Crucial BX300 SSD review - The value for money option?

 

	Review: Crucial BX300 Reviewed by: Antonis Sapanidis Provided by: Crucial Model: Crucial BX300 480GB SSD Firmware version: M2CR010

Let’s spend a little time thinking about the past, and especially the Crucial BX series. It all started back in 2015 with the outstanding BX100
SSD, a drive that was affordable and at the same time had zero compromises in build quality, and most importantly in its performance. After a few months came the BX200 SSD. It was the first TLC SSD from Crucial, and continued to be an affordable replacement for your HDD, but the TLC NAND was the limiting factor for write performance.

Now Crucial has released the BX300 SSD, an SATA 2.5" drive that it comes in three capacities, 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB. At the moment it is only available as a 2.5" SATA drive, but that is not what's impressive. The new 3D MLC NAND is the part that got me excited, and hopefully it will bring back the glory days of the BX100 SSD, both for performance and pricing.

So let's move on and start this review by taking a look at the packaging and its contents, followed by some benchmarks.

Crucial BX300 480B SSD

As always I will start by taking a look at the package and the contents that are included with the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD.
We'll start with the package.

Here is a look at the front of the box.

Also the rear of the Crucial BX300 SSD box.

Inside the box we find the usual card that has the serial for the Acronis True Image HD software, a 7mm to 9.2mm spacer, and also a small manual on how to install your SSD.

The front of the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD.

Here is the rear of the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD.

Here is a look inside the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD, and on this side we can see the four Micron 3D MLC NAND chips, the Silicon Motion SM2258 controller, covered with the thermal pad, and the DDRAM.

On the other side of the PCB we find another set of four micron 3D MLC NAND.

Specifications of the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD

We can see that the Crucial BX300 comes with a three year warranty, and a copy of Acronis true image. The Crucial BX300 SSD has a maximum read speed of 555MB/Sec, and 510MB/Sec when it comes to write speed. The drive is also available in sizes of 120GB and 240GB.

Pricing for the 120GB SSD starts at €62, the 240GB drive is available for €92, and the drive that I will be reviewing (the 480GB) for €150. All prices are based on the ones that can be found on the crucial.eu website. As always those prices are here for reference purposes so expect them to change over time.

CrystalDiskInfo

In the above screenshot we can see all the available info for the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD.

 

Let’s head to the next page where we take a look at our testing methods and the review PC.

Test machine

For this review I will be using a computer with the following configuration:

PC 1:

• Motherboard: ASUS X99-A (Intel X99 chipset)
• Processor: Intel Core i7 5280K @ 4.4GHz
• RAM: Crucial Ballistix Elite 4x8GB
• GFX: MSI GTX 960 2GB
• Sound: Onboard Realtek HD audio controller
• OS SSD: HyperX Fury 240GB
• PSU: Seasonic 750W
• Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
• Operating System: Windows 10 x64

 The Crucial BX300 480GB SSD was connected to second SATA port on the ASUS X99-A motherboard. All power saving features were disabled during each of my synthetic benchmarks.

The SATA 6Gbps drivers used on our review PC were Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) Version 14.5.0.1081.

Test applications

To test the performance of the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD, I will be using the following test applications in this review.

• HD Tune Pro
• ATTO
• Iometer
• AS SSD Benchmark
• CrystalDiskMark
• Anvil’s Storage Utilities
• PCMark

Test procedures

I will start off our testing procedures explanation by stating that I did not run many synthetic benchmarks on the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD. You may ask why I have run so few synthetic benchmarks.

SSD technology has moved so fast in the last couple of years, that basic synthetic benchmarks alone are now of very limited use, as they don't really tell us much about performance and how the drive will behave in the real world. I have therefore decided to show some basic benchmarks for the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD, and will complement this with advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show how the Cruail BX300 SSD performs in the real world.

The reality of SSD performance

While I can easily show you which SSD is technically the faster, when you use one of these modern SSDs as an operating system drive it becomes very difficult to tell them apart as far as performance is concerned.

