Crucial BX300 480GB SSD review

Memory (DDR4/DDR5) and Storage (SSD/NVMe) 367 Page 20 of 20 Published by

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Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

It's pretty hard to not like the new BX300 series, in fact my only quirk would be this: can we have BX300 SSDs in even bigger volume sizes? The price performance ratio is going through the roof here. For 98% of the time this SSD is as fast as any high-end class SSD. Only after you write multiple gigabytes (roughly ~15GB) continuously you'll see perf drop off as the caches run dry. Other then that, it's green lights everywhere. Now the BX series obviously cannot be classed at the enthusiast level, but over the years it seems that is has become no problem to maximize performance out of that SATA3 connector. The read performance is downright excellent for a SATA3 unit, writes are very fast for normal and PC gaming usage, especially in this price range. Compared to the MX series you do not get the options like data encryption and that MX300 series has better power failure protection. Other then that it is as fast and perhaps even faster in some scenarios. For a value SSD Crucial made an important decision, they created dual-caches, and in fact even added a 512MB DRAM cache alongside an SLC written cache buffer. For the 480 GB model this is a 512MB DRAM cache as well as a 16 GB SLC write cache. The 120 and 240 GB models will show lower write perf though, the DRAM cache is smaller at 256MB and 4 to 8 GB SLC cache respectively. 

Endurance then, the MX300 480GB model SSD is rated a 160 TBW, thus guaranteed at 160 Terabyte written. I think Crucial is being a little bit too modest here as I see no reason why that number would not equal the MX300. But given the MLC written nature and if you write say 20 GB a day / 365 days a year that would be 7.3 TB per year. That would still be almost 22 years of lifespan, in my thinking easily even. That TBW value is lower with smaller volume sizes, thus 80 TBW for the 240 GB drive and 55 TBW for the 120GB model.

  • BX300 120GB: £55.99 / $59.99 / €60.90
  • BX300 240GB: £83.99 / $89.99 / €90.90
  • BX300 480GB: £140.99 / $149.99 / €152.90

The ever so important factor of course is price, you'll be able to spot this unit at roughly 31 cents per GB for our tested 480GB model, and that makes this unit among the cheaper ones to get on the market. That is an MSRP and not street price, so likely they'll be a notch cheaper as well once there is volume availability on the market. So again, it'll remain to be a mid-range priced SSD, with a solid performance point of view. Mid-range these days is last year's high-end performance. And with this kind of performance you overall remain in the high-end segment on SATA3. 


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Performance

This SSD writes and reads serious amounts of tiny files in a fast enough fashion. You can notice a drop-off point once the caches really run out of stamina, but you will need to have written many GBs before that happens, and even then you are still looking at a "slow" 280 GB/sec. IOPS is not something you as a consumer should worry about too much unless you are doing a lot of database related work or create similar workloads on your PC, but this SSD certainly ranks high within this aspect. Trace testing - we think by far the best test in our entire benchmark suite is PCMark Vantage 64-bit. This is a trace test and can emulate what you guys do on your PC but then multiply it by a factor of 100, this test puts more focus on read performance opposed to writing though. The outcome of the results with the CRUCIAL BX300; sustained read / write performance, again fine. Zoom in at both IOPS and trace performance and you'll notice that the SSD can manage serious workloads without breaking so much as a drop of sweat. So whether you write lots of small files, copy MKV movies or do it all together, the BX300 remains a solid performer on all fronts.

Overall

Right, an SSD is enjoyable. Very much so. If you put a drive like this into your SATA 3 compatible laptop or SATA 3 compatible PC, you'll have no idea what is about to hit you. We very much enjoy the grand sustained performance of this SSD series. Make no mistake, replacing an HDD with an SSD in your desktop PC or laptop eliminates the random access lag of the HDD head, it is no longer mechanical. That, combined with the performance SATA 3 offers these days, is simply a massive difference and probably the best upgrade you can make for your computer anno 2017.

Your SATA controller

Some overall recommendations then. Should you be in the market for a SATA 3 SSD then we have a couple of hints. First and foremost if you have a SATA 2 controller only on your motherboard, then you'll be limited at roughly 270 MB/sec read and writes. SATA 3 (6Gbps) will free you up from that allowing the SSD to perform in the 500 MB/sec range. It is, however, important that you connect your SSD to the proper controller. Internal chipset based integrated SATA 6G controllers are the best, thus say the Z270 / X299 Intel SATA3 interface or the AMD X370 / X399 internal chipset interface. If you run the SSD from a 3rd party controller like, say, a Marvell / ASMedia 6G controller, you will often see lower performance. The new AMD chipsets offer fantastic performance btw. The more recent Asmedia controllers we spotted lately on motherboards also offer good performance, albeit still 20% ~ 25% slower than Intel's controllers. Also make sure you run your drive in AHCI mode, it does make such a difference in performance, a big difference.

 
 
 

Concluding

Crucial has made a good step forward with the BX300 coming from the BX200. The choice of (3D) V-NAND helps them in write performance, and armed with dual-caches and the new Silicon Motion SM2258 controller the combination of it all seems to be a rock solid one. Of course everything is relative to pricing, but in that respect the BX300 series will be a win as well. Your read and write performance overall will be really good, excellent even. It is only after the caches are exhausted that the write performance will drop to a 300MB/sec marker, but that only happens after writing many gigabytes continuously. One remark here, the 480GB model we tested has a bigger advantage (compared to the 120 and 240 GB models) with it's larger caches. Ergo, the overall performance the BX300 480GB offers is excellent for your normal PC user and PC gamer. Compared to the MX300 to some extent I do miss that nice extra power loss protection. That that's really all I can nag about here, well that and I do hope to see 1TB and 2TB volume sizes in the near future as well. As the biggest move in the storage industry right now is the quest for more capacity. We need multiple Terabyte SSDs as most people will want to ditch the traditional mechanical head based HDDs with their rotating platters. The Crucial BX300 480 GB model as tested comes with three years warranty, that is pretty good. The warranty plan itself is fine really, simple carry-in. So, if your workload lines up towards PC gaming and/or regular usage on an Internet PC, then we have to admit, this is looking to be a great SSD to work with, frankly speaking it's toally and utterly fine. You'll seriously receive a lot of performance for a SSD in the value segment, combined with a good price and pretty much all variables done right, we feel all lights are green. Go for it, this is pure value versus performance. 

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