a nice, fast, boot drive to replace my 512Gb Micron that is still in my system.
All of the comprehensive speed tests are sick, not much about computers is clear to me but I'm looking to save some money buying an enclosure for nvme and understand from experience and watching videos that performance varies depending on workload, or time under consistent use. I have many terabytes of photos to transfer so this is super-informative and great for a noob.
Excellent information yet again, thank you and excellent work. 👍😎 Just a thought, a real world test of actual game loading amongst these M.2 SSDs I think would be very illuminating. Many synthetic tests have always been a little misleading. Generally M.2s with DRAM from the cheapest PCIe 3.0 to the most expensive PCIe 5.0 loading times are within approx. 1s~3s and often
.. Interesting, I didn't realize my Samsung 990 Pro could get so hot?! Although the only stress it really gets is installing and loading my games which lasts for only a matter of seconds.
Just bought a 1TB T500 for $57 and a WED Black SN770 2TB for $86 two weeks ago. Very happy with my setup. 3TB is more than enough for me. And even my secondary drive is more than fast enough. All for $143.
@@joelrosario9407 I know you are US so can't compare to UK pricing but daaaaamn that is very cheap. Just dropped a 2TB for gamwe storage for 130GBP UK which is good here, but you just blew me out of the water 😥
@@grimreaper6352late reply but it was on sale on Amazon. It was weird because the price was simply listed for $57, instead of showing a discount. So I wonder if there was a mistake or something. But it was shipped from Amazon brand new.
I think a deep dive comparing the top 5 best gen 4 SSD’s would be nice, which I think includes Samsung 990 pro, Crucial t500, SN850X, SK Hynix Platinum P41 and lexar nm790. 5 versions with 1TB and 5 versions with 2TB. Focusing on the same things as mentioned here in this video but also efficiency, power consumption and temperature. Most tests and reviews don’t give information on this matter but it is usually is a dealbreaker for laptops which cannot use heatsinks. Another important thing is software support: for example Lexar doesn’t have software support (so if any issues happen with the drive it is unlikely they will give a firmware update) and SK Hynix software is very poorly made and slow, also they have never made a firmware update for SK Hynix Platinum P41. I think these are also important things to mention.
I wish I could take up this recommendation, but I've had 2 failures of crucial ssds and both within their warranty but they did not honour it here in Australia. The first drive died in 3 months, they didn't honour warranty saying that Australia doesn't have a warranty service, and ended up swapping it with an Intel one from the retailer. The second drive died on my birthday 5 months old. Again got the same no Australia warranty, this time opting for a Team group SSD as a replacement from retailer.
I love the way you present, including your voice! In case this matters, I'm going to indulge in semantics: when you speak of SSD speeds and say, "... performant, especially when gaming ...", I wonder if newbs out there took it to mean that, other than game load, map load, and cut scene load times, the actual game performance, frame to frame, etc., barely cares what storage device you are using. So yeah, if you can afford it, get the best. It's what I did. Anyway, this isn't something I'd bring up when we hang out in person. that would be boring. Anyway, thanks for spreading information!
For drive encryption, I would use the OS. Otherwise you could get locked in if there's a drive failure, not to mention no support for storing your keys securely with something like TPM
Indeed. Microsoft has moved away from hardware encryption in Bitlocker because it causes too many problems. Not to mention the garbage implementations that turned out to be insecure time and time again.
It's great news a full speed PCIe 4.0 SSD doesn't need a heatsink anymore. Have you seen the heatsink of the TeamGroup Z540? No matter how well it performs I would never install that monster in my PC.
That looks disgusting. If your SSD needs that then you have a big issue. I doubt it does though, the Phison Gen5 controller SSDs I had were all fine under a small heatsink as well. Off topic. Just unboxed the Z790 Aorus Xtreme X, that comes with an optional heatsink that's comically large.
@TechTesters What offers better real-life speed? One 4TB drive (for OS, apps, games and general data storage) or several "specialized" 2TB drives? Right now I am considering to use 3 drives: 1, Crucial T500 2TB - for OS and light apps 2, Teamgroup Cardea Z540 2TB - for games (ocupying the only Gen.5 slot on the Asrock X670e Steel Legend) 3, Kingston KC3000 2TB - general data storage (movies, family photos and videos, music library, etc.) This may look like an overkill, but I want a setup that should last for many years (saving money today is not a priority). No upgrades are planned until the next big PC upgrade in about 6-8 years.
"real life" you'r not going to notice a difference. But I personally like having my OS and work and games on separate drives anyway. But I'd say get the biggest SSD that still offers good value, and keep the extra slots for future upgrades.
@@TechTesters Thank you very much for your reply. I am sure you are quite busy. I am not a content creator (at least not anymore), so I prefer more speed to more volume. There will be one Gen 4 slot free if I need more storage in the future, or I could buy a big 2,5" SSD or 3,5" HDD. Also, in the future it should be easier to upgrade specialized drives, than having to move all my data at once. Now 2+2TB are still cheaper than a single 4TB (equally fast) drive.