A typical use of a small capacity SSD at the moment is to have your operating system and applications installed onto the SSD. The performance difference compared to a traditional HDD is enormous, however when you start to compare SSD to SSD the difference becomes almost impossible to detect.

Let’s look at why this is the case.

Drive A can boot to the desktop in 8.11 seconds, and drive B can boot to the desktop in 8.12 seconds, the difference in time is milliseconds, and can one really tell the difference?

The fact is, all modern SSDs are only ticking over when they are only running the OS and launching applications, it’s only when you get to some of the larger capacity SSDs, with enough free space to be able to hold the actual data that you’re going to be working with, be that video, audio or pictures, for example, that you actually get a tangible difference in performance. This is where the SSDs with the better sequential performance start to pull well ahead of the SSDs which have lower sequential read/write performance.

Small file random IOPS vs sequential performance

IOPS

This is a fairly complex subject, but I will do my best to explain things in a manner that is easy to understand.

The term IOPS is the amount of input or output transactions that can take place in a one second interval, so for example, if an SSD is quoted as being able to cope with 20,000 4K random write IOPS, then the SSD should be able to cope with 20,000 input transactions in a
period of one second. If the same SSD is said to be able to produce 20,000 4K random read IOPS, then the same SSD should be able to produce 20,000 4K random read output transactions in a one second interval.

Okay, now we have some figures to work with, the next question is how many IOPS are actually required?

This will depend on your usage pattern. If you are a typical desktop user who browses the internet, does some word processing or perhaps some audio or video editing, and perhaps plays a few games, then in actual fact, you don’t need to have massive 4K random read/write
performance. The actual amount of 4K random performance that is required for a fast and smooth running system for a desktop user with a usage pattern similar to the above will be well under 1,000 4K IOPS.

On the other hand, if the SSD is being used for running a large and complex database server, then 4K random performance is the absolute measurement of how fast that server will run, as this type of application does most of its input and output transactions in the 4K domain.

So why would I need an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS for a desktop?

In fact you don’t need this type of performance for a desktop, but an SSD which is capable of coping with 80,000 4K IOPS will be faster than an SSD which can only cope with 20,000 4K IOPS.

Okay, I just said if under 1,000 4K IOPS are actually required for typical desktop usage, why is an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS faster than an SSD with only 20,000 4K IOPS, confused?

You may ask, if I only require 1,000 4K IOPS surely the rest is wasted?

While you may never need 80,000 4K IOPS, IOPS is all about latency. The reason that an SSD can cope with as much as 80,000 4K IOPS is because latency in this domain is very low. With 4K files, even if you require to process 500 of them at the same time, you are not talking about a huge amount of data, it has far more to do with how long it takes the SSD to process a single file, and the amount of time required to process a single 4K is all about how long it takes for the SSD to access or store that data before it can move on to the next transaction.

In other words an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS performance will handle those 500 files faster than the SSD with 20,000 IOPS.

So how will a desktop user even notice this faster speed if so little 4K random IOPS and data are actually used?

Multitasking is a good example. The more tasks you run at the same time, you more you will notice the speed difference.

Sequential performance

I have always maintained that sequential performance was every bit as important as small random file performance for a desktop SSD. Some highly regarded people on other sites found this statement quite funny a couple of years ago when I made it, but my, how times have
changed in the world of SSD reviewing.

To me this was always so obvious for a desktop user. For example, let’s say you want to launch an application or game. Both have some fairly large files to load, and also a great many small files, but the point is, even the smaller files are sequential in nature. Now let’s
say you’re into audio or video editing. Video files tend to be huge, and the files are written or read sequentially. Isn’t this how many users are using their PCs these days?

Summary

So how does this shape up in the real world? Which is better, massive 4K IOPS or massive sequential performance?

In an ideal world you want both, as an SSD with massive random 4K IOPS and sequential performance will always be faster than an SSD that has high sequential performance and moderate 4K random IOPS performance, and the same applies to an SSD that has massive 4K random performance and moderate sequential performance. The SSD which has high performance in both patterns will always be the faster SSD.

