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MagyarCrucial MX500 4TB review - SATA SSD with an extreme amount of space
Crucial's MX series is the somewhat faster, but also somewhat more expensive SATA SSD series from the manufacturer, which has now been expanded by a 4 TB model. The manufacturer wants just under 360 Euros (~$418) for it, and the prices on the Internet are currently on this level as well.
If you currently want a lot of storage, but do not want to do without SSD speed, you will have to spend between 300 and 400 Euros (~$349 and $465), so Crucial does not make the cheapest offer here, but it is on par with the competition.
Crucial MX500 technical data in comparison | |||||
Capacity | 1 TB | 2 TB | 4 TB | ||
Serial number | CT1000MX500SSD1 | CT2000MX500SSD1 | CT4000MX500SSD1 | ||
Controller | Silicon Motion® SM2258 with special Micron® firmware | ||||
Format, interface | 2.5 inch, SATA 6 Gbit/s (SATA III) | ||||
Sequential read rate | 560 MB/s | ||||
Sequential write rate | 510 MB/s | ||||
4K sector-limited random read IOPS | 95K IOPS | 90 K IOPS | |||
4K sector-limited random write IOPS | 90K IOPS | ||||
TBW | 360 TB | 700 TB | 1.000 TB | ||
Supported operating systems | Windows 7/8.0/8.1/10/11 | ||||
Features |
| ||||
Warranty | Limited, 5 years | ||||
MTBF | 1.800,000 hours | ||||
MSRP | 99,95 Euro | 196,03 Euro | 361,75 Euro | ||
Test system - Crucial SSD in the Zotac MEK Mini
We have installed the Crucial MX500 4TB in a Zotac MEK Mini a compact gaming system with Intel Core i5-9400F and GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER. The installation is very easy: Just snap the SSD into the slot and format it in Disk Management.
More about the Zotac MEK Mini you can read in our review.
Features - Hardware encryption included
The Crucial MX500 is built from 3D NAND flash. Crucial offers a warranty of up to 5 years or 1,000 written terabytes, whichever comes first. The SSD offers a height of 7mm, an adapter to 9.5mm is included.
A hardware-supported 256-bit AES encryption can be activated to protect the data from unauthorized access.
AS SSD & CrystalDiskMark
Let's first take a look at what Crucial promises for its SSD: 560 MB/s in sequential read and 510 MB/s in write should be possible. This is on par with other SATA SSDs.
These read and write rates are almost achieved in the AS-SSD benchmark, but about 40 MB/s are missing in both cases. In CrystalDiskMark with a queue depth of 32 and one thread, we get even closer to the promised data rates: It is almost reached with over 558 MB/s in read, and the gap also narrows in read.
Overall, these are satisfactory results, but it should be noted that the theoretical values can only be achieved in certain situations.
What is noticeable, however, is that the access times are a bit slow.
| Crucial MX500 4TB , | Patriot P300P512GM28US , , Patriot P300 P300P512GM28US | Western Digital Blue SN550 NVMe , , Western Digital Blue SN550 NVMe SSD 1 TB WDS100T2B0C | Kingston KC600 , | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS SSD | 118% | 127% | 28% | |
| Seq Read | 520 | 1060 104% | 1852 256% | 447.3 -14% |
| Seq Write | 467 | 1300 178% | 1322 183% | 452.1 -3% |
| 4K Read | 28.6 | 24.37 -15% | 26.84 -6% | 41.69 46% |
| 4K Write | 73.7 | 131.7 79% | 165.7 125% | 96.5 31% |
| 4K-64 Read | 344.5 | 553 61% | 386.4 12% | 358.1 4% |
| 4K-64 Write | 301.4 | 1147 281% | 1098 264% | 315.1 5% |
| Access Time Read * | 0.067 | 0.024 64% | 0.024 64% | 0.037 45% |
| Access Time Write * | 0.142 | 0.092 35% | 0.096 32% | 0.034 76% |
| Score Read | 425 | 683 61% | 598 41% | 444 4% |
| Score Write | 422 | 1408 234% | 1396 231% | 457 8% |
| Score Total | 1071 | 2458 130% | 2280 113% | 1144 7% |
| Copy ISO MB/s | 600 | 1088 81% | 1496 149% | 1062 77% |
| Copy Program MB/s | 381.1 | 1202 215% | 799 110% | 621 63% |
| Copy Game MB/s | 488.4 | 1222 150% | 1488 205% | 717 47% |
* ... smaller is better
ATTO
The ATTO benchmark uses data blocks of different sizes to check the SSD's performance even more practically.
