Crucial T500 Pro Gen4 2TB SSD Review – Move Over Expensive 8-Channel High End SSDs!

TSSDR TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL

SSD testing at TSSDR differs slightly, depending on whether we are looking at consumer or enterprise storage media. For our Crucial Gen4 T500 Pro 2TB NVMe SSD testing today, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide.

For this Test Bench, there are no ‘bios’ specific performance tweaks whatsoever and the new ASUS Maximus Z790 Hero brought us to over 6GHz while the newest Kingston Renegade Fury DDR-5 memory rests comfortably at 7200MHz.

The components of this Test Bench are detailed below. All hardware is linked for purchase and product sales may be reached by a simple click on the individual item.

INTEL Z790 PCIE 5.0 COMPONENTS

PC CHASSIS:	Corsair 5000D RGB White Tempered Glass Chassis
MOTHERBOARD:	ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero Gen 5
CPU:	Intel 13th Gen Core i9-13900K
CPU COOLER:	Corsair Hydro Series H150i Capellix White
POWER SUPPLY:	Corsair HX1000i Platinum Modular 80Plus
GRAPHICS:	ZOTAC GeForce RTX 3080 Trinity White
MEMORY:	Kingston Renegade Fury RGB DDR5-7200 32GB
STORAGE:	Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Gen 4 4TB NVMe SSD
KEYBOARD:	Corsair K70 PRO RGB Optical Mechanical Gaming
MOUSE:	Corsair M65 RGB Elite FPS Gaming
MONITOR:	Samsung 34? 1440p WQHD Ultrawide Gaming

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software in use for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of Crystal Disk Info, ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Mark, AS SSD, Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AJA, TxBench, PCMark 10, 3DMark, PassMark Performance Test, Final Fantasy XIV Gaming BenchMark, as well as true data testing. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to results already obtained.

A WORD ABOUT PERFORMANCE AND BUILDS

As can be seen above, we have just upgraded from a 12th Gen Intel Z690 Alder Lake system to a 13th Gen Z790 Raptor Lake build where we saw the chipset move comfortably into PCIe 5.0. This alone may cause a performance increase in testing which we will identify in our comparison charts until there are enough Gen 5 reviews to move them to their own chart. Our view is simply that we want to provide the reader with the best possible performance and we welcome all to refer back to specific reports in order to identify the system in use should they desire. Logically, we simply haven’t the time to retest hundreds of SSDs every time we move up to a new platform. Thank you for understanding.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER. 8.17.8 X64

Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.

EXTREME TEMPS WITH HEATSINK

EXTREME HEATSINK WITHOUT HEATSINK

Crystal DiskInfo validates that our SSD is running in PCIe 4.0 x4, using the NVMe 2.0 protocol and confirms that it is TRIM capable. You may notice the temp differences with and without the heatsink above.  These are extreme tests where we had to really push to reach these temps.  We can confirm that the T500 Pro, void of any heatsink, is still an ideal SSD for any laptop or ultra book

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 4.01

ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.

ATTO performance hits highs of 6.64GB/s read and 6.05GB/s write are as good as it gets for a Gen4 4-channel SSD. Very encouraging as well is the fact that performance consistently rises as data sizes increase.  We have always found this to be the trademark of a solid SSD.