Crucial MX500 M.2 SATA SSD Review (500GB)

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 250GB Samsung 960 EVO to the test SSDs and time how long it takes. Once complete we can calculate the average speed.

The MX500 M.2 averaged 530MB/s during the 30GB write transfer. This is even faster than the results we got from the 1TB 2.5″ model.

POWER CONSUMPTION

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.

Our result with Active State Power Management enabled shows that the MX500 M.2 averaged 0.137W at idle. This is a bit on the high side compared to many other SSDs we have reviewed, and even slightly more than the 1TB 2.5″ model, but nothing to be concerned about.

POWER EFFICIENCY

Finally, we wanted to post up a graph of the power efficiency of the SSDs in write transfers. We are looking at MB/s per Watt in this graph. The higher the result, the better.

The chart above shows us just how efficient an SSD is in writing data. Here we can see that the MX500 M.2 averages 186MB/s per watt, which lands it right in the middle of our comparison graph.