Crucial BX100 SSD Review (500GB/1TB) – True Value Defined

POWER CONSUMPTION

For our power consumption testing, we have the drive connected to the system as a secondary drive. To record the wattage, we use an Amprobe AM-270 multimeter connected in line with the 5v power on our SATA power cable to the drive. The multimeter records the min/max amperage draw from the drive over our testing period.

We also record the drive’s sequential and random read and write power draw using Iometer. We then take the values recorded and calculate the wattage of the drive. Some of the results may seem high compared to a standard notebook HDD because as these are peak values under load. When we see average power draw, SSDs are still more power efficient because they only hit max power for a short period of time.

While testing we found that the highest power usage that the SSD got was just over 4.1W. This is much better than the label’s 10W rating. During idle the 500GB drive had a power consumption of 45 milliwatts and the 1TB 75 milliwatts. These low numbers are great to see. Even though the 1TB model has an additional eight NAND packages we see very little in the jump of power consumption.

REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall, the BX100’s performance in the benchmark tests were pretty good except for the 1TB drive not quite reaching read IOPS specifications. The PCMark Vantage scores were impressive especially when compared to the MX200 results we saw earlier this week. The results for PCMark 8 showed that against the other drives the 500GB and 1TB capacities didn’t fluctuate much in consistency over the span of the test. Furthermore, it finished ahead of all the drives except the MX100 512GB during light workloads. The power testing showed the drive has comparable idle power consumption to the MX200, 15mW less for the BX100 500GB at 45mW and 10mW more for the 1TB at 75mW.

Crucial seems to be continuing the price war that their MX100 started in the value SSD marketplace. The introduction of the BX100 is where Crucial left off with the MX100 and now they have developed not only a 1TB capacity for a very reasonable price, but their entire capacity range. This should in turn spark another decrease in pricing across the market.

Four years ago I bought my first SSD, the Crucial M4 64GB, for half the price of the BX100 500GB. That was when SSDs were just starting to become a PC enthusiast’s must have. Even now they are still growing, improving, and optimizing greatly with each new series of Crucial drives. HDDs are quickly become obsolete and today everyone should be able to afford an SSD at these prices. With this addition to Crucial’s value oriented drive we should expect to see even greater storage and speed increases at this place in the market in the near future.

 Due to its low price-point and performance seen here today we award Crucial’s new BX100 value series of SSDs our Gold Seal!  This SSD is definitely the gold that will perform in the PC of the typical user today!

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