Crucial MX100 512GB SSD Review

It wasn’t a long time ago that you’d be bothered by the pricing of SSDs especially with capacities past 256GB getting ridiculously steep. We’ve had tons of SSDs come in for review and we ourselves are still amazed at how fast the prices are coming down. Crucial has been one to be at the helm of competitively price product and our Crucial M550 review shows how much the drive is top-notch yet still manage to bring some A-list performance. During that time, the Crucial MX100 was also making buzz and we finally have the sample in our labs for testing to see the value of this series.

Specifications

• Brand: Crucial
• Form Factor: 2.5-inch internal SSD
• Module Size: 512GB
• Warranty: Limited 3-year
• Specs: Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 6Gbps 2.5″ Internal SSD • 550 MB/s Read, 500 MB/s Write
• Series: MX100
• Product Line: Client SSD
• Interface: SATA 6.0Gb/s
• Part number: CT512MX100SSD

Crucial shop listing

Closer Look

Crucial packages the MX100 in a similarly styled box like the M550: blue-tinged, gradient colors with a shot of the product in front and details enumerated at the back.

Inside the packaging is a spacer to increase the height of the MX100 for 9.5mm slots. Not pictured is also a leaflet for your free copy of Acronis True Image HD for cloning purposes. Finally, the Crucial MX100 SSD itself wrapped in an anti-static bag.

The Crucial MX100 is a standard 2.5″ form factor SSD in a 7mm package height. A stencil of the MX is subtly printed in the main sticker but otherwise the design is basically 1:1 of the M550.

Here is a shot of a 9.5mm SSD compared to the new series of 7mm SSDs we have. Notice that the MX100 features a somewhat sleeker profile than the Fury SSD and SP910.

PERFORMANCE

Test Setup

Processor: Intel Core i7 4770K
Motherboard: ECS Z97-PK
Memory: Kingston HyperX Beast DDR3-2400
Storage: Crucial MX100 512GB SSD
PSU: BitFenix Fury 650W

[tabs] [tab title=”Potential Performance”]

ATTO Disk Benchmark benchmarks a drive’s read and write speeds with increasing file sizes and graphs them.

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For potential write testing, HD Tune was used to measure the drive’s write performance. Again, we focus on the average results for real-world relevance.

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[tab title=”Crystal DiskMark”]

Crystal Disk Mark is storage benchmarking software was developed by “hiyohiyo” of Japan, and is available for free. Crystal Disk Mark measures sequential, and random read/write speeds of storage devices.

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[tab title=”AS SSD”]

AS SSD is a benchmark tool that determines the performance of Solid State Drives but can also be used to measure hard drives, it just takes longer. The tool contains six synthetic and three copy tests .

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[tab title=”File Transfer”]

We’ve taken our compression test files, a collection of images, documents and other files ranging from 1KB to 50MB amounting to 3,310 files for 3.34GB and a single, large 12GB file. We’re posting the raw transfer results for your reference.

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[tab title=”Boot-Up Time”]

To measure boot-up time we used BootRacer. BootRacer is a free program that measures Windows boot-up times.

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[tab title=”Power Consumption”]

We hook-up a meter to our SSD and see how much it pulls from the PSU during idle and full write operation.

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[tab title=”Performance Degradation”]

One thing about SSD manufacturers is that they give the consumers some sort of false image of what their products can do. Solid-state drives by their very nature tend to go down a few levels after some usage and settle at a certain performance point which will be it’s “steady” state. What this means for you, the consumers, is that even though this drive is rated, for example, at 550/500MB at the box it will not do that after you’ve used the SSD over time. To simulate extensive usage, we’ve filled the drive with data 10 times. After which the drive is allowed to rest for TRIM to kick in and then another 10 full write cycle is performed. This is repeated until we have written 4-5TB of data.

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Conclusion

Its very clear what Crucial is trying to do with MX100: they want to take the fight straight to the competition with aggressive pricing. And as we saw in the graphs, we’ve also got a performance player in the Crucial MX100. Let’s break it down further:

Performance. Clearly aimed at users who value the price: performance rather than bleeding-edge outright benchmark figures. With gamers mostly looking to have an application/game drive to read-off large texture data, the drive complements this scenario well. Other than that, performance is quite high with the 512GB version showing off the power of its larger chips running in parallel.

Build Quality. The Crucial MX100 is well-made and very solid. As Crucial builds the drives themselves along with their own NAND, we expect some tight QA in there.

Functionality. This SSD is a perfect boot/app drive with its great sequential performance. Write performances vary especially with capacity but more or less the Crucial MX100’s target market are those just looking to dump their files into a fast SSD to read from. What should really be the best scenario here is the possibility of high-capacity RAID0 due to the reasonable cost. At RAID0, this drive will easily reach 1000MB/s sequential performance and provide 1TB of storage.

Bundle. We can’t really ask for more from an SSD and while we’ve seen some that don’t bundle cloning software, Crucial includes a full copy of Acronis True Image HD.

Value. And here is where it all boils down the price. $224 to be exact for the 512GB variant and less than half of that for the 256GB variant. This is where Crucial hits it hard, trying to outprice every competitor right now. Fact of the matter is, the Crucial MX100 has enough performance to satisfy gamers and power users where write-intensive duties isn’t top priority.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a 512GB SSD at this price range and prices can drop as low as $209 in some e-tailers. For gaming applications and basically read-intensive applications, the Crucial MX100 is going to be tough to beat. As it is right now, its price positioning gives it the upper hand in almost all instances.

If you are considering this drive, the 256GB gives you the best option for your money but if you really need the storage space or want to double-up eventually to a RAID0 1TB array then the 512GB version is the best option.

Read TechPorn’s Review of the Crucial MX100 256GB

The Crucial MX100 backed by a 3-year warranty. We give the Crucial MX100 our B2G Value Award.