Crucial MX300 1050GB

MX300 - Introduction It certainly is a wonderful time to be a PC enthusiast. Not only is the amount of computer and graphical horsepower available at an all-time low, so too is the cost of super-fast storage that can take advantage of all that horsepower at an all-time low. One need look no further than the Crucial MX300 1050GB Solid State Drive for proof of this. This SSD not only breaks the Terabyte barrier it also breaks the barrier of entry with an asking price of only $260 – or 25 cents per Gigabyte. Not that long ago a 1TB Solid State Drive would set consumers back a heck of a lot more than that and would not come with as much performance, or durability, as the MX300 1050GB offers. To be precise in addition with the usual SATA saturating sequential speed, this drive boasts a decent 92K/83K IOPS and has a Total Byte Written rating of 320TB or constantly writing over 29GB a day for three years straight. The secret to the MX300's ability to offer all that at this price is the new NAND it uses. Unlike any Crucial branded drive releases the MX300 makes use of cutting edge 3D NAND instead of 2D NAND. In a nutshell this means the NAND is not laid out in a single two dimensional plane and rather is built like a high-rise apartment. This not only dramatically increase the density of a NAND 'chip' but reduce the cost per Gigabyte of said NAND. This combination is why Crucial can offer a two Terabyte Solid State Drive that can fit inside the typical 7mm z-height "2.5-inch" chassis. While we would love to be able to show you what a Two Terabyte (actually 2.1GB) Solid State Drive can do, we have done one better and will be showing how far $520 can go these days via two 1050GB MX300s in a simple RAID 0 array. So buckle up, and get ready for lift off as we take over two Terabytes worth of cutting edge storage for one hell of a joy ride. MX300 - Specifications and Features MX300 - A Closer Look While there is no denying that the MX300's shipping container is just as elegant as its predecessors, the fact remains this is actually a much lower key box. By swapping out the black and silver box of the MX200 for a mostly gray one Crucial really has opted for an even more conservative looking package. Though in a market filled with garish and over the top 'look at me' shipping containers seemingly focused in on the thirteen-year-old this box will actually be more than eye catching than the MX200! The accessory list Crucial includes is basically the same as what ships with the MX200 series – that is to say darn decent. Not only do you get a 2.5mm adapter to turn the 7mm form-factored MX300 into a more ‘typical’ 9.5mm drive, you also get a serial for Acronis True Image HD. This software solution may not be as fully featured as the full version of Acronis’ True Image application but it will make cloning your old drive to your new SSD a snap. The only feature that is missing from this accessory list is a 3.5″ adapter plate which makes installing it into a case easier. However, considering the low asking price and the fact a lot of cases now come with 2.5″ drive mounting options this is not the concern it was even a few years ago. The MX300 itself is also a testament to the conservative approach to SSD design. The top main label is classic Crucial 'MX' black, blue and silver that contrasts nicely with the all silver metal chassis, while the bottom 'information' label is white with black text. One nice thing is the bottom label's top right corner explicitly states in bold lettering precisely what capacity version of the MX300 you are holding in your hand. This does make finding a particular MX300 in a pile of them much easier than it otherwise would be. Very nice. Before we crack open these drives and show the internals, a bit of explanation is in order about the oddball capacity rating. Basically, the new TLC 3D NAND has a density of 384Gbits per die or layer (and yes even though this new NAND is built like an apartment building you can stack a die upon a die… or a fully-fledged apartment on top of another apartment) instead of 128Gbit (MLC) or 256GBit (TLC) like planar (2D) NAND in previous generations. This doe lead to some rather odd combinations. For example, the typical '1TB' SSD is actually 1024GB… but 1024GB does not divide evenly into 48GB (384Gbits). So Crucial either had to go lower than the competition at 21 layers (1,008GB) or higher with 22 layers (1056GB – the actual on-die amount this drive has though this extra 6GB is 'over-provisioning' that is not accessible by the system. Only the controller can access it and use these free blocks to replace bad blocks, wear leveling etc. etc.). Crucial decided to be generous and give us more rather than less. This is explains why instead of 250GB, 500GB, 1TB or 2TB; MX300's are 275GB, 550, 1050GB and 2100GB. Consider this unintended consequence of using mega-density NAND a nice little bonus. Now with that taken care of as you can see the MX300 1050 makes use of a 3/4 length PCB that houses eight NAND ICs (chips), the Marvell 88SS1074 4-channel controller and a single 512MB LP-DDR3 Ram cache chip. In case you are wondering the MX300 makes use of two different IC layer densities to hit the magic '22'. To be precise there 'H' NAND ICs and 'G' NAND ICs (with H having 3 'layers' of NAND per chip, and G having only 2 'layers'). Usually we dislike seeing dissimilar NAND ICs used on the same drive, but it really was unavoidable. As such the four channel controller will not have perfect interleaving on all four channels, but each channel will still have at least 4 layers and thus good NAND interleaving level. To further boost performance the MX300 sets aside a portion of the NAND to use in what is best describe as pseudo-SLC mode. Much like smaller MX200s what the controller does is use an entire TLC cell in 1-bit mode… just as if it was SLC NAND. It then uses this space as a short term cache for random writes and once the controller feels confident that this data is indeed needed for long term storage then – and only then - is it written to the TLC NAND portion of the drive. Doing this is a lot gentler on the TLC NAND as the wear and tear of physically changing the cell from a 0 to 1 state is a lot less than with the usual six states a TLC cell has. This is a big reason why the MX300 can boast 360TB Total Byte Written specification and excellent write performance. The only downside is that the capacity of the cell is only 1/3 of what it originally was. To put that another way to create a 20GB cache buffer requires sixty gigabytes worth TLC NAND. Personally we would love to be able to manually control the size of this buffer (and create a 350GB 'SLC' SSD) but Crucial does not allow that. Also unfortunately Crucial has hard set the buffer size and no longer uses a 'floating' capacity buffer like the MX200 series makes use of. This is because it did cause the occasional hiccup if the drive was quickly filled and a main priority of the MX300 series was performance consistency. Another bonus of using a NAND based secondary cache buffer is the controller can quickly empty its RAM buffer and thus reduce the chance and amount of 'in flight' data becoming corrupted in the event of an unexpected power loss. To further reduce the chance of data loss the MX300 has a copious number of onboard capacitors that will allow the controller to do complete any writes that are ongoing, update its logs and then when the power is restored it can figure out what data in the SLC cache can be deleted and which needs to be transferred to the TLC portion of the NAND. The only data that will be lost is 'in flight' data stored in the RAM… but once again this amount is limited and since no Acknowledgement ('Ack') code is sent to the OS before it is written the NAND, the OS should not be expecting those changes to have been made. This doubling up of redundancy, triple if you include the ECC that also reduces uncorrectable data errors, means the MX300 may not have enterprise grade data loss protection but it is a lot closer than what most consumer grade drives do. MX300 - Testing Methodology The reasons to purchase a high performance storage device are as varied as the consumers who purchase them. For some application load time is the deciding factor in their purchasing decision. For others it is Virtualized Operating System performance. For others still it is game load times. For others still it is to shave a .1 of second off their synthetic test scores so as to climb ever higher in the online rankings that various sites host. With such a wide variety of criteria it behooves us to use as wide and varied a list of testing protocols as possible. As such we have used a blend of synthetic and real world benchmarks, as well as custom recorded real world game benchmarking. For custom game play we have chosen f popular titles: Borderlands 2, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Saints Row 3. These games should give a good overview of the potential performance a given storage device will offer in real world game centric scenarios. For game load times testing we have chosen games which are clearly not Internet, GPU, RAM or CPU bottlenecked. The system was cold restarted in between each load to make sure no data saved in the GPU’s ram could influence load times. As with all tests all games were run four times and an average rounded the nearest second is recorded as the official result. For the Call of Duty: Ghosts we timed the level load time for the map called Into the Deep in the single player game. This level was chosen as it contains a large map and loads a lot of data from the storage device to the GPU. For Borderlands 2 we have recorded the time it takes to fast travel from Sanctuary map to Oasis. Oasis is the beginning of the Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty DLC. This was chosen as it not only is a special level not included in the original Borderlands 2 game and thus contains additional data which should slow the load of this special map. For Saints Row 3 (labelled ‘SR3’ in the chart) we have recorded the load time from a specific save game. The game was saved just at the end of the ‘Shaundi saved’ version of “Three Way Ending” but before the cut scene. This was chosen as the game not only loads the Three Way Ending data but also the next level “Gangsta’s in Space” DLC level. For synthetic tests we used a combination of the ATTO Disk Benchmark, AS-SSD, Crystal Disk Benchmark, HDTach, HD Tune, and IOMeter. For real world (non-gaming orientated) testing we have used OS startup, Adobe Photoshop, VMWare, and data transfer times. For data transfer we timed how long a single 30GB rar file took to copy to and then from the devices. We also used 15gb of small files (from 100kb to 200MB) with a total 36,000 files in 1200 subfolders. All tests were run 4 times and average results are represented. To ensure optimum performance in between each test run the device was sanitary erased. Main Test System Processor: Intel i7 5930K Memory: 32GB (4x8GB) Crucial Ballistic Elite Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth X99 Cooling: Noctua U12S SSD: 1x Intel 750 1.2TB NVMe SSD Power Supply: Corsair AX860i Monitor: Dell U2714H OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 MX300 - HD Tune Pro Read Bandwidth For this benchmark, HD Tune Pro was used. It shows the potential read speed which you are likely to experience with these storage devices. We don’t put much stock in Burst speed readings and thus we no longer included it. The most important number is the Average Speed number. This number will tell you what to expect from a given drive in normal, day to day operations. The higher the average the faster your entire system will seem. Write Performance For this benchmark HD Tune Pro was used. To run the write benchmark on a drive, you must first remove all partitions from that drive and then and only then will it allow you to run this test. Unlike some other benchmarking utilities the HD Tune Pro writes across the full area of the drive, thus it easily shows any weakness a drive may have. The sequential file performance of this new series is everything you could expect from a SATA AHCI based model. That is to say very good. MX300 - ATTO Disk Benchmark The ATTO disk benchmark tests the drives read and write speeds using gradually larger size files. For these tests, the ATTO program was set to run from its smallest to largest value (.5KB to 8192KB) and the total length was set to 256MB. The test program then spits out an extrapolated performance figure in megabytes per second. In and out of RAID scenarios the MX300 1050GB SSD is rather good – bordering on impressive. A lot of this is of course due to the fact that it uses a mega sized pseudo-SLC cache buffer… but users really do not care about the 'how' or the 'why' and only that it does. MX300 - Crystal DiskMark Crystal DiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and random read/write speeds; and allows you to set the number of tests iterations to run. We left the number of tests at 5 and size at 100MB. MX300 - AS-SSD AS-SSD is designed to quickly test the performance of your drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and small 4K read/write speeds as well as 4K file speed at a queue depth of 6. While its primary goal is to accurately test Solid State Drives, it does equally well on all storage mediums it just takes longer to run each test as each test reads or writes 1GB of data. While not as massive an upgrade from the MX200 the MX300 1050GB is rather potent – especially in RAID scenarios. Considering the down right reasonable asking price the average consumer can easily get a lot of bang for their hard earned buck. MX300 - IOMETER: File Server Test To test each drive we ran 6 test runs per device (1,4,16,64,128,256 queue depth) each test having 8 parts, each part lasting 10 min w/ an additional 20 second ramp up. The 6 subparts were set to run 100% random, 75% read 25% write; testing 512b, 4k,8k,16k,32k,64k size chunks of data. When each test is finished IOMeter spits out a report, in that reports each of the 6 subtests are given a score in I/Os per second. We then take these 8 numbers add them together and divide by 6. This gives us an average score for that particular queue depth that is heavily weighted for file server usage. Crucial's MX series has never been targeted at the workstation marketplace so it comes as little surprise that the MX300 is not great at such tasks. By the same token when you combine two of them in a simple RAID they do produce