However, you can still have an SSD that is very fast for desktop use that has moderate random 4K performance and massive sequential performance, the same can be said about a drive having massive random 4K performance and moderate sequential performance, as it is about getting the balance right if you have to compromise on one or the other.

Drive preparation for running the tests

All the SSDs used in this article were in a clean and fresh state when the testing period started. From then on, each drive had to rely on its own NAND cleaning effectiveness for the remainder of the tests.

• Both our spinning HDD drives were defragged before the start of each test.

• All SSD and HDD used in this article had their partitions aligned to the Windows 10 x64 defaults.

Where I use graphs in this article to display results, I will use the following colours to make it easier, for our readers to see which drive we are reviewing.

 Crucial BX300 480GB SSD

 Comparison SDD

 

Now let's head to the next page, where I look at some basic benchmarks...

Reading Benchmarks

HD Tune

HD Tune Test – Sequential reading test

The result for the Crucial BX300 SSD is just acceptable.

ATTO disk benchmark

ATTO has become a standard tool for measuring the data throughput of HDDs and SSDs. It measures the reading and writing performance, using different file sizes and block sizes.

Testing the drive with ATTO we can see that it achieves its maximum rated read and write speed.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0

CrystalDiskMark is quite a handy benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause problems for a system drive.

The result for the BX300 480GB SSD is very good.

AS SSD Benchmark

AS SSD benchmark is a benchmarking tool specifically designed to test SSDs. The application tests sequential reading and writing performance, 4K random reading and writing performance.

AS SSD benchmark also tests 4K threaded performance. This is very exciting, as this test is the first available test that I am aware of, that simulates how a PC operating system actually works. A modern PC and OS, such as Windows Vista/7 does not just run a single thread at
a time, it runs many threads. The AS SSD benchmark "4K 64Thrd" tests run 64 threads simultaneously throughout the test. If this result is good, then you can be pretty sure the drive will perform extremely well as a system drive.

After the tests complete, AS SSD benchmark derives a total score for the drive being tested. This is based on all aspects of the test results, and gives an indication of how the drive is performing overall.

Now let’s look at the results for the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison drives’ results are presented in the form of a graph.

An outstanding result for the Crucial BX300 SSD.

Let's head to the next page and run some tests using PCMark 8.....

 

PC Mark 8 - HDD Suite

We have built quite a close relationship with FutureMark software, the authors of the PCMark PC benchmarking software that we use in our tests. I decided I would use PCMark Vantage as stopgap measure until the more up-to-date PCMark 8 benchmarking suite became available. I'm pleased to say that PCMark 8 is now available, and it gives me great pleasure to introduce you all to the results obtained by this new 'real world' benchmarking suite.

I will describe the basic way that each test is carried out, above the graph for each test.

PC Mark 8 HDD suite results

Here is a screenshot displaying the results for the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD.

The Crucial BX300 SSD did manage a very impressive result of 369.38MB/s.

The result for the After Effects test.

The result for the InDesign test.

The result for Photoshop heavy test.

The result for the Illustrator test.

The result for the Photoshop light test.

The result for Battlefield 3.

The result for World of Warcraft.

The result for the Word test.

The result for the Excel test.

The result for the PowerPoint test.

Summary:

The Crucial BX300 480GB SSD showed outstanding performance.  

Let's head to the next page for our IOMeter test results.....

 

I/O Performance

There is little point of having an SSD drive that has blazing sustained reading and writing speeds, if the drive can't handle reading and writing of small random files. If you intend to use your new SSD drive to store and run your operating system, then the drive must be able
to cope with the many small random files that Windows will write to the drive continually. So I feel it is very important to test how many of these random files that a drive can handle in one second. I believe that anything over 1,000 I/O’s per second would be enough for most users running a consumer grade mainstream PC, and should provide a smooth running system. But obviously, the more I/O's that a drive can handle, the faster the drive will feel and leave more headroom for those huge multitasking sessions that users sometimes engage in.

The things that I will look at are the total I/O per second and total MB/s.

