Crucial P5, the protagonist of this review, is the new proposal among the storage products of the American company. The NVMe SSD guarantees performance at the highest levels, although in a test it did not fully convince us. Find out more in the review
In recent years, but even more so in recent months due to the pandemic, there has been an incredible push in the direction of smart working. Professionals from various sectors, mostly multimedia, have always experienced the need to have high-performance machines at home or in their office but now this need is extending to more and more users around the world. The world of PC hardware is evolving accordingly, which is why, considering the current costs, and the resulting benefits, it is impossible not to recommend inserting a M.2 SSD with NVMe interface, therefore able to take advantage of all 4 dedicated lines of the motherboard’s PCI Express slots.
Crucial P5 review: technical characteristics
Crucial P5 is one of the products that best of all represents the ideal product for professionals of all sectors and for gamers who want the most from their PC. The NVMe SSD top of the consumer range of Crucial is equipped with memoria NAND TLC e controller Micron, able to guarantee, on paper (you will find the actual data found below), performance in read / write up to 3400/3000 MB / s.
Not to be underestimated, among the technical characteristics of the product, the dynamic acceleration of the writing and the adaptive thermal protection (about which we have more than a few doubts) which guarantee an MTTF factor higher than two million operating hours. Crucial P5 is available, with these features, in 500GB denominations, 1TB (used in this review) and 2TB.
Crucial P5 review: the benchmarks
As for the benchmarks on the Crucial P5, we relied on software such as CrystalDiskMark, AS SSD Benchmark, e ATTO Disk Benchmark. The hardware platform on which the drive has been installed has the following characteristics:
- Processor: Ryzen 5 3600
- Motherboard: B450 Aorus Elite
- RAM: 16,0 GB Ballistix 3200MHz
- Operating system: Windows 10 a 64 bit
The first test was carried out with CrystalDiskMark 7.0, one of the most used benchmarks in this sector due to its immediacy, with transfers of 1GB and 4GB. The results have us stupid and not a little. If the value in writing is absolutely in line with what the company declared, it is in reading that we were impressed. Well more than 3500 MB / s which in themselves would be more than what the company declared. Well done Crucial! H values then remain definitely above the category average even in 4K operations.
The second test was carried out on AS SSD Benchmark, with 1GB and 3GB files respectively. AS SSD Benchmark performs random sequential read and write test without using cache and it also provides an interesting data access speed value. Although in this test it is more than normal to find a slight inflection of the values, we are still faced with excellent results, especially in reading. Instead, making a brief comparison with his direct rival Kingston KC2500, he loses in the clash over file access time. Not bad in daily use and everything turns into a very interesting overall score in the test.
The last test was made using ATTO Disk Benchmark. ATTO Disk performs a benchmark detecting read and write speeds through the transfer of files of varying sizes identifying the trend in relation to the different size of the blocks (from 512 B to 64 MB. In this test we found some not very exciting values (in relation to the range of belonging). In fact, in the transfer of small files we are faced with at decidedly unexciting speeds that still stabilize from 128 KB onwards. Unfortunately, even in this case, we are faced with values (still excellent) that they tend to oscillate within a range of scissors but never stable. Nothing that clearly affects its use in everyday life, but it is a must to highlight it in the review phase.
On the other hand, what made us reflect a bit concerns the temperature reached with the 1GB sample we have on test. Well over 60 ° C in the tests carried out, not a very high value but certainly above average, despite the motherboard slot being equipped with dissipation for the drives.
It is time to take stock
Crucial P5 is the NVMe SSD to consider if you need to purchase a primary drive for your PC, password: speed! The selling price of about € 150-160 in the 1 TB cut is perfectly in line with competitors in the same price range, against which, P5 manages to prevail. Unfortunately, the temperature value leaves some doubts about the efficiency over time of this product, however excellent and recommended.
8.8 Recommended
Points in favor
- Top speed
- Reading beyond expectations
- Price in line with the proposal
- Performance superior to many competitors
Points against
- Fairly high temperatures
The Crucial P5 review article: NVMe at full power comes from TechGameWorld.com.