Crucial - T500 2TB Internal SSD PCIe Gen 4x4 NVMe M.2 with Heatsink for PS5

I bought this SSD for my PS5, and been using it with no issue at all for around a year. Very easy to install.

Just like the PlayStation brand SSD. Its run like a charm. Write/Read speed are awesome. In a less price. I would say, it is a bang for a buck for a expensive console.

SUMMARY The T500 is a premium offering from Crucial with the hardware to back it up. It reached some of the fastest Gen 4 speeds I’ve ever recorded, has 2GB of DRAM, a life expectancy of 1200 TBW, and is fully compatible with the PS5. INTRO The T500 represents Crucial’s (Crucial is owned by Micron) premium entry into the consumer NVMe market. Crucial has put all the necessary hardware on the drive to make it a top performer in the field and the specs and the results prove it. The T500 is capable of sequential read speeds up to 7400MB/s and write speeds of 7000 MB/s. Crucial places approximately 1GB of DRAM per TB, so this 2TB SSD is equipped with 2GB of DDR4 DRAM. Managing all of this is the latest Phison controller that supports Microsoft’s DirectStorage tech. Warranty on the drive is 5 years with an endurance rating of 1200TBW. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION My test computer is a new 2023 Asus ExpertCenter. It has a 13th generation Intel Core i5 processor, 16GB of RAM, and most importantly, supports the latest Gen4 NVMe interface. The computer came with a Micron Gen 4 NVMe drive installed, but it was only a 500GB model and honestly, speeds into and out of the drive were underwhelming. Far from what I would have expected from a Gen 4 drive. While I was hoping for improved performance from the desktop, my real reason for installing the T500 is I am trying to make the Asus a mild gaming PC in addition to its daily chores as my primary workhorse. After installing just 2 games on an otherwise fresh install of Windows 11, I had clogged up over 60% of my existing drive. This was forcing me to store larger work files on my NAS and my performance was dropping off rapidly, the fuller the 500GB model got. Storage room improved significantly with the T500 as final capacity after partitioning, provisioning, and installation of Windows 11 yielded 1.83TB of usable storage space. After installing the drive in the desktop and a fresh copy of Windows 11, it was time to reload all the latest drivers, my current choice of games, and all the latest productivity and business software. Surprisingly, the computer was much more responsive. Opening and installing large files seemed much quicker. Larger video driver downloads compiled faster and were much quicker to open after download. The computer just seemed peppier and no matter what I asked of the desktop, it just felt much snappier and less labored. I thought this was more of a mind trick than anything. I had made myself believe that after spending all this time installing the drive and re-downloading all the software I use, this desktop must be quicker. Kind of like when you put a shiny new part on your car and you swear it runs better, has more power, and gets better mileage. So, was I just making myself believe it, or was it faster? Time to find out. Fingers crossed, because this installation, update, and all the software downloads & installs took a while. Ugh. Queuing up CrystalDiskMark confirmed my observations. The desktop is decidedly faster than it was. Going from one Micron drive to another shows a vast disparity in drives with the same Gen 4 interface. Attached are photos of the results. The T500 is nearly twice as fast as my old NVMe drive. Sequential and Random read and write speeds are right at where Crucial claims they should be, topping more than 7000MB/s. Outstanding. Even more impressive, is that even during all my benchmarking, the drive never got over 71C and never thermal throttled. Partly because of good case airflow, but mostly due to the integrated heatsink on the drive. A worthy option whether you are installing the drive in a PS5 or a desktop. Synthetic benchmarks aside, this drive is markedly faster in day-to-day tasks. Opening larger driver installation packages is much quicker. Driver installs, game installs, everything happens much quicker with the T500. To prove my theory, I used my 2 newest games I purchased over the holidays. The files are massive (both games clocked in at over 80+ GB each). Once the games are downloaded, the installer goes back, reads, and verifies the installation. With over 80GB per game, this can take a while and it did. My old Micron drive averaged just over 1 GB/s read speeds (sorry, I don’t have photos documenting). Top read speed was approximately 1.25 GB/s. Not bad. However, the T500 crushed it. Game verification was taking place at over 4 GB/s with speeds reaching up to 4.3 GB/s. That’s nearly 4x the increase in performance! This is immediately noticeable when opening a large application, starting a new game, installing drivers, etc. NEGATIVES The only negative I find about the T500 is its lack of hardware-based encryption. I scoured the Crucial website and even their product literature and can find no mention of support for encryption. A premium drive of this caliber deserves the ability to support hardware-based data encryption, especially one that Crucial is billing not only as a gaming drive, but as a drive designed for demanding workloads. FINAL THOUGHTS The lack of hardware-based data encryption is the only fault I can find with the T500. It is an excellent drive that can reach the upper limits of data throughput in the Gen 4 interface. It has a great warranty and is made using, in my experience over the years, Micron’s excellent memory chips. I have had nothing but exceptional performance from my Crucial and Micron products. I’ve been using a low-end P3 in another desktop for years without issue. I have no doubt this drive will serve consumers well and will continue with Crucial’s excellent reliability. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Decent ssd. Did remove the heatsink as it was not needed.

First: outer package was not even sealed completely. anyone with a flashlight could look inside it and i suspect someone did try to rip my SSD out of it!! The very large box (13"x8"x4") was damaged on delivery via UPS, my wife picked it up and shows it on Ring doorbell, also! Zero packing material inside. noticed a huge 3in gap as though someone tried to pry it open. the small Crucial box inside is 4"x5"x1.25" with crushed area on its bottom. Second: inspection of the SSD inside appears undamaged. I will update review after installation and performance review.