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Hot off its test run this morning and in our hot little hands (well not really) is the latest Crucial consumer offering, the Crucial T710 Gen5 2TB SSD. This SSD is Crucial/Micron’s first ‘consumer’ release with their latest 276-layer G9 3D TLC NAND flash memory. This move improves upon the previous G8 232-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory and, well, we never think about this but its construction is absolutely amazing.
Look at the picture of this G9 TLC memory and consider its most likely comparison of it being a 276 floor apartment (below) with several elevators, which are actually interconnects for the transfer of data quickly from layer to layer…or floor to floor. Yet this ‘apartment building’ is somewhere in the area of 1.5mm thick. Micron’s G9 (Generation 9) memory has been demonstrated once before in a SSD at TSSDR. Can you name that SSD?
The SSD is none other than the Micron 4600 Gen5 ‘Client’ SSD and the two SSDs are virtually identical, as shown by this shot below. Which is which? Can you tell?
Both the Micron 4600 and the newest Crucial T710 rely on the Silicon Motion SM2508 Gen5 8-channel SSD controller, and both have Micron DRAM cache with two pieces of Micron 3600MT/s capable 276-layer G9 3D TLC NAND flash memory, each piece of memory with a RAW storage value of 1TB.
Both are single sided and built upon a black form factor 2280 (22mm wide x 80mm long) PCB (printed circuit board). Both use the latest NVMe 2.0 SSD operating protocol and both have AES 256-bit hardware encryption and support TCG Opal 2.02 and TCG Pyrite 2.01. Follow this report along with our previous Micron 4600 Gen5 SSD Review and see just how the two compare.
The Crucial T710 is a PCIe 5.0 (Gen5) x4 (4-lane) SSD soon to be available in capacities of 1,2 and 4TB. The big difference between the T710 and the previous T705 and T700 versions that we have reviewed is the implementation of the much smaller and much cooler 6nm Silicon Motion SM2508 SSD controller which maintains under 8 watts active power usage.
Specifications for the T710 list 14900MB/s read and 13800MB/s write along with up to 2.2 million IOPS read and 2.3 million IOPS write. We should make note that one will most likely only see these maximums achieved in a AMD based system whereas our Test Benches have always been that of Intel and performance is just a bit lower.
The Crucial T710 comes with a 5-year limited warranty and is rated at 600TBW (terabytes written) per terabyte of capacity. Checking out Amazon at the time of thiis reports publishing, we see th 1TB priced at $239.99, 2TB at $359.99 and the 4TB version at $659.99.
Let’s check out some speeds….
Thanks so much for this Les. You promised and you delivered. It will be interesting to see which one, WD or Crucial, finishes on top when the WD heatsink versions become available. And a white version wouldn’t hurt. Now on to the 4th of July and Labor Days sales!
In the last bar chart of page 4 (Final Fantasy XIV) one of the bars is labeled “WD_Black SN850X Gen5 8TB”. Shouldn’t that be Gen4?
You are absolutely correct and thank you. Will amend for future charts, as well as past charts as time permits!