It seems that this is another good ssd from Crucial. I have mx500 (2tb) and p5 plus (2tb) both of them are up to my standard but p5 plus is on a hot side for me. I cannot wait to grab this drive and test it out. . I would love to see a head to head comparison between this t500 and p5 plus with the same capacity. I feel sad that there is no 4tb version of p5 plus.
I have a seperate video on the impact of capacity. a 2TB P5 Plus wouldn't do significantly better than the 1TB one, except maybe a bit in the consistency test. It's not going to come close to this.
Hoping to get those sorted asap. But I understood they just did a huge round of layoffs so I'm not sure how that will develop. SK Hynix models are going to be included soon, I didn't check the Solidigm specs yet but I hear those "P41" models are basically the same?
Thank you for posting this excellent review of the T500 device, and for bringing up the potential firmware issue. I'm impressed with the testing results you are posting and your thoughts on the drive. I too wish the heatsink is removable. Time will tell what develops with the firmware issue. Your continued investigation (as reported in the pinned comment) certainly makes me wonder about the stability of the firmware. I find the product packaging interesting. It appears to be printed in English as the primary language. Is that the standard for computer components in Europe? Or globally? I am American; my only overseas travel experience is with Great Britain, Canada, and the Bahamas. Thank you for this very well tested product review. You certainly put a great deal of time and effort into truly testing the product and reporting your findings. I trust your testing protocols and product recommendations.
Thank you! Here in Holland I mostly just see English boxes. Only some really large retail brands like Logitech I think localize their packaging. As for the firmware, TBC. Seeing how well it does generally, I'm pretty sure it'll be fixed soon.
Honestly, more than speed I'd like to see SSD capacities increase. For so many things I do, a SATA SSD is fast enough for me, but I can't find anything good above 4Tb. IO/random read and write tasks are such a slog on HDDs that I don't want to go that route either .
I ordered T500 2TB over the AMAZON. Received the one with the FW 1.0, contact the CRUCIAL and they send me the new one with the FW 2.0 free of charge the very next day...I can only say well done CRUCIAL --> AMAZING support (very rare these days..)
@@tomasgomez1906 There is only one order code and during the order You will not be able to choose the firmware. Once the product is shipped You will able to check which version did You actually got (just read it from the drive itself): P8CR001 --> FW 1.0 P8CR002 --> FW 2.0 In case You actually got the firmware lower than (P8CR002 --> FW 2.0).. Just contact Cruacial support and they will send You the new drive free of charge (no matter where did You bought it...)... In my case I order it from AMAZON, Crucial send me the new one and left me to keep the one from AMAZON (no return required)..
Price is pretty competitive. This goes on the list for when I move my main machine to linux. Looks like it does do encryption, not sure why they left that bit out on the marketing.
For apples to apples comparison, I really wish your WD Black SN850X was a 2 TB version instead of a 1 TB version. I don't think it's fair to compare the 2 TB T500 to the 1 TB SN850X, as the 2 TB version of the SN850X would probably at be closer (if not better) than the T500.
Congratulations on the video, well done! one question: i have both t500 and sn850x (both 1TB), plus other 2.5" SSDs. In which one should I put the operating system? where would you put heavier software like Lightroom, Premier Pro? and where would you put games instead? Main use is 80% games and 20% various softwares. what to put on the t500 and what on the sn850x? Thank you. 😊
Thank you, ordered this for my PS5 today. I wish there was a 4TB option though. Those thermals and performance are extremely impressive! Edit: Unfortunately this drive sucks for the PS5. Barely get over the minimum speed requirements for the PS5 in the speed test. Which is around 5,500 mb/s when this drive is rated like 7400. For the PS5 I highly recommend sticking to the tried and tested drives like the sn850x, 990 pro, 980 pro etc. I’m very disappointed!
This channel has been so useful! This SSD looks like a no brainer for me BUT, i notice the link in the description is an affiliate link... does this mean that the review could be skewed? or is this channel quite non-partial when it comes to reviews? I'm new to the channel but subbed for the info alone, thanks for the video!
Glad you found it useful! I'd like to think that people can trust me to be impartial, and that my opinions are based on the data and are both reasonable and fair, but in the end that's a decision you'll have to make for yourself. Also remember that links to other drives are in the description as well, even when videos are less positive (unless the product is just outright bad, then I'll refuse to link to it), you just happened to land on a video of an SSD that actually really managed to stand out, which has been rare for Gen4 SSDs in 2023.
I'd love to see how the SN570 2TB model holds up. The 1TB has been falling far behind in the latest comparison charts. But the 2TB model now has the same controller as the SN770 1TB and the same NAND as the SN770 2TB model. I bought one today and triple checked before and after the purchase. Not installed yet. I believe it would still be very close to the SN580 and SN770 in your benchmarks.
I feel it is good to provide non removable heatsink if someone is uncertain they can go with without heat sink but for 2ndry drives i havnt seen boards havjng heatsink and also sony ps5 is great
was looking at the mp34 but to compare the t500 is really affordable at the moment. . . hopefully will get some good life out of it. i still remember to me 40gb being a massive hdd. and now i just brought a near 4000GB hdd. just wow.