Partition alignment and sector boundaries

Windows 10 will automatically align a partition to 4k boundaries during partition creation, Windows XP won’t. It is imperative that an SSDs partition is aligned. Windows XP is also restricted to sector boundaries, while Windows 10 will use 4k boundaries if it can. The Crucial BX300 480GB SSD is 4k boundary aware, and will use these boundaries if possible. Of course it will also remap LBAs for compatibility with the sector boundaries so that the drive can be used with Windows XP.

IOMeter allows us to set the sector boundaries for conducting the tests, and I have therefore set the sector boundaries at 4K, which means the IOMeter tests are valid for Windows 10 and Windows Vista users. XP users will not be able to obtain such results.

I will provide a screenshot of the tests on the review drive for those of you who like to see the actual test result. All the comparison drive results are represented in the form of graphs.

If any of you would like to see a screenshot from any IOMeter test on a particular drive, please feel free to request one, and I’ll post the screenshot in the forum thread.

All the IOMeter tests create a 20GB data set on the target drive, and each test is run for a duration of 3 minutes.

IOMeter 4K random write test with repeating data.

The first test involves creating continual 4KB random files on the target drive with IOMeter. I use a 4KB file size, as it is believed that Windows will create and modify many of this size of file constantly in the background during a typical Windows session. It is said that
most 4K random writes take place at a queue depth of only one.

Queue depth 1

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD (Queue depth 1)

The result is very good.

Queue depth 4

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD (Queue depth 4)

The result is good.

Queue depth 32

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD (Queue depth 32)

Again the result for the Crucial BX300 is good.

4K random write queue depth profile

For this
test I used various queue depths from 1 – 32 to give you an idea how this SSD performs at different queue depths. For a normal desktop user, with lightweight multitasking, the queue depth will rarely rise above 2. For heavy multitasking, the queue depth is unlikely to rise above a value of 8.

The performance of the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD is close to the middle of the chart, and overall not that impressive.

IOMeter 4K random read test.

If there are many 4k files created, then that must also mean that many 4k files need to be read. This test measures 4k reading performance.

Queue depth 1

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD (Queue depth 1)

An excellent result to start with.

Queue depth 4

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD (Queue depth 4)

The Crucial BX300 480GB SSD delivers a very good result.

Queue depth 32

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD (Queue depth 32)

Another excellent result from the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD.

4K random read queue depth profile.     

This test shows how the review drive scales with increasing queue depths.

The overall performance of the Crucial BX300 480GB is very good.

IOMeter 512KB write test with repeating data.

Sequential writing performance is also very important, and in this test I will be measuring the sequential writing performance of the drive.

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD - 512K Sequential write with repeating data

The sequential write test gave an excellent result for the Crucial BX300 SSD.

IOMeter 512KB read test.

This test measures 512k sequential reading performance.

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD – 512K sequential reading test

Also an excellent result for Crucial BX300 SSD in the read test.

IOMeter Workstation simulation (outstanding I/Os = 64).

When running applications you will find that there is a mixture of small random files and larger sequential files, being created and read. Not only that, it isn’t just one file at a time. In this test I measure a simulated workstation pattern, with a queue depth of 64 (threaded).

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD – Workstation simulation

The result for the Crucial BX300 SSS is excellent.

Summary

The performance of the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD is generally very good.

 

Now let’s head to the next page where we will look at how the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD performs using Anvil's Storage utilities....

 

Anvil’s Storage Utilities

As well as performing SSD endurance tests. Anvil’s Storage Utilities has a very nice SSD benchmarking application. The SSD benchmark tests many different aspects of SSD performance, including 4K random at different queue depths, and also sequential performance, but more importantly than this, all using real test data.

Another very nice feature of Anvil’s SSD benchmark is the fact that you can change the compression levels of the test data. The compression levels of the data sets used for the tests can be varied from 0% compression right up to 100% compressed data, and there are even a few data profiles already included, such as database (8%) compression, and also an application profile (46%) compression, which is designed to simulate real application data being read and written to the SSD.

