The Crucial BX 500 series is a successor to the Crucial BX 300 series, which landed on our list last year. For those looking for a low-cost entry into SATA based SSDs, the Crucial MX500 250GB doesn’t make many compromises for around the $50 mark.Īlternatively, the Crucial BX500 120GB can be presently had for less than $30 - but you shouldn't buy it. The MX500 250GB blends real-world speed and price nicely and is on par with Samsung’s older 850 Evo. The MX series also offers support for Opal encryption and partial power loss protection, which are nice features on budget or otherwise aggressively priced SSDs. It uses TLC NAND and a Silicon Motion SM2258 controller, courtesy of Micron and Silicon Motion, respectively. Best SSD Sales Holiday 2018 (Black Friday & Cyber Monday)Ĭrucial MX500 250GB: The Crucial MX500 is Crucial’s first drive to make use of 64-layer 3D NAND and is part of Crucial’s consumer-oriented MX series. Our recommendations below have taken all these into consideration, given their price and class. Whether you’re looking at SATA or NVMe, relevant factors to consider are still NAND type, controller, number of PCIe lanes (two or four), NAND endurance, NAND channels supported by the controller, etc. Older motherboards and BIOS versions won’t support this feature, and at this point, probably never will. To get the most out of an NVMe drive, you need to be able to boot from it-that means BIOS support. Be wary of heatsinks, as they usually don’t translate into any real-world performance difference and are usually only for aesthetics.
This means being sure you have adequate M.2 slots on your motherboard if you’re on Skylake or Ryzen era hardware onward, you’re likely in good shape.Īlso, be warned that just because you have an M.2 slot, it doesn’t mean it’s PCIe x4. For instance, some cheaper NVMe drives only use two PCIe lanes, rather than four.Īdditionally, most consumer NVMe SSDs still adhere to the M.2 form factor. Budget NVMe drives come with a caveat, though, as many have pared down controllers and NAND channel configurations. The NVMe market has widened to the point that we’re seeing both budget and high-segments for these drives now. NVMe vs SATA in 2018Ī few years ago, these two interfaces effectively drew a line between consumers: Those for which money was no object could afford to live on the bleeding edge of storage technology, for the rest, SATA III was the obvious choice. Additionally, SATA drives hit the SATA performance ceiling a long time ago, and NVMe drives further eclipse them in performance. That said, SATA is still a legacy interface, and lower cost NVMe drives are closing the price gap. SATA drives are still relevant, and we’ve even seen Samsung refresh their venerable 850 Evo with the new 860 Evo this year. Thus far, only a couple QLC drives have made it to market, and they’re not even that competitive with TLC-based drives, much less HDDs.
QLC promises to bring price and storage parity with high-density HDDs, and further push mechanical drives out of the client PC space, but that will take some time yet. We’ve also seen QLC NAND enter the market, most notably from Micron. Some SSDs in the 500GB – 1TB range have seen new lows, and year-end deals should make those prices even more attractive. On that note, increased production has brought SSD prices down considerably in recent months. That said, 64-layer NAND is set to be supplanted by 96-layer NAND in 2019, as manufactures are ramping-up capacity and new production lines. Drives using 32-layer NAND aren’t worth considering anymore. 64-layer 3D NAND is still the standard, and the best drives are using it. This year has set some interesting trends for the SSD market. 1TB SSDs are more affordable than ever now, and we'll explore some of those listings. Today, we're looking at the best SSDs for gaming PCs, workstations, budget PC builds, and for cheap, high-capacity storage. This guide will take the legwork out of distinguishing what the year’s best SSDs are based on use case and price. That said, buying something just because it’s cheap isn’t ever a good idea, really better to know what’s best first, then buy cheap-or cheaper than usual, anyway. SSD prices have been especially good lately, and the holidays should certainly net opportunities for even better deals. These guides will also help users navigate the overwhelming amount of Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing ahead of us all.
You can check our most recent guides for the Best Cases of 2018 and Best CPUs of 2018. These guides provide a snapshot of what the year had to offer in certain spaces, like SSDs, for instance.
As we get into the holiday spirit here at GN, it’s time for our year-end round-ups and best of series-probably some of our favorite content.