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Because of the slightly insane numbers popping up, the test experience with the T700 was just a general hoot. So much so that I also installed a couple of operating systems on it, and they felt snappier. Not a huge difference, but noticeable. Is the Crucial T700 worth it?
Pci 5 only will be good for server. For desktop for now only heat and compatible issues. Maybe two years beyond to be slim and the software can use that speed.There are no heat nor compatibility issues as long as you are using a PCIe 5 M.2 mobo. Don't be fooled by the elephant sized heatsinks that some companies are supplying with Gen 5 SSDs. In most if not all cases the mobo supplied SSD heatsink/cover plate is more than enough cooling to prevent throttling. The large heatsinks are a marketing ploy.The T700 is an excellent demonstration of what this generation of computing is capable of. If you have a new-generation system or are planning on building one, the T700 is worth considering, especially if you want the best hardware. You’re going to get cutting-edge performance, and even in the worst-case scenario, with a heatsink on, you’ll likely get performance that matches any PCIe 4.0 SSD. Nothing revs a storage reviewer’s engine more than a large jump in mainstream performance. Hitting that long skinny pedal for me was Crucial’s T700 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD, which transferred data a full gigabyte-per-second faster than any SSD we’ve tested to date. All I can say is, “Yowser!” Crucial T700 price, design, and specs
Typical I/O performance as measured using CrystalDiskMark® with a queue depth of 512 and write cache enabled. Windows 11 Core isolation disabled for performance measurement. Fresh out-of-box (FOB) state is assumed. For performance measurement purposes, the SSD may be restored to FOB state using the secure erase command. System variations will affect measured results. ATTO Disk Benchmark showcases data transfer performance by reading and writing data in chunks of increasing sizes from 512 bytes to 64 MB. In ATTO, the T700 performed well, too, but there were instances where the P5 Plus outperformed it. Specifically, the 512B and 1KB write tests. In repeated tests, I found the T700 lagging behind in some of the smaller data size write tests. Non-heatsink versions of the Crucial T700 must be installed with a motherboard or alternate heatsink to achieve optimal performance.
The T700 is a PCIe Gen 5.0 x4 NVMe M.2 SSD, rated for up to 12,400 MB/s in sequential read speeds, and up to 11,800 MB/s in sequential write speeds, as well as random read speeds and write speeds of up to 1,500K. It's a double-sided 2280 M.2 drive featuring Phison's bleeding-edge E26 controller, 4GB of LPDDR4 memory, and Microsoft DirectStorage API. The T700 is absolutely the current king of the hill, and it’s not even a particularly close contest. If you have the required PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot, it’s the NVMe SSD you want—assuming you have the required monetary wherewithal to pay for the privilege.
At least the reward for all that handiwork is, in certain conditions, some truly next-generation performance. CrystalDiskMark’s sequential read/write speed tests showed the T700 really could reach 12400MB/s read and 11800MB/s, plus a few megabytes’ change, and although the AS SSD sequential tests produced lower results they were still several gigabytes per second above those of the very fastest PCIe 4.0 drives. Since 2004, I have worked on PCMag’s hardware team, covering at various times printers, scanners, projectors, storage, and monitors. I currently focus my testing efforts on 3D printers, pro and productivity displays, and drives and SSDs of all sorts. The T700 is slated to be the first of a new set of faster PCIe 5.0 SSDs that offer even better performance than what we saw with the initial PCIe 5.0 SSD we covered in our Phison E26 SSD controller preview. The T700 uses the Phison E26 SSD controller, a robust design used in several other 5.0 SSDs, paired with speedy 232-Layer TLC flash, thus creating the fastest SSD we’ve ever tested in our labs. Impressively, it delivers this level of performance with passive cooling thanks to its well-designed heatsink, but if you remove the heatsink the SSD will also work well in motherboards with proper M.2 heatsink coverage.