These are so cheap at the moment. Found a 1TB T500 for $100AUD, which is $67USD. That’s incredible value. By the way, Nadia, would you pick this over the Sabrent Rocket. This is faster, but is there anything I’m missing? Edit: Never knew it was THAT much faster. Disregard my comment lol. Thanks!
I bought the T500 without the heatsink for my laptop. I'm curious as to what would be an alternative for one, the encryption protection on this drive. Is there a third party that can help with this, perhaps windows bit locker? And secondly, I'm planning on not just gaming but also moving 100s of TB of data for backup. Since i read your T500 firmware issue. And you explained the reason. Which NvME would be a perfect for data moving 100s of TB with consistent speeds?? And not worry about the SLC issue that crucial decided to do. Thank you love your videos. :)
I just purchased the crucial p5 plus 2tb and then I see this and now I’m getting my refund and I’m buying this t500 this a level up from what I was going for.
Goedenavond/good evening, I just went with a Team Group MP44L 2TB m.2 NVME in Thailand, for 2795 thb (approx. 77.65 usd), with relatively good performance and (hopefully) TLC nand flash and a Phison E21T controller. Probably the best bang for the buck here. Could you do a review on Team Group SSDs too? Or aren't they available in The Netherlands? And what about Chinese DRAMless SSDs with the latest Maxio controller and YMTC 232-layer flash?
Too bad they aren't offering a 4TB version yet, I am waiting for black friday to pick a new one wich will be a 990pro most likely, already have a 850x 4TB but seems the 990pro is the best one for everyday tasks according to your lovely concise reviews even thou it prob doesn't mater but I want +4TB of nvme space... and games are getting biiiiiiiiiiiig
Robert, I have an ACASIS Thunderbolt 4 enclosure coming (with an included fan that can be toggled) that I plan to use with this nvme. If I can remember to dip back in here, I'll let you know how I fare.
Are you able to do a video comparing the speeds of an NVME SSD in the primary MOBO slot vs the chipset slot? Is there any real difference? How much performance do you leave on the table if you put like a T500 in the NVME slot powered by the chipset?
I have to disagree with you on this review. I bought a 2TB T500 to upgrade the boot drive in my Acer Aspire Vero laptop. After I installed it, the sequential write speeds were quite low for a Gen 4 drive, around 2700 Mbps. I read on RUclips that a firmware upgrade might fix that problem, so I tried to upgrade the firmware to the current P8CR003 version. My laptop has Intel RST drivers that treat the boot drive as a RAID, and unfortunately the Crucial storage executive that is used to upgrade the firmware did not recognize the drive as a genuine Crucial SSD, and refused to upgrade the firmware. I tried putting the Crucial T500 in a different computer to upgrade the firmware, but that didn't work either. So I returned the Crucial T500 to Amazon and replaced it with a Samsung 990 Evo, which DID have the latest firmware and which runs extremely fast in my laptop computer. You should do a review on that SSD when you get a chance.
prices will fluctuate a lot until xmas are over, 2TB KC3000 already dropped to 105€ and 2TB Fury Renegade to 112€ here in central Europe, Crucial will have to drop 2TB model costs to 990 Pro to really "steal" Samsung's customers :D
Hello there!! I just lost a Samsung 970 Evo plus (likely to the dreaded firmware problem) and I am SERIOUSLY considering this drive as my next OS drive. But I have an Asus motherboard and I read somewhere that this drive has compatibility issues with programs like Amoury Crate. Have you come across these issues in your tests?
Thanks for the review! Just wondering - do you have any opinions on the Nextorage NE1N4TB? I bought one from Newegg, with read speed up to 7300 MB/s, and 4TB, pcie 4. Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
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Update - 31/10 10:30 (CET): We're currently looking into a potential firmware issue with the T500. Apparently, some others had reported issues with post-SLC performance, mentioning speeds can drop to 300MB/s in sustained writes. Our (two) drives didn't show any issues in the last few weeks we've had them, and part of testing is copying two sets of 500GB to the SSD, which it handled perfectly, three runs in a row. Similarly, PC Mark 10 Consistency pushes close to 30TB through the drive, and it did all those runs perfectly as well. SSDs with poor base level (once pushed through dram/slc cache) performance always show issues there.
Update 12/12: First off, sorry it took a while to update on this. We've been extremely busy the last few weeks for various reasons. Crucial has been pushing to discuss the firmware topic since day 1, it's not because of them this took a while.
Anyway, we've spoken with them since and talked about what we're seeing and what other reviewers are reporting, and they've been very open in talking about why some of these things are happening. The short version of it is that Crucial decided to push for as much SLC caching and as much "real world" performance as possible, at the cost of worse sustained performance when you dorun out of SLC space. But this really only happens if you don't give the drive a chance to clean up (SLC -> TLC) at all, so you basically have to write 1/3rd of the capacity without any interruptions for you to see that drop. So even when copying two sets of 500GB, with a little break in between, we didn't see that in early testing, and neither did we see that with PC Mark 10 Consistency which does push ~27 TB through the drive (and runs various tests with the drive nearly full), since it has some interruptions which allowed the T500 to clean up.
