Crucial BX300 480GB SSD Review

Introduction & Closer Look

In the world of Crucial SSD products, they have basically offered 2 ranges; the BX being the slightly lower positioned affordable upgrade, as opposed to it’s MX sibling. At launch Micron offer the new BX300 series in 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB options and it is the latter we have here today for your viewing pleasure.

Anyone familiar with the BX range from Crucial will immediately see that the packaging of the drive is identical to its predecessor in almost every way. Having a strong brand identity is a great thing, but I would like to have seen some difference to help distinguish this new range.

With the outer packaging being extremely familiar, it is somewhat unsurprising that the drive itself follows this trend, with its silver casing adorned by its blue & white label.

Only when we flip it over do we get the confirmation of the model and capacity of SSD that we are working with today.

However, packaging and aesthetics is not really what we are interested in, and it’s what is contained inside that is of real interest. Here we have a half size board, housing eight 3D NAND flash memory ICs (four on each side of the board). Directing this total of 480GB is the Silicon Motion SM2258 4-channel controller, which sits alongside the 512MB DRAM cache buffer on the PCB.

Specifications

• Form Factor: 2.5” 7mm
• Controller: Silicon Motion SM2258
• NAND: Micron 256Gbit 32-layer 3D MLC
• DRAM (DDR3): 512MB
• SLC Write Cache: 16GB
• Sequential Read: 555MB/s
• Sequential Write: 510MB/s
• 4KB Random Read: 95k IOPS
• 4KB Random Write: 90k IOPS
• Write Endurance: 160TB
• Warranty: 3 years limited

Test Setup & Performance

Test Setup:

• CPU – Intel Core i7 6700k
• Motherboard –Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero Alpha
• Cooler – ID Cooling Auraflow 240
• GPU – ZOTAC GTX 1060 6GB AMP! Edition
• RAM – Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 32GB DDR4 2666MHz
• SSD –Crucial BX300 240GB
• PSU – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 11 1200w
• OS: Windows 10 64 bit

Methodology

All benchmarks are done on a fresh install of Windows 10 Professional 64-bit that is fully up-to-date with Windows Updates to ensure that the performance reflects a real-world scenario and not that of a tweaked benchmarking system.

Benchmarks

AS SSD – 4K read and write speeds & sequential read and write speeds

4.75GB Transfer Test – Time taken in seconds to transfer files to the SSD; fastest and quickest drive wins!

Performance

AS SSD

4.75GB Transfer Test

Conclusion

Performance

The new BX300 not only offers a real step against it’s BX200 predecessor, but more than holds it’s own against everything else in our charts. In our tests we fell just shy of the quoted read/write speeds of 555 and 510 MB/s respectively.

Perhaps the most important test for the average user is our real-world data transfer test, and the BX300 rated a respectable time of under 15 seconds to transfer just shy of 5GB of data.

Design

There is really very little to say here, given that aside from casing colour and choice of sticker design, little more can be achieved with an SSD. Crucial have opted for an identical aesthetic to their previous BX200 design. Does it really matter??? Not really… but I would have liked to have seen something a little bit different to herald this new model.

Value

At the time of the review, the 480GB variant retails a shade over £130 in the UK. At that price you are looking at £0.27 per GB of the usable 480GB capacity, which is on a par (if not better) than anything else on the market today that gives equivalent performance.

Final Thoughts

For anyone today that still relies on a mechanical HDD for their boot drive, then the move to any SSD is an absolute no brainer… in fact any SSD would be a vast improvement. For anyone in the market for a good performing SATA3 SSD, that also delivers good value for money, then I recommend that you consider the new Crucial BX300.

Buy from Crucial: £130.79

Huge thanks to Crucial for sending the BX300 480GB SSD in for review