Crucial T700 SSD 4TB, M.2 2280 / M-Key / PCIe 5.0 x4, Kühlkörper

Wer hohe Performance ohne Kompromisse möchte und bereits eine entsprechend potente Plattform mit PCI Express 5.0 für M.2 besitzt, dürfte sehr viel Freude an der T700 finden ‒ gute Kühlung vorausgesetzt. AES-Verschlüsselung und TCG Opal runden den Funktionsumfang ab. Für die gezeigte Gesamtleistung gibt es völlig verdient unseren Performance-Award!

In Hinblick auf die Leistung gibt es an der T700 SSD nichts auszusetzen, es ist im Gegenteil sehr beeindruckend, welche Geschwindigkeiten der Speicherriegel erreichen kann. Ob diese Performance im Alltag wirklich nötig ist: In den allermeisten Fällen wohl eher nicht. Bewusst sein solltet ihr euch über den Kühlungsbedarf.

Mit der Crucial T700 hat ComputerBase die erste SSD mit PCI Express 5.0 im Test. Das Laufwerk mit Phison-E26-Controller erreicht bis zu 12 GB/s beim Lesen, was mit PCIe 4.0 nicht mehr möglich ist. Der Benchmark-Vergleich mit SSDs mit PCI Express 4.0 und 3.0 sowie SATA zeigt allerdings: Die Crucial ist nicht immer die schnellste.

Crucial T700 Pro is the only PCI-Express Gen 5 SSD on the market with a 4 TB variant. Unlike some vendors who adopt fan-cooled solutions, Crucial has opted for a passive heatsink, which is why thermals are an important part of our review. We'll also look at power consumption and performance, too, of course.

Even though I was expecting the 4TB variant of the T700 (heatsink edition) to easily surpass its smaller capacity brother in reality both drives were exchanging blows throughout all my tests. In the end it’s safe to say that both drives perform roughly along the same lines which isn’t a bad thing since we’re talking about performance levels surpassing even 12.000MB/s in some tests. Of course, thermal issues are still a thing with heavy workloads which is why I skipped my regular SNIA tests altogether but for most usages that don’t require long and intense periods of reads and writes current Gen5 drives with heatsinks on them will probably never surpass 40 degrees Celsius (still with PCIe 6.0 not that far away I can’t help to wonder what issues related to temperatures manufacturers will face then). At the time of my review the 4TB variant of the T700 Pro Series (Heatsink) Gen5 M.2 NVMe SSD by Crucial retails for USD499.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 478.84Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de). As expected, consumers looking for one of the best (if not the best currently) Gen5 SSDs in the market today are required to pay a premium over Gen4 models and that’s obviously fine. Overall, there’s not much I can say about the T700 Pro Series by Crucial that this review hasn’t already revealed. Performance is great, cooling thanks to the bundled heatsink is very good (again, during all my tests temperatures didn’t exceed 45 degrees Celsius for the 4TB model) and as for endurance levels with a TBW of 2400 for the 4TB variant well it doesn’t get better than this so the Golden Award is once again in order.

The Crucial T700 is the best all-around performing SSD we have tested to date. Micron brings its own bleeding-edge NAND flash to Phison’s current-flagship E26 PCIe Gen 5 controller with fantastic results. The Crucial T700 clearly led the pack in terms of sequential transfers, and offered highly competitive random 4K transfers and latency, and class-leading game and productivity performance.

One of the oldest names in the flash business is Micron/Crucial and our own relationship with them goes way back to 2010. Back then, we were one of the first to review their Crucial C300 RealSSD in a 64GB capacity, with lightning fast speeds of 357MB/s read and 76MB/s write, and a price of $139.99…

The Crucial T700 looks to be the fastest PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD that will be available on the market, arriving as early as May. Its passive cooling is a nice addition to what is an incredibly fast drive.