I'm happy we got this cleared up, and they did say they are looking into a possible firmware update in the future to improve post-SLC performance if possible, but if you ask me I really don't think the current situation changes anything for most of you, nor is it even a bad design choice for the majority of SSD buyers who end up with a larger SLC buffer with the T500 than with most other drives. If you really need an SSD just for constant file transfers of 100s of Gigabytes, maybe consider something else, but for everyone else, I stand by my opinion that the T500 is one of the top tier SSDs to consider, especially now that prices in most regions already seems very competitive.
Let me know if you have any questions!
What an absolutely useless product.
I'm not surprised. I'm sceptical regarding Phison controllers ever since I've had a Corsair MP600 (the 1st model from 2019).
How is possible T500 to be faster than T700 in gaming bench?
@@looks-suspiciousSkeptical.
NOT sceptical.
My British dictionary says otherwise.@@PSYCHOV3N0M
In the last 3 years I've needed 6 or 7 SSD's for various builds. Nada has steered me in the right direction every time. No need to look anywhere else for NVME info. Nada is the queen
Happy to hear that, thank you!
Exactly, well written!
Agreed. BEST SSD reviews.
@@TechTesters Your name NADA seems like a Serbian name, which means, to believe, to have faith, to have to expect, HOPE....
Yeah she is. Within five minutes of finishing one of her videos, I go straight to purchasing.... with her affiliate link of course.
How come you only have 266K subs???!!! One of the best channels for PC hardware reviews. Thank you so much.
266k subs is a lot lol
Thank you for the consistent, well put together videos.
My pleasure / thank you!
I am very happy/pleased that Crucial decided to push for as much SLC caching and as much "real world" performance as possible at the cost of worse sustained performance once the SLC space is depleted! That is true performance! I'm tired of seeing "performance" ratings and reviews that have nothing to do with how I, and the greater majority of other users, actually use the drive! When a gen 5 drive runs at 15,000MBps, what good does that do me when it can't even do Q1 random r/w speeds of the best Gen4!
Great review, the information is so clear I don't know a lot about computers but I learn what I need for the new main SSD that I'm looking for. Also I really liked that you explain what the different bench marks are for instead of just throwing graphics and numbers like other channels do
And your audio, voice and tone make it so easy to follow because english is not my main language
Hands down the best ssd reviewer out there!🎉
Glad you think so, thanks!
Hands down the most beautiful SSD reviewer too 😄
Absolutely. Nada is THE standard.
Great to see more high end Gen 4 drives for uses that Gen 5 isn't needed/ possible on the platfrom.
Great Channel Nada. I give your reviews as much weight as any of the other channels with a million or more subscribers... you deserve more for sure. With regard to the T500 2TB model. I purchased a pair to run in a RAID0 in my 3rd Gen ThreadRipper system as I had already used a pair of 500GB WD SN850's for the very same purpose for two years now. MUCH to my surprise, putting together a 2nd - 3rd Gen ThreadRipper system together (even better MoBo) and the pair of T500 NVMe resulted in no better performance than the OLD SN850 NVMe. I WAS expecting at least a 60 percent improvement and at VERY least 30 percent ... but it amounted to pretty much nothing. Everything triple-checked and up-to-date, clearly Crucial drives are NOT a good candidate for RAID configurations. I'll go to a pair of modern day 2TB SN850x NVMe instead. It seems the pinnacle of the T500 performance IS to use them in single drive mode and make SURE you enable the Performance Cache mode in the Crucial Storage Executive software. FYI, it was not enabled by default and in single NVMe mode, performance was also less than "great".
Interesting. I wonder if it's just raid, or if something is very different on AMD / Threadripper systems? I know some older systems definitely impact SSD performance in general.
Curious if the SN850x raid setup is going to perform much better?
Few days ago was release 4 Tb version. Will be nice to see a new review of 4 Tb version.
Thanks for mentioning their temperatures...
Iam looking at this model but 4gb.. Iam owner of older P5plus 1 and 2 tb drives and really like these... After 2 years around 95% in crystal diosc !! Love Micron !! :)
TCG Opal 2.0 encryption appears to be supported as per LinkedIn post by crucial/micron.
Another really good review for us, awaiting the launch of T500 at decent pricing in India
Great review, impressive product. I also thought Gen 4 was at its limit but this is a notable improvement. I completely agree with your conclusion that this should be top recommend SSD for nearly everyone assuming pricing will be competitive. That being said, I am a little sad my SN850X lost the Gen 4 gaming crown.
I bought a SN850X like a few months ago its a great drive and have a second M2 slot free so I may grab one of these T500 drives when the prices drop.
@@MrNelahemThey’re cheap here in Aus. 110AUD which is like 70USD. That’s insane value
@@Quizack 2tb or 1tb?
nice! ordered. retiring the p5 plus
My current pc is about 7 liters and has 2 NVME drives on the motherboard. And a 2Tb SATA drive. The M.2 drives are also 2 Tb but are gen 3 drives. Haven't been tempted to replace those until this review. I think I will definitely be looking at a couple of these early next year. The 4TB versions will be tempting if the price is good. Time to start saving my nickels!
