Crucial PCIe 5.0 SSD, T700, Impresses with Compact Heatsink and High Speeds (updated)

The Linus Tech Tips team has had the opportunity to test Crucial's new T700 SSD, which is set to be the company's first PCIe 5.0 SSD. The team managed to achieve impressive read speeds of over 12 GB/s in CrystalDiskMark. 

However, what makes the T700 stand out is its surprisingly compact heatsink, unlike other PCIe 5.0 SSDs such as those from Gigabyte or Sony's Nextorage, which are much larger, or actively cooled with a small fan like Corsair's MP700 and those from CFD Gaming. It should be noted that RND4K results are fairly in line with current NVMe SSDs, so we're not sure how much of a difference this performance will make in real-world situations. 

The T700 also boasts a considerable write speed of 11,857 MB/s, and there is no indication that the NVME SSD throttles thermally despite achieving such high speeds. Crucial has tweeted that the T700 will be available in May, but pricing is still unknown. However, it will likely be in a similar range because similar PCIe 5.0 SSDs from Gigabyte and CFD Gaming had MSRPs of between €350 and €400 for 2 TB.

Updated: 

Crucial has recently provided a sneak peek of their upcoming T700 M.2 NVMe Gen 5 SSD, marking the company's comeback in the high-end client SSD market. The new drive features a Phison E26-series controller, the latest-generation 3D TLC NAND flash, and DDR4 DRAM cache, all of which are produced in-house by Micron Technology. The company's own performance metrics for the drive were accidentally leaked on a key slide from the "Previewers Guide".

The Crucial T700 will be offered in three different sizes: 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB. The 1 TB model boasts sequential reads of up to 11500 MB/s, sequential writes of up to 8500 MB/s, up to 1.2 million IOPS 4K random reads, up to 1.5 million IOPS 4K random writes, and an endurance rating of 800 TBW. The 2 TB and 4 TB models offer identical performance with up to 12000 MB/s sequential reads and up to 11000 MB/s sequential writes, as well as up to 1.5 million IOPS random reads and writes. The 2 TB variant has an endurance rating of 1,200 TBW, while the 4 TB model boasts 2,400 TBW.

It also seems Crucial influenced and restricted the benchmark results to those parties willing to review it using benchmarks only showing big sustained numbers: