As this is both a Crucial branded model… and a “2280 edition” of an existing model it should come as no surprise that the shipping container is basically the same as the standard P310’s box. That is to say its combination of white background, blue font, and nicely sized picture of the M.2 SSD housed inside Just Works™. Yes. It is on the conservative side. In fact, one could argue that Crucial’s almost aggressiveness in their conservatives makes them stand out more than the flash-n-dash boxes most other companies use. Bluntly stated, this is the equivalent of placing a Bentley in amongst a bunch of Dodge Vipers… and those who know will be immediately drawn the Bentley and not the various “Poors Edition” wannabe Super Car.
Moving on. The interior packaging is similar but not the same as the standard P310 series. That is to say while it does rely upon a two piece, plastic ‘clamshell’ style interior ‘house’ the P310 2280 lacks the duality of the OG/2230 P310 series. Which is fine. This is not a 22x30mm model where the design team foresaw the need for not only 2280 adapters… but housing both inside the original packaging. Put another way, the P310 2280 uses the ‘standard’ Crucial clamshell and that is perfectly acceptable for 2280 sized M.2 drives. The standard option uses a ‘defense in depth’ strategy that has show to work well in the past and has proven itself more than capable of handling the (typical) bumps and bruises Ye Olde Angry Shipping Agent will inevitably inflict on this box while it is in their… ‘tender mercies’.
For those who have not read up on the original P310 the P310 2280s components may come as a bit of surprise. Ironically… those who have read our previous P310 2230 2TB review will equally be surprised by some of Crucial’s design decisions. Let’s start with the core components and go over what has changed and not changed… as this is a very interesting model to say the least.
First up you have the controller. The new(ish) PCIe 4.0 x 4 Phison E27T controller is actually a very good choice for this more budget minded model. After all, the E27T’s combination of 4-channels with DRAM-Less abilities makes for a much more palatable purchase for Crucial. In fact, when purchased by not by the pallet or even tractor trailer load… but at the weekly (possibly even monthly) factory output levels the per IC price is not what anyone would consider a large impact on the P310 series build cost.
Furthermore where there are only 4 channels to populate, with each one only needing 3600MT/s to be saturated, and it only has to hit “good enough” performance levels by PCIe 4.0 standards, which is easily accomplished by Microns N58R QLC NAND, this is a model that can be consider fast enough and inexpensive enough to satisfy a wide range of build’s secondary and in some cases primary storage needs.
So yes. You will not find a DDRx RAM IC on the PCB. Yes. You will not find a virtual ton of NAND ICs either.
All of which will come as little surprise to those who already know about the P310 series. What will be surprising is the fact that Crucial has not taken the time to minimize the lack of NAND ICs that accompany 2230 form-factor standards. Yes. Just as with the original P310 2TB, the 2280 edition only makes use of one NAND IC. Ugh. This is not a good thing. At all.
We completely understand why the OG P310 needed to rely upon only a single NAND IC… as it is designed for devices which not only demand a 22×30 form-factor but also a single sided one at that. Thus no room for even a second NAND IC. With 22×80 fomr-factor there is zero good reasons to not at the very least include a second NAND IC. Heck, in the 2280 M.2 NVMe marketplace dual sidedness is not that big a deal. Thus there was room for not one extra, not two extra… but three extra. Which would allowed the P310 2280 edition the luxury of having each of the 27T’s four channels directly connected to an entire NAND IC and not just a couple dies worth on one single NAND IC.
Why would that matter, and why do we consider this a major misstep by Crucial? Simple. Saturation of the CMOS baked in the NAND IC itself. Under normal ‘d drive’ conditions the chances of the single CMOS worth of electronics being noticeably overwhelmed by I/O requests are minor. Outside of massive, p-SLC write cache exhausting write requests… it probably just will not happen. As a ‘C’ drive that is running a modern OS? Yeah. Even excluding the SmartFlush a logs that will try and keep ahead of p-SLC write buffer exhaustion (that cause Phison drives to have a ‘classic’ 3 tier / steps write performance levels)… I/0 requests can indeed make that one CMOS worth of electronics be the bottleneck that limits the E27T. That is something no 2280 drive should ever suffer from. The small 4 channel controller and its lack of on PCB cache should be the limiting factor. What a missed opportunity to say the least.
More puzzling still is the fact that is blatantly obvious that Crucial did take the time to rearrange the PCB circuity. So it is not like this is just a P310 with factory 2280 adapter baked directly into it or anything. In fact, if you look closely at the PCB you can see that not only did the rearrange the circuitry… the had to mod’ their existing 2280 PCB so as to work with the QLC NAND’s smaller footprint! IE It is straight up installed in a E/W orientation when the PCB already had N/S contact points built into it… as that is what most 2280s do, including Crucial’s P5, T500, and T7xx series. Strange.
On the positive side, this is a much easier to install in the typical PC storage device than its lil’ bro 310 2230. So much so that, unlike the P310 2230 series, it is Plug and Play simple. Which is a good thing as that is the standard upon which all 2280 SSDs (including SATA) have to meet.
Also on the positive side is this is a model that sips power and creates very little heat. So much so it makes its more expensive sibling the T500 series seem greedy by comparison. As such this is basically a drive that can be cooled with potato level cooling. Hell. If you do not push it too hard and use it mostly as a read (nearly) only ‘D’ drive it could probably get by without any heat sinks. Something the T500 series can also not do.
Taken as a whole. The P310 2280 does appear to be a decently designed model. Albeit one that may have been rushed a little to quick to market and with a couple quirks a standard QA/QC ‘sanity check’ would have caught. Best guess is Crucial was caught a little flat footed by how popular the 2230 edition is, and instead of obtaining a large quantity of lower density NAND ICs for the P310… they just tacked in on the NAND ICs set aside for the 2230 edition. Hopefully if a P320 is released in 2280 form-factor Crucial will take the time to remove this nitpicks.