Thanks for the excellent review!
My pleasure!
I just bought 2 - 2TB T500s for $145.99 each and that is awesome! I love the price to performance this has and it beats almost anything out there! Thanks for the recommendation Nada!
I already what you recommended long back, the Kingston KC3000 . It is an awesome drive. Now I wanted to buy a second drive, and there you are recommending another best. I just know that what you recommend is always the best.👍👍👍
But the price/performance ratio for the KC3000 is much better. KC3000 2TB ~ €103,-, T500 2TB without heatsink ~ €195,- . And the TC500 is not almost twice time faster.
@@MrSteini1979 But thermal performance is way better with KC3000 right?. Good thermal performance means longevity.
@@alexmercer3001 All new mainboards have a onboard heatsink for min. 1, the better ones for 3 or 4 NVMe SSDs. In a case with normal or good airflow the temps are fine. For a laptop or PS5 the T500 make sense. But in the most laptops, the other components are slower. So you don't need the "fastest" SSD.
Thank you. Very comprehensive video, everything I needed to know. 😊
Thanks for your review. I bought this to replace an HP FX900 Pro that is on my HP EliteBook 840 G5 due to firmware issues, lack of support, and having 3F0 error.
Was just wondering which Gen4 drive to upgrade to. Now I know. Noice!! 👍
Glad I could help!
I look forward to your reviews as much as I enjoy watching them. Excellent work Nada!
Thank you so much!
This is certainly a drive I will be keeping my eye on. Thank you very much for the review, and those speeds and temps are impressive. This would make a nice, fast, boot drive to replace my 512Gb Micron that is still in my system.
$170 USD on Amazon for the 2TB model is reasonable for the level of performance. Thank you for the review!
Crazy how it dropped it all the way to $101 USD November 18.
All of the comprehensive speed tests are sick, not much about computers is clear to me but I'm looking to save some money buying an enclosure for nvme and understand from experience and watching videos that performance varies depending on workload, or time under consistent use. I have many terabytes of photos to transfer so this is super-informative and great for a noob.
Best review of SSD. You gained a subscriber 👍
If possible it would be nice to see you include the SK Hynix P41 platinum in your gen4 lineup as well!
Just finishing up testing that one, will make a video on it in the next 2-3 weeks!
@@TechTesters Looking forward to it!
Excellent information yet again, thank you and excellent work. 👍😎
Just a thought, a real world test of actual game loading amongst these M.2 SSDs I think would be very illuminating. Many synthetic tests have always been a little misleading. Generally M.2s with DRAM from the cheapest PCIe 3.0 to the most expensive PCIe 5.0 loading times are within approx. 1s~3s and often
.. Interesting, I didn't realize my Samsung 990 Pro could get so hot?! Although the only stress it really gets is installing and loading my games which lasts for only a matter of seconds.
The 4tb version just launched, could you review it?
I'm waiting for T-800 and T-1000 variant :D
Thank you! Had some questions about what drive to go with in a SFF build in the FORMDT1 and you answered all of them.
Best SSD review channel, thanks !
Thank you too!
Looks like it's a solid choice to get Crucial T500 for OS, and WD Blue SN580 for games/apps. Thank you for excellent videos on PC components!
Thanks! And if the prices are Ok that is definitely a good setup
Just bought a 1TB T500 for $57 and a WED Black SN770 2TB for $86 two weeks ago. Very happy with my setup. 3TB is more than enough for me. And even my secondary drive is more than fast enough. All for $143.
@@joelrosario9407how did you manage to get it for $57?
@@joelrosario9407 I know you are US so can't compare to UK pricing but daaaaamn that is very cheap. Just dropped a 2TB for gamwe storage for 130GBP UK which is good here, but you just blew me out of the water 😥
@@grimreaper6352late reply but it was on sale on Amazon. It was weird because the price was simply listed for $57, instead of showing a discount. So I wonder if there was a mistake or something. But it was shipped from Amazon brand new.
$138.39 on Amazon right now after 3hrs of review videos and researched I think I made my choice. Thanks
I think a deep dive comparing the top 5 best gen 4 SSD’s would be nice, which I think includes Samsung 990 pro, Crucial t500, SN850X, SK Hynix Platinum P41 and lexar nm790. 5 versions with 1TB and 5 versions with 2TB. Focusing on the same things as mentioned here in this video but also efficiency, power consumption and temperature. Most tests and reviews don’t give information on this matter but it is usually is a dealbreaker for laptops which cannot use heatsinks. Another important thing is software support: for example Lexar doesn’t have software support (so if any issues happen with the drive it is unlikely they will give a firmware update) and SK Hynix software is very poorly made and slow, also they have never made a firmware update for SK Hynix Platinum P41. I think these are also important things to mention.
I wish I could take up this recommendation, but I've had 2 failures of crucial ssds and both within their warranty but they did not honour it here in Australia. The first drive died in 3 months, they didn't honour warranty saying that Australia doesn't have a warranty service, and ended up swapping it with an Intel one from the retailer. The second drive died on my birthday 5 months old. Again got the same no Australia warranty, this time opting for a Team group SSD as a replacement from retailer.