rather impressive workstation-esque performance. Color us impressed. By dedicating a full core to internal house cleaning the PHISON S10 based XLR8 CS2211 may lack performance at shallow queue depths but it more than makes up for it once the queue depths get more realistic. This goes double for RAID-1 configurations as the demands are nicely spread across both controllers. This is not something we can say about all SATA controllers… and is one of the reasons we like the PHISON S10 so much. MX300 - System Boot Time When it comes to hard drive performance there is one area that even the most oblivious user notices: how long it takes to load the Operating System. While all the other tests were run with a Windows 7 operating system, this particular test uses another older test bed's “day to day” OS (copied over to our new testbed) which has accumulated a lot of crud over the months from installs and removals. We chose the Anti-Virus splash screen as our finish line as it is the last program to be loaded on start up. MX300 - Real World Data Transfers No matter how good a synthetic benchmark like IOMeter is, it cannot really tell you how your hard drive will perform in “real world” situations. To this end we will be running timed data transfers to give you a general idea of how its performance relates to real life use. To help replicate worse case scenarios we will transfer a 30.00GB contiguous file, then a folder containing 1200 subfolders with a total 36,000 files varying in length from 200mb to 100kb (15.00 GB total). Testing will include transfer to and transferring from the devices, using MS RichCopy and logging the performance of the drive. Here is what we found. Good boot time… check. Good data transfer speed… check. Excellent RAID performance… double check. What more could you ask for from a SATA solid state drive?! MX300 - Load Time Testing ADOBE CS6 LOAD TIME Photoshop is a notoriously slow loading program under the best of circumstances, and while the latest version is actually pretty decent, when you add in a bunch of extra brushes and the such you get a really great torture test which can bring even the best of the best to their knees. Let’s see how our review unit faired in the Adobe crucible! VMWare Load Time Performance VMWare is a powerful application which allows users the ability to run a virtualized Operating System from inside their main OS. This program is not only processor and RAM intensive but puts significant load on the storage subsystem with deep, heavy read/write IO requests to the drive. To help give you a general idea on the performance improvements from running a RAM Drive we have timed the time it takes to load XP SP3 from inside VMWare. These may be the kind of scenarios that do not play the MX300's strengths but as Stalin once said "quantity has a quality all its own" and when you combine massive capacity with a massive amount of SLC-cache the end result is a drive that can handle tasks that many SATA solid state drives cannot. Borderlands 2 Load time For Borderlands 2 we have recorded the time it takes to fast travel from Sanctuary map to Oasis. Oasis is the beginning of the Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty DLC. This was chosen as it not only is a special level not included in the original Borderlands 2 game and thus contains additional data which should slow the load of this special map. CoD: Ghosts Load time For the Call of Duty: Ghosts we timed the level load time for the map called Into the Deep in the single player game. This level was chosen as it contains a large map and loads a lot of data from the storage device to the GPU. Saints Row 3 Load time For Saints Row 3 (labelled ‘SR3’ in the chart) we have recorded the load time from a specific save game. The game was saved just at the end of the ‘Shaundi saved’ version of “Three Way Ending” but before the cut scene. This was chosen as the game not only loads the Three Way Ending data but also the next level “Gangsta’s in Space” DLC level. This level of performance is exactly what PC enthusiasts are looking for in their next (reasonably priced) storage purchase. The very fact you can get over 1TB for $260 and 2.1GB for only $520 is simply icing on the cake. MX300 - Partial and Full Drive Performance While it is important to know how a drive will perform under optimal conditions, more realistic scenarios are just as important. Knowing how drive will behave when partially or even nearly full than when it is empty is very important information to know. To quickly and accurately show this crucial information we have first filled the drive to 50% capacity and re-tested using both synthetic and real world tests. After the completion of this we then re-test at 75% and 90% of full capacity. Synthetic Test Results For our synthetic testing we have opted for our standard VMWare test. MX300 - Real