To make sure these drives perform at their maximum performance, we will be disabling all the power saving features in the BIOS (C6-state, etc). The testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 10 64-bit with the latest windows updates installed. We disabled a bunch of unnecessary services such as drive indexing, Prefetch, Superfetch, Defrag and removed all the bloatware from Windows 10 to make sure there were as few processes running as possible during the testing. the 4TB model can handle up to 1000TB (TBW) which equals to about 520GB writes per day. Crucial MX500 Series Looking at average read latency in our budget all-flash setup, across the board we had very low latency. We had sub-2ms latency in almost all areas, with SW RAID coming un below 1ms in a few areas. Write latency in RAID5 are the areas that stand out, with hardware RAID measuring in at just under 23ms and storage spaces with a hefty 503ms.

Price-wise, the MX500 4TB SSD is hard to beat and comes with features such as hardware encryption, dynamic write acceleration, and can also protect your data in case of a power outage. A simple way to improve server performance is to replace those slow hard disk drives (HDD) with high-capacity solid-state drives (SDD). SSDs can provide maximum performance at a lower cost than replacing existing servers, and Crucial Technology has an affordable solution to make the decision easier. Crucial presents an SSD with a lot of storage space with the MX500 4TB. It is by no means the first SATA SSD with this much storage, but it is an interesting alternative. Once again, we are using the AS-SSD software to measure sequential read and write speed of each drive. IOMeter 4KB Benchmark Random 4K write speeds for all capacities is rated for up to 90K IOPS and 95K IOPS for random 4K read speeds. Pricing & EnduranceAlso, I like that Crucial includes a 7mm to 9.5mm adapter with their MX500 SSDs for installations that require a 9.5mm drive height.

The MX500 500GB SSD has a write endurance of 180TB (TBW) which is almost half of what the 870 EVO 500GB can offer (300TB TBW).The MX500 SSD comes in a silver aluminum enclosure and utilizes the SATA III 6Gbps interface but it is compatible with SATA II and SATA I interfaces, but that means it will work at a reduced speed.

The AS-SSD software is a popular benchmarking software used to measure the performance of an SSD. In this test we are measuring the overall score. AS-SSD Sequential Benchmark I don't have a 4TB Samsung 870 EVO drive on me but I do have the 2TB model which is what I will use in my benchmark below. In this review we will be primarily comparing the Crucial MX500 SSDs to the Samsung 870 EVO SSDs to see which one offers the best price-to-performance ratio.

Conclusion

The SSD industry has been in a race to the bottom of the barrel, but due to the NAND shortage, we've often been given the bottom without the price drops to match. Micron's new 64-layer NAND, which makes its way into the Crucial MX500, promises to tip the scales in the other direction with competitive performance and superior pricing.

The endurance of SSDs is fairly difficult to determine practically. The usage and environment heavily impact an SSD’s life. Nonetheless, these are the figures that are furnished by the companies. Parameter The 870 QVO leverages QLC NAND technology, offering substantial storage capacities up to a staggering 8TB, making it a frontrunner for heavy storage needs. On the flip side, the MX500 utilizes TLC NAND technology, which, although caps at a 2TB storage capacity, promises faster performance and greater longevity. Benchmarks Observations: It is evident that the Samsung 870 QVO slightly edges out the Crucial MX500 in both sequential and random read/write performances. While the margin is not substantial, it nonetheless offers a superior performance profile compared to the MX500. Some of the storage capacity is used for formatting and other purposes and is not available for data storage. 1GB equals 1 billion bytes. Not all capacities available at initial launch. To represent a large file usage scenario, we are copying a 5GB ISO image to a different folder on the same drive. ConclusionThe only downside that I can think of is the write endurance which is much lower than what the Samsung 870 EVO offers.