Very happy with the 1tb when they where on a super sale wish I bought two !!
I love the way you present, including your voice! In case this matters, I'm going to indulge in semantics: when you speak of SSD speeds and say, "... performant, especially when gaming ...", I wonder if newbs out there took it to mean that, other than game load, map load, and cut scene load times, the actual game performance, frame to frame, etc., barely cares what storage device you are using. So yeah, if you can afford it, get the best. It's what I did. Anyway, this isn't something I'd bring up when we hang out in person. that would be boring. Anyway, thanks for spreading information!
Thank you! As for gaming, I hope it's clear enough, but I guess I should make a general SSD fact video at some point to just refer to every time.
Just picked up the 2T non heatsink for $107 USD on Amazon.
Has Crucial released firmware upgrade yet to fix the issue TechTesters talks about in pinned comment?
For drive encryption, I would use the OS. Otherwise you could get locked in if there's a drive failure, not to mention no support for storing your keys securely with something like TPM
Indeed. Microsoft has moved away from hardware encryption in Bitlocker because it causes too many problems. Not to mention the garbage implementations that turned out to be insecure time and time again.
It's great news a full speed PCIe 4.0 SSD doesn't need a heatsink anymore.
Have you seen the heatsink of the TeamGroup Z540? No matter how well it performs I would never install that monster in my PC.
That looks disgusting. If your SSD needs that then you have a big issue. I doubt it does though, the Phison Gen5 controller SSDs I had were all fine under a small heatsink as well.
Off topic. Just unboxed the Z790 Aorus Xtreme X, that comes with an optional heatsink that's comically large.
Hi Nada. I can't wait to buy an MB that supports Gen5. I also can't wait to win the Lottery.
Well, looks like I'm getting a 2TB one for my PS5. Thanks for the review.
@TechTesters What offers better real-life speed? One 4TB drive (for OS, apps, games and general data storage) or several "specialized" 2TB drives?
Right now I am considering to use 3 drives:
1, Crucial T500 2TB - for OS and light apps
2, Teamgroup Cardea Z540 2TB - for games (ocupying the only Gen.5 slot on the Asrock X670e Steel Legend)
3, Kingston KC3000 2TB - general data storage (movies, family photos and videos, music library, etc.)
This may look like an overkill, but I want a setup that should last for many years (saving money today is not a priority). No upgrades are planned until the next big PC upgrade in about 6-8 years.
"real life" you'r not going to notice a difference. But I personally like having my OS and work and games on separate drives anyway.
But I'd say get the biggest SSD that still offers good value, and keep the extra slots for future upgrades.
@@TechTesters Thank you very much for your reply. I am sure you are quite busy.
I am not a content creator (at least not anymore), so I prefer more speed to more volume.
There will be one Gen 4 slot free if I need more storage in the future, or I could buy a big 2,5" SSD or 3,5" HDD.
Also, in the future it should be easier to upgrade specialized drives, than having to move all my data at once.
Now 2+2TB are still cheaper than a single 4TB (equally fast) drive.
Gonna slap 2x of these on my HPZbook fury g10.
Will wait till T800 came
It seems that this is another good ssd from Crucial. I have mx500 (2tb) and p5 plus (2tb) both of them are up to my standard but p5 plus is on a hot side for me. I cannot wait to grab this drive and test it out.
.
I would love to see a head to head comparison between this t500 and p5 plus with the same capacity. I feel sad that there is no 4tb version of p5 plus.
I have a seperate video on the impact of capacity. a 2TB P5 Plus wouldn't do significantly better than the 1TB one, except maybe a bit in the consistency test. It's not going to come close to this.
Would love to see the Solidigm drives mixed in here. Smart former Intel Optane folks behind these drives.
Hoping to get those sorted asap. But I understood they just did a huge round of layoffs so I'm not sure how that will develop. SK Hynix models are going to be included soon, I didn't check the Solidigm specs yet but I hear those "P41" models are basically the same?
Thank you for posting this excellent review of the T500 device, and for bringing up the potential firmware issue. I'm impressed with the testing results you are posting and your thoughts on the drive. I too wish the heatsink is removable. Time will tell what develops with the firmware issue. Your continued investigation (as reported in the pinned comment) certainly makes me wonder about the stability of the firmware. I find the product packaging interesting. It appears to be printed in English as the primary language. Is that the standard for computer components in Europe? Or globally? I am American; my only overseas travel experience is with Great Britain, Canada, and the Bahamas. Thank you for this very well tested product review. You certainly put a great deal of time and effort into truly testing the product and reporting your findings. I trust your testing protocols and product recommendations.
Thank you! Here in Holland I mostly just see English boxes. Only some really large retail brands like Logitech I think localize their packaging.
As for the firmware, TBC. Seeing how well it does generally, I'm pretty sure it'll be fixed soon.
Update posted!
I just bought it. My other 2 crucial drives are still alive . my xpg drive just died. Sticking with crucial drives for now on.