World Results For a real world application we have opted for our standard Adobe CS6, and Saints Row 3 tests. This is one area that Marvell based units have never excelled at, but because of the shear quantity of pseudo-SLC cache the MX300 1050GB is easily the best long term, full capacity, performing drive Crucial has released to date. MX300 - Performance Summary and TL;DR In an effort to make sorting through all the results as easy as possible we have combined the results all of all the test results into an easy to digest summary format. By comparing this drive to similar products in all the various tests you will be able to easily find the result(s) you are interested in, see the improvement and decide if this model is worth the investment. Making a model that could live up to the rather high standards of the MX200 certainly was no easy task but Crucial has indeed precisely that. Color us impressed. MX300 - Score Card and Summary Performance: 37 out of 40. Due to the SATA AHCI bottleneck this drive is very, very fast in and out of RAID but obviously will never hold a candle to what NVMe or even AHCI'PCIe' based models can do. With that for its class the performance of the MX300 1050GB is still outstanding and sure to please average consumers and PC gaming enthusiasts alike. Technological Innovation: 18 out of 20 The only thing that would have made this a perfect 20 out of 20 is if Crucial had opted for a NVMe controller instead of Marvell's SATA AHCI controller. Besides this 'issue', the MX300 is packed to the rafters with Innovation – so much so it makes most SATA SSD's look downright backwards in comparison. Build Quality & Warranty: 19 out of 20 Like all Crucial models the MX300 is built to exceedingly high standards – right down to including physical data loos protection abilities. On the warranty front a three year warranty is a touch disappointing as Toshiba, Intel, and even newcomers like PNY now offer longer warranties. However, Crucial has a stellar reputation for making the RMA experience as painless as possible. Value: 19 out of 20 When you combine good performance with down right cavernous capacity the end result is a drive that is packed with as much value as it is technological innovation. Now if Crucial would only release a NVMe model and do for the enthusiast class what they have done – with the MX300 – for the mainstream consumer! Final Score: 93 out of 100 A combination of excellent capacity, equally great durability, and good performance is a winning one. In other words: performance, value, and capacity … what more could you ask for?! MX300 - Closing Statement There is no denying that a lot of enthusiasts who loved the MX200 would really have preferred to have seen the MX300 make use of MLC NAND and not TLC NAND. This is because planar (aka 2D) TLC NAND was fragile, slow, and got a much deserved reputation for only being fit for entry level 'cost is everything' solid state drive series. Above all else, the MX300 show that 3D NAND is an entirely new ballgame with entirely new standards upon which it should be judged. Throughout testing the MX300 – in and out of RAID we might add – did post numbers that were bloody impressive. Some may argue this is simply because the Marvell controller makes use of a Pseudo-SLC setup in which a portion of the NAND is not three bit capable but one. This may indeed be the case, and does boost performance higher than it normally would be, the fact remains that even when this 'buffer' is exhausted the NAND is still pretty peppy. More importantly by further lowering the overall price consumers can easily afford larger drives than ever before. This means not only more room for storage, but a larger SLC-cache buffer. So much so that the average consumer will never exhaust the 1050GB MX300's write buffer before it has a chance to empty it. This is doubly so when dealing with two 1050GB SSDs! To be honest it this is reduction of price per Gigabyte that makes the MX300 so impressive. After all, 'vale' is simply a judgement call based upon a fairly simple equation = performance/ cost. When the cost side of the equation is so low value threshold is equally low. Make no mistake, this drive is not just a good value because it is inexpensive but because the overall abilities of this drive are just that good. Onboard capacitors for data loss protection, one of the best hassle free warranties in industry, superb drive write durability, and yes excellent performance, all combine to create a near perfect storm. As such we strongly recommend consumers look past the 'TLC' part of the specifications page and look at the overall value the MX300 in general and the 1050GB capacity version in specific have to offer. When you do that you may just be amazed at what Crucial has been able to do in a single generation.

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