The Crucial BX300 (480GB) SSD Review: Back To MLC
by Billy Tallis on August 29, 2017 9:00 AM ESTSequential Read Performance
Our first test of sequential read performance uses short bursts of 128MB, issued as 128kB operations with no queuing. The test averages performance across eight bursts for a total of 1GB of data transferred from a drive containing 16GB of data. Between each burst the drive is given enough idle time to keep the overall duty cycle at 20%.
The sequential read burst speed of the Crucial BX300 is faster than any previous Crucial drive, but only just barely catches up to the rest of the market.
Our test of sustained sequential reads uses queue depths from 1 to 32, with the performance and power scores computed as the average of QD1, QD2 and QD4. Each queue depth is tested for up to one minute or 32GB transferred, from a drive containing 64GB of data.
The sustained sequential read performance of the BX300 actually shows a regression from the BX200, though both drives fall in the middle of the pack and above Crucial's MX drives. The fastest SATA SSD (Samsung 850 PRO) is 45% faster than the BX300, and even the Intel 545s is 22% faster.
The power efficiency of the Crucial BX300 on the sequential read test is poor, and the other two drives that use Micron's 3D NAND (as TLC) join the BX300 at the bottom of the chart. The Intel 545s does well on this efficiency score, so Micron will probably be able to shore up this weakness in future products when they adopt their 64L 3D NAND.
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Samsung's SSDs are the best-behaved on this test, with performance saturating at QD2 and consistently staying there through the rest of the test. The MX300 is also quite consistent through this test, but with much lower performance overall.
Sequential Write Performance
Our test of sequential write burst performance is structured identically to the sequential read burst performance test save for the direction of the data transfer. Each burst writes 128MB as 128kB operations issued at QD1, for a total of 1GB of data written to a drive containing 16GB of data.
The burst sequential write speed of the BX300 is good, but not enough for it to stand out from the crowd or to beat the MX200. The MX300 stands out for being substantially slower than most SATA SSDs.
Our test of sustained sequential writes is structured identically to our sustained sequential read test, save for the direction of the data transfers. Queue depths range from 1 to 32 and each queue depth is tested for up to one minute or 32GB, followed by up to one minute of idle time for the drive to cool off and perform garbage collection. The test is confined to a 64GB span of the drive.
On the longer sequential write test, the BX300 stays in the top half of the chart and performs close to the top tier of drives, but is a bit slow given that it uses 3D MLC.
The power efficiency of the Crucial BX300 is a bit better than Samsung's SSDs, but the drives using Micron's 3D TLC are more efficient and Toshiba's OCZ VX500 is in the lead by a substantial margin.
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The Crucial BX300's sequential write speed saturates at QD4 and it performs steadily thereafter, but at QD2 it is much slower than its maximum and is outperformed by many SSDs.
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MrSpadge - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
A budget drive with budget price, without any real weakness - well done!nwarawa - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
Does this thing still have partial power loss protection? I don't see much in the way of capacitors in the images, at least compared to the M500 up to the MX300Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - link
No, it does not. The BX series always omits that feature.nwarawa - Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - link
"The BX series always omits that feature."Incorrect. The BX100 most definitely did. I even confirmed with Crucial themselves.
Samus - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link
BX100 PCB: http://www.storagereview.com/images/StorageReview-...No power loss protection.
BX series has never offered it. If Micron/Crucial said otherwise, they lied.
Samus - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link
Here is a high-res shot from AT: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9144/IMG_2266.jpgKristian seems to believe in that review there are enough caps to drive 8 NAND dies, a piece of 1.35v DDR3 DRAM, and the SMI controller, for 200us.
As an engineer, without even measuring the capacitance of the tiny inlays of that PCB, it's visually clear this is physically impossible. Just comparing to the PCB of the MX100 which has a dedicated PLP circuit and rows of caps, no matter how much power efficiency the BX100 design has over the MX100, the level of PLP is going to be entirely different, which leads me to this thread:
This thread has a good definition of "power loss protection" on the BX100: http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/Crucial-...
Basically, it's discussed that about 2-4MB of the indirection table cache (which is write-thru to the NAND by design) can be protected by the design. In other words, insignificant and irrelevant. This is why PLP was never marketed for the BX100. It's useless. Most non-enterprise implementations are.
nwarawa - Tuesday, September 12, 2017 - link
I wouldn't call partial PLP "useless". Old SSDs wouldn't just lose SOME data. They would often lose ALL data. It would be nice to see an updated version of this test from years ago:http://lkcl.net/reports/ssd_analysis.html
The M4 didn't have the partial PLP, so it would be interesting to see how much of an improvement the M500 with it's partial PLP made. For that matter, some Phison S10 drives and Samsung's last few years of models mention some form of firmware based PLP... so how effective are they?
Anyone want to start a GoFundMe for this guy to run some updated tests?
nwarawa - Tuesday, September 12, 2017 - link
Update: I reached out to lkcl to see if he's interested in continuing the testing, and if GoFundMe would work for him. I said I would chip in $10-$20 to see some updated test results. Anyone else interested in these tests?nwarawa - Tuesday, September 12, 2017 - link
Samus, you didn't read carefully enough. It's not whether or not it has FULL power loss protection, but PARTIAL power loss protection. You can read anandtech's review of the BX100 for more information on what that entails. The very link you posted shows the little capacitors that are sufficient for the PARTIAL power loss protection. The reason this was even brought up is that there seem to be fewer of those capacitors on the BX300, which raised doubt as to if the feature was still included. I was just in a convo with Crucial directly, and they confirmed that the BX300 does indeed still have partial PLP.FunBunny2 - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
when 3D NAND was first proposed, durability was supposed to improve because such devices could/would be built on larger nm nodes. has that actually happened? what node(s) are being used for 32/64L?