My top 3 favorite tech channels
Great review. SSDs are just silly right now in pricing. I watched an intel 2TB M.2 go from 59.99 to 118.99 in a couple months.
Which Intel? The older Intel stuff is going up since solidigm isn't making all of them anymore.
Honestly, more than speed I'd like to see SSD capacities increase. For so many things I do, a SATA SSD is fast enough for me, but I can't find anything good above 4Tb. IO/random read and write tasks are such a slog on HDDs that I don't want to go that route either .
Agreed, we need more 4/8TBs.
I ordered T500 2TB over the AMAZON. Received the one with the FW 1.0,
contact the CRUCIAL and they send me the new one with the FW 2.0 free of charge
the very next day...I can only say well done CRUCIAL --> AMAZING support (very rare these days..)
how can I know which is which?
@@tomasgomez1906 There is only one order code and during the order You will not be able to choose the firmware. Once the product is shipped You will able to check which version did You actually got (just read it from the drive itself):
P8CR001 --> FW 1.0
P8CR002 --> FW 2.0
In case You actually got the firmware lower than (P8CR002 --> FW 2.0).. Just contact Cruacial support and they will send You the new drive free of charge (no matter where did You bought it...)...
In my case I order it from AMAZON, Crucial send me the new one and left me to keep the one from AMAZON (no return required)..
@@marijaperkovic194 can't we update firmware ourselves? I'm planning on buying 2tb model. and whats the difference between fw 1.0 and fw 2.0?
Thanks for the review.
My pleasure!
No explicit mention, but it seems this is THE best NVME for external enclosures currently.
Price is pretty competitive. This goes on the list for when I move my main machine to linux. Looks like it does do encryption, not sure why they left that bit out on the marketing.
T500 is awesome my only issue is that there is no 4TB version yet :'c
Have you heard back from Crucial yet about the firmware?
could you please include laptop power consumption tests or at least some average/efficiency numbers
Thanks to your video, now I'm decided to get this Crucial 1tb with my crucial ram ddr5. hahaha thank you
Hope I helped :)
For apples to apples comparison, I really wish your WD Black SN850X was a 2 TB version instead of a 1 TB version. I don't think it's fair to compare the 2 TB T500 to the 1 TB SN850X, as the 2 TB version of the SN850X would probably at be closer (if not better) than the T500.
Nice SSD.. allround much better as a whole. Thank you for the review (duw)
looks like a new gen 4 king if that potential firmware issue can be sorted out
Congratulations on the video, well done! one question: i have both t500 and sn850x (both 1TB), plus other 2.5" SSDs. In which one should I put the operating system? where would you put heavier software like Lightroom, Premier Pro? and where would you put games instead? Main use is 80% games and 20% various softwares. what to put on the t500 and what on the sn850x? Thank you. 😊
Thank you, ordered this for my PS5 today. I wish there was a 4TB option though. Those thermals and performance are extremely impressive!
Edit: Unfortunately this drive sucks for the PS5. Barely get over the minimum speed requirements for the PS5 in the speed test. Which is around 5,500 mb/s when this drive is rated like 7400. For the PS5 I highly recommend sticking to the tried and tested drives like the sn850x, 990 pro, 980 pro etc. I’m very disappointed!
I know Samsung lost some reputation, but I went ahead and got the 990 Pro 4TB for $300 after tax. Had some best buy store credit
good review good product thanks 👍
This channel has been so useful! This SSD looks like a no brainer for me BUT, i notice the link in the description is an affiliate link... does this mean that the review could be skewed? or is this channel quite non-partial when it comes to reviews? I'm new to the channel but subbed for the info alone, thanks for the video!
Glad you found it useful!
I'd like to think that people can trust me to be impartial, and that my opinions are based on the data and are both reasonable and fair, but in the end that's a decision you'll have to make for yourself. Also remember that links to other drives are in the description as well, even when videos are less positive (unless the product is just outright bad, then I'll refuse to link to it), you just happened to land on a video of an SSD that actually really managed to stand out, which has been rare for Gen4 SSDs in 2023.
I love me some Crucial.
I'd love to see how the SN570 2TB model holds up. The 1TB has been falling far behind in the latest comparison charts. But the 2TB model now has the same controller as the SN770 1TB and the same NAND as the SN770 2TB model. I bought one today and triple checked before and after the purchase. Not installed yet. I believe it would still be very close to the SN580 and SN770 in your benchmarks.
I feel it is good to provide non removable heatsink if someone is uncertain they can go with without heat sink but for 2ndry drives i havnt seen boards havjng heatsink and also sony ps5 is great
Thank you for this video 🙏🏻
Thank you!
I was considering this VS a 990 PRO until you mentioned the price.
Can't go wrong with either. But it'll probably take a few days, if not a few weeks, for T500 prices to settle. That always happens with new products.
Thanks!
Thank you, once again! 😊
Awesome video and review. +1 sub
was looking at the mp34 but to compare the t500 is really affordable at the moment. . . hopefully will get some good life out of it.
i still remember to me 40gb being a massive hdd. and now i just brought a near 4000GB hdd. just wow.
