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MX100 PACKAGING AND COMPONENTS
The MX100’s packaging is just a cardboard box matching Crucial’s typical blue and grey theme as seen with their other SSDs.
Included in the box is not only the 7mm thick 2.5″ MX100, but a 7mm to 9.5mm spacer you can attach to the drive if need be for size compatibility purposes. Furthermore and more interestingly, they seem to be taking note on what other companies have been doing when they include their migration software with their drives. Crucial is including Acronis True Image HD key with every MX100 drive as well.
The casing of the MX100 is a nice etched aluminum finish with the PCB screwed into the aluminum casing and then protected by an aluminum base plate.
Once we void the MX100 warranty by removing the casing, we get to see the beauty that lies inside. A green PCB that appears to look almost exactly the same as the M550.
There is a Marvell 8 channel 88SS9189 controller. A thermal pad attached to the aluminum casing rests against the chip to help dissipate heat.
This controller is a little more optimized than the previous 88SS9187 controller The M500 has and allows for better DevSLP support. DevSLP allows for very low power usage in sleep mode. The MX100, it will only use 100mW of power at idle. And when active, the drive will use up to 3.7W of power for the 256GB variant and up to 4.2W for the 512GB variant when transferring data.
On the PCB there are 16 modules of Micron NAND flash memory, as well as a single Micron cache memory chip on the front. By using the Micron FBGA Decoder, we can identify the 256GB memory as having the product number MT29F128G08CBCCBH6 and the 512GB memory product number being MT29F256G08CECCBH6. It is 16nm MLC NAND flash memory with each module being 16GB in capacity for the 256GB drive and 32GB for the 512GB drive. Although the total RAW capacity of these SSDs are 256GB and 512GB, usable storage space is only 238GB and 476GB respectively.
And finally, below we end our PCB tour with a close up of the power capacitor array that allows for the drive to stay on long enough to flush the DRAM buffer to the NAND in case of a power failure.
This drive is an insane value, especially given performance. It’ just too bad, that they won’t offer 1TB version.
Samsung should really update it’s aging 840EVO, because crucial is destroying them 🙂
Performance wise, the 840 EVO actually is competitive compared to this. The drawback is that it is a TLC drive. Even at 16nm, the MLC MX100 will be a better choice (that and it has power loss protection). Judging by the performance, only the 512 GB version seems to fully saturate the controller. Heck, the 512 GB version is about as fast as the M550, which is supposed to be the “performance” version of Crucial’s SSD line. The 256 GB version is slower. I would imagine that the 128 GB version is even slower.
The only thing I wish was a better controller. Marvell 88SS9189 powers this chip. On one hand, it’s a reliable, proven beast. We should not have any hitches on this drive. Usually for those who want reliable, it’s become standard advice on the computer enthusiast forums to wait a few months when a new controller hits the market to make sure that there are no issues. On the other, it’s not the fastest chip around. Write performance isn’t top notch it looks like. I guess at this price point, it’s not possible to get a top of the line chip.
We seem to be seeing the proliferation of enterprise-like features onto consumer SSDs.
This drive offers:
– Power loss protection
– Encryption support
– Some pretty solid data protection features
There have been other “enterprise-like features” on consumer drives.
– The Corsair Neutron GTX’s LAMD controller offered really good sustained write performance – especially in sequential benchmarks
– OCZ’s Vector 150 too seemed to have good performance consistency and judging by the PR around the Vector 180, it seems to be following in delivering enterprise features to enthusiasts
I think that looking forward, the lines between consumer SSD and entry level enterprise SSD are beginning to blur.
I’d love to see a LAMD-like controller with power loss protection, data protection, and offered with premium quality MLC NAND – at consumer prices like this. Judging by how ferocious competition is getting, that may not be far.
> The only thing I wish was a better controller. Marvell 88SS9189 powers
this chip. On one hand, it’s a reliable, proven beast. We should not
have any hitches on this drive. Usually for those who want reliable,
it’s become standard advice on the computer enthusiast forums to wait a
few months when a new controller hits the market to make sure that there
are no issues. On the other, it’s not the fastest chip around. Write
performance isn’t top notch it looks like. I guess at this price point,
it’s not possible to get a top of the line chip.
