Crucial BX500 Review, new 960 GB SSD for cheap gaming PCs

Crucial BX500

Crucial is reaping good sales and good reviews in its SSD ranges during this 2018. Its BX and MX ranges have a performance and price ratio that only brands like Samsung can try to match. To differentiate itself once again, Crucial has just introduced its new BX500 SSD with 960 GB, with which it aims to reach gamers with less budget.

In the launch of the Crucial BX500 only had three capabilities for its users, which was well received by users and where they needed more space could mount a RAID 0 system at low cost and high performance or opt for the highest performance and capacity version of the 1GB MX500.

With this release and at the expense of Crucial finally unveiling the price we could say that it will be, most likely, the best SSD with Euro / performance / capacity ratio in the tough fight with SanDisk and Samsung EVO.

What has been revealed are their speeds, which in this case will remain at the same level as the rest of the BX500 saga, that is, will have up to 540 MB / s of reading and up to 500 MB / s of writing. This makes Crucial BX500 great for gaming and editing large files.

To maximize the sales, this BX500 960 GB will come with NAND Flash SLC memory, which gives a high profitability and duration at the same time a great overall price and good performance.

This type of NAND cells are used for the highest profitability and lowest price by manufacturers, since they contain only 1 bit per cell and therefore its cost is lower, compared to MLC / TLC / QLC.

Crucial BX500 YouTube Review

The problem of this type of SSD for a manufacturer is to be able to include so much capacity in the same space, since having the minimum unit of bits / cell, increasing the density of NAND is really complicated.

On the other hand, since they are simpler in their form and function, their access time is faster and their durability remains intact, as Crucial certifies up to 240 TBW.

This is explained from the point of view of the SLC technology itself. Its degradation is lower and its durability is greater, mainly because each cycle P / E an SLC only needs to traverse once a single layer of oxide, against MLC or TLC that for their large capacity need different voltages to traverse several layers of rust and several times in each cycle.

Therefore, the higher the number of bits / cells, the greater the jump between layers with more voltages between them, encouraging that the number of writes as a general rule be lower than the higher bit / cell ratio is achieved.

Currently the 480 GB BX500 is at historical lows in terms of its price from December 18, since it can be obtained on Amazon for 66.99 euros, which gives us a ratio of 13 cents per gigabyte currently.

The model of 240 GB runs the same fate, being at a historical low at a price of 41.99 euros, which makes us suspect that this BX500 of 960 GB could be between 150 and 160 euros approximately on its release to the market, then end settling between 100 and 120 euros.