I think I had a 80MB hdd (yes megabytes).. it was a 386 machine
Yep. 20MB HDD in the 286 era. Or technically no HDD in the Commodore 😅
These are so cheap at the moment. Found a 1TB T500 for $100AUD, which is $67USD. That’s incredible value. By the way, Nadia, would you pick this over the Sabrent Rocket. This is faster, but is there anything I’m missing? Edit: Never knew it was THAT much faster. Disregard my comment lol. Thanks!
I bought the T500 without the heatsink for my laptop. I'm curious as to what would be an alternative for one, the encryption protection on this drive. Is there a third party that can help with this, perhaps windows bit locker?
And secondly, I'm planning on not just gaming but also moving 100s of TB of data for backup. Since i read your T500 firmware issue. And you explained the reason. Which NvME would be a perfect for data moving 100s of TB with consistent speeds?? And not worry about the SLC issue that crucial decided to do.
Thank you love your videos. :)
I just purchased the crucial p5 plus 2tb and then I see this and now I’m getting my refund and I’m buying this t500 this a level up from what I was going for.
Unless a new competitor comes out which can beat this, then this is the next upgrade for me, when the 4GB version is launched.
Hello! Thank you for the review! Which stress test did you use for thermal testing?
Goedenavond/good evening, I just went with a Team Group MP44L 2TB m.2 NVME in Thailand, for 2795 thb (approx. 77.65 usd), with relatively good performance and (hopefully) TLC nand flash and a Phison E21T controller. Probably the best bang for the buck here. Could you do a review on Team Group SSDs too? Or aren't they available in The Netherlands? And what about Chinese DRAMless SSDs with the latest Maxio controller and YMTC 232-layer flash?
Will see if I can grab some of those!
You are just awesome. As usual
😊 Thanks!
Too bad they aren't offering a 4TB version yet, I am waiting for black friday to pick a new one wich will be a 990pro most likely, already have a 850x 4TB but seems the 990pro is the best one for everyday tasks according to your lovely concise reviews even thou it prob doesn't mater but I want +4TB of nvme space... and games are getting biiiiiiiiiiiig
I see lots of review that say this drive runs pretty hot. Only your review stated that the t500 drive has good thermal.
What a great review. Can you recommend an external 40Gbps compatible enclosure that works with the Crucial T500? Many thanks, Robert.
Robert, I have an ACASIS Thunderbolt 4 enclosure coming (with an included fan that can be toggled) that I plan to use with this nvme. If I can remember to dip back in here, I'll let you know how I fare.
Did you forget to include Samsung 990 Pro 4TB in benchmark? it's slightly better than 2TB
Are you able to do a video comparing the speeds of an NVME SSD in the primary MOBO slot vs the chipset slot? Is there any real difference? How much performance do you leave on the table if you put like a T500 in the NVME slot powered by the chipset?
Interesting question! Lets test that.
Its on sale!! Amazon today for $125
$102 now
I love your videos. I watch these from Turkey. Clean, plain and simple explanation.
Thank you!
Crucial should make a t1000 model and have liquid metal cooling
@TechTesters,
There's 4TB capacity released. Can you check it up against benchmarks, please?
I wish you would review the Seagate 2Tb FireCuda 530 because it very price competitive.
Would really like to see how it stacks up against the Seagate Firecude 530 🤔
Ill make sure that gets added again in future graphs!
I have to disagree with you on this review. I bought a 2TB T500 to upgrade the boot drive in my Acer Aspire Vero laptop. After I installed it, the sequential write speeds were quite low for a Gen 4 drive, around 2700 Mbps. I read on RUclips that a firmware upgrade might fix that problem, so I tried to upgrade the firmware to the current P8CR003 version. My laptop has Intel RST drivers that treat the boot drive as a RAID, and unfortunately the Crucial storage executive that is used to upgrade the firmware did not recognize the drive as a genuine Crucial SSD, and refused to upgrade the firmware. I tried putting the Crucial T500 in a different computer to upgrade the firmware, but that didn't work either. So I returned the Crucial T500 to Amazon and replaced it with a Samsung 990 Evo, which DID have the latest firmware and which runs extremely fast in my laptop computer. You should do a review on that SSD when you get a chance.
prices will fluctuate a lot until xmas are over, 2TB KC3000 already dropped to 105€ and 2TB Fury Renegade to 112€ here in central Europe,
Crucial will have to drop 2TB model costs to 990 Pro to really "steal" Samsung's customers :D
Definitely
Hello there!! I just lost a Samsung 970 Evo plus (likely to the dreaded firmware problem) and I am SERIOUSLY considering this drive as my next OS drive. But I have an Asus motherboard and I read somewhere that this drive has compatibility issues with programs like Amoury Crate. Have you come across these issues in your tests?
Thanks for the review! Just wondering - do you have any opinions on the Nextorage NE1N4TB? I bought one from Newegg, with read speed up to 7300 MB/s, and 4TB, pcie 4. Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
Never heard of it, sorry!
The only thing missing now from the SSD Queen edicts is best 4tb drives.
Sounds like a topic for a nice roundup video :D