I will include a screenshot of the review drive, and all comparison results will be presented in the form of graphs. If you would like to see screenshots of the test results obtained on the other SSDs in this article, you can do so by following the link here.

I will also be testing three different compression profiles, which are as follows.

• 0 fill (100% compressible data)
• Application simulation profile (46% compressed)
• 100% (non compressible data)

 So let’s begin the tests.

0 fill

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD (0 fill)

Results are ranked by highest total score.

A very good result for the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD.

Application profile

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD (application profile)

Results are ranked by highest total score.

This result is excellent, for the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD.

100% incompressible

Crucial BX300 480GB SSD (100% incompressible)

Results are based on the highest total score.

For the final test the result is excellent.

Summary

The Crucial BX300 480GB SSD was able to deliver excellent performance in all three tests.

 

Now let's head to the next page for some real world tests....

 

It has become clear that simply conducting endless benchmarks on SSD drives is pointless. Real users may run a few benchmarks when they first fit their SSD drive, but most users just want a drive that performs well in the real world. They want their drive to work
"out of the box" and work fast and smoothly.

Most of the latest SSD drives can deliver very fast sustained reading and writing speeds, but these alone tell you very little about how the drive will perform in the real world.

If you intend to use your SSD as your primary system drive, with an operating system and applications installed and running from the drive, real world performance becomes much more important than just fast sequential read and write speeds, in this case I felt that it was
time to move into a different method of testing.

From now on I will only use the log files from the Event Viewer to measure the start-up and shutdown of the system, and also use filecopy to measure all my copy tests from a RAM disk to the selected storage drive that I will be testing. For these tests I will also enable all power savings features that are available, since I believe that this is the way that the majority of the users will have them set on their PC.

Real world copy tests

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I will now conduct some real world copy tests so that you can have a much better view of how the drive will perform. In these simple tests I try to simulate what a real user does with their drives. I will be copying some mp3 files, various picture and MKV files, and finishing by
installing MS Office 2007.

As I said earlier from now on all my test files will be stored in a RAM disk and copied/pasted to the destination drive using filecopy. The filecopy utility will be used from now on for all my tests, and I’ll be using it this way to measure the time that it takes to copy the files.

Before I move on to the test, I want to give you an idea on how fast your RAM is. Below you can find the results.

As we can clearly see speed isn’t going to be an issue in these tests.

Read write tests – 259 MP3 song files (1.36GB total)

I will start this set of tests by copying 259 MP3 files from the RAM disk to the destination SSD and also from the SSD to the RAM disk.

The result is excellent for the Crucial BX300 SSD.

Read write tests – 3,377 JPEG picture files (2.56GB total)

Continuing my set of tests, but this time I will be copying 2.54GB of pictures that are stored in the RAM disk to the currently testing SSD and vice versa.

Another excellent result for the Crucial BX300 SSD.

Read write tests – 1 MKV and 1 SRT file (3.46GB)

Copying a movie is very common task for all of us, and in this test there are two files that will be copied from the RAM disk to the SSD and again from the SSD to the RAM disk.

Again the Crucial BX300 SSD continues to give excellent results.

Read write tests – ISO (7927MB)

For this test, I copied ISO of the 'Iron Man' movie from the RAMDisk to the SSD and vice versa.

The same story, as the Crucial BX300 SSD continues to impress with its results.

Read write tests – Small files (533MB)

I have decided to adapt the very small files test that I am using as part of my USB3 flash tests, so this time I will be also copying all the files from the RAM disk to the SSD, and again from the SSD to the RAM disk.

Even with small files the Crucial BX300 SSD continues to give excellent results.

Windows start-up based on the Boot Racer 5.00

Start-up time

On the next screen shot you can compare the current tested SSD and compare it to other drives that I have tested. Below I present the results.

Boot time is also very good for the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD, and 28.1 seconds is an impressive result. Keep in mind that over time the boot time will change.

