Crucial MX300 SSD Review (750GB)

REAL WORLD FILE TRANSFER

We also wanted to see how performance was in a real world use when transferring large files to the SSD. For this test we are going to simply stress write performance by transferring over a 30GB folder of movies off of a 512GB Samsung 950 Pro to the test SSDs and time how long it takes. Once complete we can calculate the average speed. For reference we have included both a 2.5″ and 3.5″ WD Blue HDD.

The MX300 did very well in this benchmark. It was able to write at an average of 539MB/s. This puts it in line with the Samsung 850 EVO and other higher-end SSDs.

IDLE POWER EFFICIENCY

For our power consumption testing, we have the drive connected to the system as a secondary drive. To record the wattage, we are now utilizing a Quarch Technology Programmable Power Module. It allows us to accurately measure power consumption over time and is flexible enough to allow us to test any SSD that comes our way.

Our power analysis may change as time goes on, but for now we are looking at just a few metrics with the main goal of measuring our results against the manufacturer’s ratings. Because most consumer systems are at idle for about 80% of the time, idle power consumption is an important measure to look at when understanding the efficiency of a drive.

In the chart above we can see that SSDs are magnitudes more efficient than standard 3.5″ HDDs, though, the 2.5″ WD Blue does decent for itself, showing to be more efficient than some SSDs. The Crucial MX300 shows very well controlled idle power consumption, consuming only 36 milliwatts, which is almost the best we have seen from a 500GB/1TB class SSD other than Samsung 850 EVOs and its BX200 bother.

ACTIVE POWER EFFICIENCY

After recording idle power consumption, we record the power consumed during the 30GB transfer. This this data should give us some better insight into how little or how much power an active SSD consumes during write tasks, however, in order to paint a better picture, we then take the Watt values and divide it by the MB/s from the transfer to show each drive’s efficiency. The higher the result in the graph below, the better.

In the chart above shows us some great results. First we see that the Crucial MX300 is the most power efficient drive under this specific workload, beating out even the Samsung 850 EVO! This test also shows that the efficiency of the 750GB model is nearly double that of the older MX200 500GB model.