Testing the Crucial T700: Seriously Fast
It's still very early in the PCI Express 5.0 game, but the Crucial T700 is the best Gen 5 SSD we've encountered to date. It's offered in the highest capacity (4TB) and is available with or without a heatsink; it has 256-bit AES encryption built in; and it's the fastest drive we've benchmarked so far. Some storage capacity is used for formatting and other purposes and is not available for data storage. 1GB equals 1 billion bytes. This SSD is not intended to be used without a heatsink, such as in a laptop or PlayStation 5.It would be illuminating to test without a heatsink anyway. The current drive only starts to throttle after 0.2-0.25 TB continuous writes, so based on testing of previous drives without heatsinks, it's quite likely the only effect from operating this drive without a heatsink would be reducing that threshold to 'only' 100 GB or so. I would expect any testing that does not involve throwing around continuous hundreds of GB of data would not see any significant (or any) performance impact from removing the cosmetic greebly.
We put the T700 through our usual internal solid-state drive benchmarks, comprising Crystal DiskMark 6.0, PCMark 10 Storage, and UL's 3DMark Storage Benchmark, which measures a drive's performance in a number of gaming-related tasks. For our comparison charts, we pitted the Crucial drive against the Aorus 10000 and a slew of the fastest PCI Express 4.0 SSDs we've tried. The 232-Layer Micron TLC (B58R) flash takes up the mantle from Micron’s very successful 176-Layer TLC (B47R). Micron has gone from four planes to six and has made other improvements that make multi-planar operations faster for superior internal parallelization. The move to 1Tb (128GB) dies over 512Gb (64GB) is also an important consideration for capacity: bigger dies, more storage. Whether in particular video game devs will make full use of it, such as to depict e.g. cities to not look like Stalinist Moscow (that is using one type of texture, which gets reused on various walls, and therefore doesn't need to load much when such a texture fills half the screen, with three types of balconies reused to make it look not as monotone) - that isn't clear of course. But the option is there, including moving towards 8K, and not using artificial loading screens, such as an elevator ride between 2 areas as the only option to move between these two areas. While gaming, both SSDs ran around 66-68 degrees Celsius, s gaming performance was unaffected. Overall, I noticed that having this dual-SSD setup raised my motherboard temperature reading by 2-3 degrees Celsius. While the Gen 5 SSDs are almost 7 months late they have merit for some desktop applications. They will not offer any practical advantage over PCIe 3 or 4 unless you are moving a lot of data at once.
A Choice of Heatsink Strategies
The T700 is not the first PCIe 5.0 SSD on the market, as the Inland TD510 has been out for a while. The T700 is also not the first to be announced by a big brand name, as we can see with the Corsair MP700. However, the T700 is the fastest implementation of the E26, as it can reach up to 12.4 GBps in sequential read workloads thanks to its speedier flash with an I/O speed of 2000 MT/s. This is in contrast to the 1600 MT/s flash used in the earlier E26 SSDs, limiting them to around 10 GBps. The E26 controller supports up to 2400 MT/s flash, which would put a cap of around 15 GBps. But for now, the T700 is the fastest around. With the motherboard heatsink installed, the T700 was hitting a temperature of 81 degrees Celsius under peak load when benchmarking. The P5 Plus ran cooler in comparison, hitting up to 70 degrees Celsius. Thermal throttling is a real concern with PCIe 5.0 SSDs, and the T700 started hitting its limits when pushed. Please note that the sequential numbers are surely huge. They are going to help with sequential data transfers like copying and pasting big files. However, with the random performance actually replicating the normal day-to-day tasks, gaming, and content creation, you will hardly see any difference as compared to the Gen 4 SSDs. As mentioned, the latest generation of NVMe SSDs promises a major speed boost, but you'll only be able to enjoy it if your hardware is new enough to support the PCIe 5.0 standard. Only the latest high-end desktops are likely to support PCI Express 5.0 off the shelf, so you may have to build your own PC from scratch or perform a major update on an existing desktop. Intel users will need a 12th or 13th Generation Core CPU with a motherboard based on Intel's Z690 or Z790 chipset. AMD fans must have a Ryzen 7000 series processor with an AM5 motherboard with an X670, X670E, or B650E chipset. As to the optional heatsink, most users will be fine without it, but if you’re going to pound on the drive in a system with lots of other heat-producing components, it couldn’t hurt.
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