Installing applications

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Installing applications is possibly something you don't do that often. But should you replace your system disk, then you will most likely have to re-install your applications. Most of the SSD drives I have tested up until now are quite slow at installing applications, most likely because their I/O performance was quite limited.

For these tests, we picked some popular applications and copied the entire contents of the CD or DVD media to the RAM disk.
We did this to make sure that the reading speed of our CD/DVD reader would not hamper the performance of the target drive.

We then installed these applications onto our comparison HDD drives, which were all running mirror image installations of our Windows 10 64-bit installation, and timed the amount of time taken to install the application with a stopwatch on each of the drives.

MS Office 2007 Enterprise (full install)

Now let’s see how the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD performs with the installation of MS Office 2007 Enterprise Edition.

The procedure followed was very simple. I copied all the files from the CD to the RAM disk and used the virtual drive as a source for the installation files.

 

The Crucial BX300 480GB SSD needed 98 seconds to install Office 2007, the best result that I have seen so far.

Speed degradation after heavy testing

On this page I will measure how the SSD performs after heavy testing and usage.

I will run an AS SSD benchmark test when the OS is freshly installed so that we can get a good view of how the drive performs with the OS. After that I will fill the drive up to 50% of its capacity, use the drive for a few days, and then re-run the AS SSD benchmark. The same procedure will be followed once again, but this time the drive will be filled close to 90% or higher of its capacity. To finish this test, I will
simply delete all the extra data and leave the PC idle for a few hours so that the controller has the time to perform any necessary cleaning, then see how the drive performs.

In this picture you can see the test files that I will be copying to fill the drive with data, as you can see files vary from 8GB ISOs to very small text files.

In the picture below you will find all the applications that were installed for this test using Ninite, and I have also installed Microsoft
Office 2007.

Now let’s start our tests.

 

This is a very impressive result, considering that the drive has the OS and it's set to balance, in the power options menu. A great way to start this part of the test.

When you fill the drive to almost full, you need to expect some drop in performance, and as we can see there is one, for sequential write speed. Once again I would advise you to either leave some unallocated space on the drive, to be used as over-provisioning, or avoid filling the drive to its maximum capacity.

With the drive half filled with data, the overall performance of the Crucial BX300 SSD is excellent.

With all the extra files deleted the Crucial BX300 SSD delivers the same performance level as when I first tested it.

Write Speed test

At this moment I would like to say HD Tune write speed test was the very first test that I ran on this drive right after I got it out of the box, and from looking at the result it was obvious that it wouldn’t be very difficult to push it to its limits.

The write result is not that impressive but when you compare it with the previous BX200 the difference is huge in favour of the new drive.

This concludes our review. To read the final thoughts and conclusion, click the link below....

 

Final thoughts

The question is, did the Crucial BX300 SSD manage to continue the tradition of the BX100 SSD? Well before we go into that discussion,
I would like to mention two things that I want to see in the future from Crucial for the BX300 SSSD. The first would be to have an m.2 version of the drive, and second and more importantly would be to have a 1TB, or even better a 2TB BX300 SSD.

Now coming back to the Crucial BX300, the drive comes with very attractive pricing, but pricing alone does not have a huge impact, as for most of us the performance of the drive is the main reason why we buy, or upgrade, to newer hardware, and the overall performance of the
Crucial BX300 was excellent. Not only did it outperform the drive that it replaces, the Crucial BX200, but it also features the new 3D MLC NAND from Micron.

As we have seen, the Crucial BX300 was able to top almost all the synthetic benchmarks, but more importantly its real world performance was simply outstanding. It dominated all the real world tests that I put it though, and it also had very good performance even when the drive was almost filled with data. The Crucial BX300 is an excellent option to replace your hard drive.

To sum up, this is what I would say:

“Crucial did an excellent job making a drive that outperforms the BX200 SSD. The new 3D MLC NAND is a something that the BX300 needed and overall the drive is an excellent choice for an OS drive.”

Therefore, I give the ‘Excellent’ rating and the Editor’s 'Safe Buy’ awards to the Crucial BX300 480GB SSD.

 

Thanks to:

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