New Test: Crucial BX300 SSD

The BX300 is Crucial’s latest 2.5-inch consumer SSD based on 3D-NAND technology. The new BX300 SSD is the direct successor to the BX200 and features a Silicon Motion controller and special firmware. The high-performance BX300 technology is available in 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB.

Over the past few years, Crucial has released quite a few budget drives, and this new product is no exception. Despite this, the BX300 shows very impressive performance and energy efficiency compared to SSDs, in some cases 10 times faster than the latter. This drive would not be called a novelty if it did not differ from its predecessor BX200 (2015 release). The sequential read speed is 555 MB / s and write - 510 MB / s (the BX200 had indicators of 535 MB / s and 450 MB / s), and the IOPS value is 95,000 for random read and 90,000 for random write (BX200 - 66,000 IOPS and 78,000 IOPS, respectively).

To simplify the upgrade for users, there is Crucial's Advisor, a tool that determines whether a user's PC is compatible with Crucial drives. There is also an Acronis True Image HD software key for seamless data migration from an old drive to the BX300.

Key Features of the BX300:

• Volume - 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB;
• Sequential read - 555 MB / s;
• Sequential Write - 510 MB / s;
• Random reading: 45,000 IOPS (120 GB), 84,000 IOPS (240 GB), 95,000 IOPS (480 GB);
• Random Entry: 90,000 IOPS;
• Form Factor: 2.5-inch (7mm) SSD;
• Interface: SATA 6 Gb / s;
• Compatibility: from 7 mm to 9.5 mm port;
• Acronis True Image HD Software Key

Design and assembly

The appearance of the BX300 does not differ from the predecessors of the BX100 and BX200, except, of course, for information labels (product brand, form factor). The body is made of durable metal with smooth corners.

The back side of the SDD has a regular white sticker that displays information about a specific drive model, capacity and form factor.

There are two mounting holes on the sides of the drive. And given the form factor (just 2.5 inches), the BX300 can fit in almost any laptop. For stationary PCs, the manufacturer provides, along with an SSD adapter, from 7 mm to 9.5 mm.

Synthetic benchmarks (performance tests)

All tests, the results of which you will see later, were performed on the StorageReview HP Z640 workstation. For comparison, and as rivals for the BX300 were selected such drives:

• Intel 545S SSD (512 GB)
• Samsung 850 Pro SSD (1 TB)
• Samsung 850 Pro SSD (2TB)
• ADATA SU900 SSD (512 GB)
• Crucial MX200 SSD (1TB)
• Micron M600 SSD (1 TB)
• OCZ VX500 SSD (512 GB)
• WD Blue SSD (1TB)
• SanDisk Ultra 3D (1TB)

IOMeter serial transfer of 2 MB (read / write)



As you can see, the Crucial BX300 480GB came very close to the leadership position in the "Read" indicator with the indicator of 506.66MB / s, second only to the ADATA SU900 (521.55MB / s). When recording, the drive gave out 460.86MB / s, taking fourth place.

IOMeter random transmission of 2 MB (read / write)



But with random transmission, the BX300 480GB (432.21MB / s read and 461.73MB / s write) put it almost to the bottom of the list, only the ADATA SU900 512GB was worse.

IOMeter random transmission of 4K (read / write)



In this test, read performance was 30.24MB / s (at the end of the list), write - 107.21MB / s (cut off in the middle).

IOMeter random transmission 4K (read / write) / IOPS

In the IOPS category, the BX300 was able to squeeze 7740.82 IOPS for reading and 27445.66 IOPS for writing, taking the last step. Not surprisingly, the Samsung 850 Pro 2TB became the leader.

IOMeter latency with 4K recording.



In this test we considered both average and maximum latency for comparison with other drives.

IOMeter at 100% 4K reading



In this test, with a random workload with 100% reading activity and scaling from 1 to 64 QD. The BX300 showed the best result (1000 IOPS better than the Samsung 850 Pro 1TB itself) - from 27,441.61 IOPS and up to 85296.65 IOPS.