In fact, it shows that quite constant transfer rates are achieved starting at a data size of 256 KB, which are less than 10% below what Crucial promises as maximum read and write rates.
| Crucial MX500 4TB , | Patriot P300P512GM28US , , Patriot P300 P300P512GM28US | Western Digital Blue SN550 NVMe , , Western Digital Blue SN550 NVMe SSD 1 TB WDS100T2B0C | Kingston KC600 , | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATTO Disk Benchmark | 162% | 214% | 65% | |
| 8192KB write | 475170 | 1440000 203% | 1830000 285% | 463350 -2% |
| 4096KB write | 472980 | 1440000 204% | 1760000 272% | 461260 -2% |
| 2048KB write | 476280 | 1440000 202% | 1760000 270% | 456120 -4% |
| 1024KB write | 472980 | 1440000 204% | 1780000 276% | 453100 -4% |
| 512KB write | 472980 | 1440000 204% | 1810000 283% | 452100 -4% |
| 256KB write | 472690 | 1420000 200% | 1780000 277% | 448790 -5% |
| 128KB write | 459710 | 1440000 213% | 1780000 287% | 434550 -5% |
| 64KB write | 444280 | 1420000 220% | 1740000 292% | 418330 -6% |
| 32KB write | 417840 | 1390000 233% | 1640000 292% | 434340 4% |
| 16KB write | 384000 | 1350000 252% | 1390000 262% | 405410 6% |
| 8KB write | 302120 | 911630 202% | 871060 188% | 352320 17% |
| 4KB write | 205670 | 502690 144% | 528600 157% | 260230 27% |
| 2KB write | 116250 | 269670 132% | 29220 -75% | 172430 48% |
| 1KB write | 68390 | 136790 100% | 11170 -84% | 95010 39% |
| 0.5KB write | 35920 | 66440 85% | 5800 -84% | 53340 48% |
| 8192KB read | 533330 | 1470000 176% | 2260000 324% | 533330 0% |
| 4096KB read | 533330 | 1590000 198% | 2310000 333% | 529660 -1% |
| 2048KB read | 533330 | 1590000 198% | 2290000 329% | 524830 -2% |
| 1024KB read | 533330 | 1470000 176% | 2260000 324% | 526030 -1% |
| 512KB read | 533330 | 1450000 172% | 1630000 206% | 523640 -2% |
| 128KB read | 352530 | 1150000 226% | 2070000 487% | 501720 42% |
| 64KB read | 323490 | 615190 90% | 1430000 342% | 517280 60% |
| 32KB read | 296210 | 411140 39% | 917140 210% | 497710 68% |
| 16KB read | 244250 | 217710 -11% | 550840 126% | 463630 90% |
| 8KB read | 209960 | 118690 -43% | 729390 247% | 406420 94% |
| 4KB read | 70480 | 158850 125% | 465580 561% | 279440 296% |
| 2KB read | 37990 | 105020 176% | 29300 -23% | 172920 355% |
| 1KB read | 21920 | 58690 168% | 8180 -63% | 93540 327% |
| 0.5KB read | 9860 | 30880 213% | 539 -95% | 50540 413% |
Conclusion - Good performance at a reasonable price
Crucial presents an SSD with a lot of storage space with the MX500 4TB. It is by no means the first SATA SSD with this much storage, but it is an interesting alternative.
The Crucial MX500 4TB competes with comparable SATA SSDs from Samsung, Western Digital or SanDisk. Pricing-wise, they are all in the range of 300 to 400 Euros (~$349 and $465) and the differences are more in the details: If you would like to have hardware encryption, only Samsung's models come into question apart from our test SSD, and a performance warranty of up to 1,000 written TB is not available everywhere, either. On the other hand, the 5-year warranty is already standard for most devices.
The Crucial MX500 4TB is well equipped and you get a lot of storage for your money.
The SSD achieves the promised data rates in certain scenarios in the benchmarks, but the underperformance is also otherwise still within limits, so we can give the SSD a good report card in terms of speed. However, the Crucial MX500 cannot compete with the power of an NVMe SSD, which is simply in a different league due to the faster interface.
Price and availability
The Crucial MX500 4TB is available directly from the manufacturer at https://www.crucial.de/ssd/mx500/ct4000mx500ssd1 for 361.75 Euros. Similar prices are from our partners notebooksbilliger.de or Cyberport available. At Amazon you can currently get the SSD for just under 400 Euros (~$465).
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