Crucial MX300 750GB SSD review

Memory (DDR4/DDR5) and Storage (SSD/NVMe) 367 Page 19 of 19 Published by

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Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

It has been a while since we tested Crucial SSDs and quite honestly I wasn't expecting the MX300 to be as good as it is. Sure it'll remain a mid-range SSD, but mid-range these days is last years high-end performance. And with this kind of performance you overall remain in the high-end segment on SATA3. Typically we often see TLC NAND issues with linear and sustained writes, e.g. after writing a couple of GB the performance drops. Crucial here applied a SLC cache, it'll write fast up-to roughly 30GB written at 475 MB/s but only after that 30GB the perf starts to drop to say 280 MB/s. That SLC cache does the trick as it is by far big enough to avoid any write issues. What I also appreciate is the new and extra endurance in terms of TBW and warranty. The 750 GB is guaranteed at 220 TBW, and that even remains to be a low estimate. But before you have written even 200 TB on that SSD, you will need to have done crazy stuff. Say you plan to use this SSD a good ten years (which in technology land is a LOOOONG time). That means on average you could write 22 TB per year. Divide that by 12 months and multiply it by 1,000 (GB) and you could write 1.83 TB per month, which is almost 60 GB per day (for ten years). The MX300 also is fast enough as it was able to stay in the middle segment to the top of pretty much all tests we fired at it from our benchmark suite. 

Performance

Overall this SSD shines at many factors and on all levels really, IOPS performance is very good. This SSD writes and reads serious amounts of tiny files in a very fast fashion. We did 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 MX300; 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 big MKV movies or do it all together, the MX300 remains a solid performer on all fronts.


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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 2016.

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. We absolutely prefer the performance of the Intel Series 6 and 7 (H67/P67/Z68/Z77/H77/Z87/X79/H97/Z97/X99/H170/Z170) integrated SATA 6G controller over anything else available on the market. If you run the SSD from a 3rd party controller like, say, a Marvell 6G controller, you will see lower performance. The new AMD 85X and 900 chipsets also offer fantastic performance. 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.

Price point

Crucial is able to keep the prices very competitive as this product is made 80% in-house as Crucial is owned by Micron.

  • 750 GB costs € 199  / € 0.26 per GB

A mainstream price for a way above average class performing SSD with excellent endurance and you'll receive a three year carry-in warranty for the 750 GB model, which we feel is an OK warranty policy. The prices could come down a bit more (IMHO) though we expect new 3D NAND types this year. The industry last year moved from 32 towards 48 layers, it seems bigger volume size SSDs are coming as 64 Layer 3D NAND Technology is launching this year. The next generation 3D NAND technology, BiCS3 has 64 layers of vertical storage capability. 

 
 
 

Concluding

The Crucial MX300 series is all about getting a lot of value, volume and decent performance, the updated MX300 performed really well. And that is interesting as this is a bit of a budget model. Read performance throughout the test session is comparable and up-to snuff with the competition in the 500 MB/sec range, writes are plenty fast up-to the point where you need to write huge and massively sized multi-GB files for long periods. We noticed that after 30GB written (sustained) the write performance dropped from 470 MB/s towards 280 MB/s. But again, that is after the SLC cache thus is depleted, and 30 GB certainly is a lot. If that perf drop after 30GB written is an issue for you, you will need to spend more money on an SSD with another NAND flash write type, that is the compromise for a somewhat value SSD. The SSD (based on NL EURO prices) costs 26 cents per GB, a lot of the competition already is in that same range at 25 cents per GB for their 500/512 GB models. So yes, at roughly 25 cents per GB it would be an awesome SSD with decent storage. But clearly the tested 750 GB model is competitive in performance. For the MX300 750GB model, the volume size with 220 TBW and three years guaranteed under warranty feels pretty good. The warranty plan itself is fine really, simple carry-in. We have seen SSDs in the same volume / class and even cheaper price range rated at 300 TBW. But we also understand that the MX300 is partly competing with the EVO models from Samsung. Concluding, 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. Any SATA3 these days however is getting that SATA3 bottleneck (hence I LOVE the new NVMe developments). But if all SATA3 SSDs roughly perform similar, then my advice to you is that you need to focus on quality of NAND, TBW and warranty. Trust me, you are not going to notice the difference in-between an SSD reading at 475 MB or 560 MB/sec. It just doesn't work like that as we need many more orders of magnitude for that to become noticeable. It's a nice value SSD, and comes recommended by Guru3D.com, I would really like to see a 1TB unit at 20~25 cents/GB become the norm, sooner rather than later though. We certainly cannot complain about the MX300, it offers good value for money with proper performance levels.

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