IOMeter at 100% 4K recording



In this benchmark, the BX300 480GB indicator ranged from 7804.250197 IOPS to 96519.20322 IOPS. Second place, right behind the Samsung 850 Pro.

In the final series of synthetic tests, we will compare SSDs in a mixed workload server environment with queue depths from 1 to 128. Each of our test server profiles has a strong bias towards read activity, starting from 67% reading the database profile and ending with 100% read web server profile.

IOMeter DB (IOPS)



The first is a database profile with 67% read and 33% write, mainly focused on 8K transmissions. And here the BX300 showed a range of 7438.52-47704.30 IOPS.

IOMeter Web Server (IOPS)



Our web server profile is read-only with a range of transmission sizes from 512 bytes to 512 KB. At this workload, the BX300 drive ranged from 4,598.5 IOPS to 23,988.22 IOPS.

IOMeter File Server (IOPS)



The next profile is 80% read and 20% write, the size of the transferred files is from 512 bytes to 64 KB. The BX300 issued 5,240.36 IOPS and 36,908.54 IOPS, again reaching the top of the leaders.

IOMeter Workstation (IOPS)



The last profile is focused on workstation activity with 20% write and 80% read when transferring 8K files. The start of our subject was not very good - only 5180.51 IOPS, but in the end he became a leader with an indicator of 48330.04 IOPS.

Tests in real conditions

Synthetic tests of course help determine the strengths and weaknesses of a particular drive, but do not give a full understanding of how they will work in real life. Therefore, we decided to test the BX300 using StorageMark 2010 in three categories: PC as a home theater, work PC and gaming PC.

Home Theater

Test conditions: play one 720P HD movie in Media Player Classic, one 480P SD via VLC, download 3 movies via iTunes and record one stream (15 minutes) of 1080i HDTV through Windows Media Center.



In this test, the BX300 took second place, losing the championship to the OCZ VX500 512GB.

Work PC

Test conditions - 3 hours in an office environment with 32-bit Windows Vista, running Outlook 2007, connected to an Exchange server, browsing the web using Chrome and IE8, editing files in Office 2007, viewing PDF files in Adobe Reader, an hour of local music playback and two hours of streaming music through Pandora.



The indicators are not the best, but still not the worst.

Gaming PC

In this test, simulates disk activity during the operation of a computer game. In this simulation, 94% is reading and the remaining 6% is recording. The test runs on 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate pre-configured using Steam and with games such as Grand Theft Auto 4, Left 4 Dead 2 and Mass Effect 2 that are already downloaded and installed.



Our drive did very poorly with this test, with a creak giving out 8020.11 IOPS, 431.65MB / s and 0.934 ms latency.

Conclusion The

BX300 retains the status of a good budget solution for those who finally decided to get rid of their hard drives and upgrade to SSDs. Its dimensions are also worthy of attention, since even ultrabook users can use it.

Tests, the results of which we reviewed earlier, showed a rather average result. But Crucial did not plan to release a monster that could completely tear competitors to pieces. Their main task was to give people an affordable (in terms of price) drive with decent performance. And they did it very well.

Source: storagereview

Advertising. Stock! Only now get up to 4 months of free use of VPS (KVM) with dedicated drives in the Netherlands and the USA (configurations from VPS (KVM) - E5-2650v4 (6 Cores) / 10GB DDR4 / 240GB SSD or 4TB HDD / 1Gbps 10TB - $ 29 / month and above, options with RAID1 and RAID10 are available) , a full-fledged analogue of dedicated servers, when ordering for a period of 1-12 months, the terms of the action are here,Existing subscribers can get a 2 month bonus!

How to build the infrastructure of the building. class using Dell R730xd E5-2650 v4 servers costing 9,000 euros for a penny?