Actually, Marvell *89 (and 87*) is a wicked fast silicon; so fast in fact, that the fastest drive on sata6gbit is acutally based on the very same controller (or a older revision of that) — Sandisk Extreme PRO.
Its not the controller, that makes the MX100 a lesser performing drive. Its the use of “subpar” NAND and firmware that makes mx100 (and other crucial drives) middlerange at best. But to be honest, its not like someone buying such a drive is gonna notice the difference anyway. Especially writes speeds (which are often criticized). Bulk of workload is reads anyway. There is little use for very fast sequential writes on consumer drives anyway.
Re-reading the Sandisk reviews, you may be right. They do use the same family of controller. Hmm interesting, so it is the NAND that is holding the chip back.
Hmm, this drive might get somewhat faster with newer firmware. But yeah you are right that the 16nm NAND is not that good.
” But to be honest, its not like someone buying such a drive is gonna
notice the difference anyway. Especially writes speeds (which are often
criticized). Bulk of workload is reads anyway. There is little use for
very fast sequential writes on consumer drives anyway.”
It will depend on how the end user uses their SSD.
But I agree that for most consumers, they are mostly doing reads, so read speed will dictate real speed most often. Then again, it’s probably not worth for most consumers paying the premium for something like the Extreme Pro either. For real world stuff, it’s probably not noticeable for most consumers.
I think we are seeing some sort of segmentation like we did for hard drives. Western Digital for example has a “Black” series of drives that are faster, at the expense of cost:capacity, noise, and power consumption.
Higher end SSDs seem to cost about 50-60% more per unit of storage, but offer higher quality NAND.
looks like someone turned off their cstates for once
Yes… we are running a bit of a balancing act on this one, leverage coming from the fact that all new motherboards are optimized with C States off. It is still very funny how little education there really is on the benefits vs vulnerability with C States on or off.
Can the Guide get an update about “C States” ?
It looks like one was planned but I do not see it in the Guide:
https://www.thessdreview.com/Forums/ssd-optimization-guide/2763-altering-c1e-c3-c6-ssd-performance-enhancement-pros-cons-3.html
This HP Guide claims “C States” affect latency due to turboing: https://www.fusionio.com/load/-media-/2ojjak/docsLibrary/Configuring_and_Tuning_HP_Servers_for_Low-Latency_Applications-c01804533.pdf
Thanks.
It’s worth noting that the 256 is actually a 320 drive. With 20% overprovisioning the MX100 performance won’t degrade like a bargain drive with 7%
Ralph-
What do you mean by, “…the 256 is actually a 320 drive…”? When you pop it in, how many GB are available? Could somebody clone a nearly full 320GB HDD (Hard Disc Drive) onto this?
Jim
He meant it’s not 256, you get 220 GB (not 320 wtf) 🙂
Actually, you get 238GiB of useable space 🙂
“Although the total RAW capacity of these SSDs are 256GB and 512GB, usable storage space is only 238GB and 476GB respectively.”
This is incorrect. Usable storage space is still 256GB and 512GB. The 238GB and 476GB is just Windows reporting the available space with the wrong suffix. It should be 476GiB, which is equal to 512GB. You can see it is in fact 512GB, by going into the properties window for the drive and you will see the capacity listed as over 512,000,000,000 bytes.
it’s hard to chose between the samsung evo 250 gb and mx 100. read different reviews on the mx100 that contradict one another. Guess some of these review sites get payed to say something positive or negative insteead of being objective. I have a samsung 830 now and i’m satisfied with it, never failed me. But i need a bigger one now. I like the protection and encryption on mx100. Samsung 840 evo doesn’t have that right? The price of the mx 100 is a bargain, but the writing performance is not great. Yeah single mode is ok, but not mixed workloads. Some give me some advice. Gonna use it for audioproduction
Just go with MX100.
While on paper write performance isn’t all that great, its actually better than EVOs (330 vs 250MB/s) once evo runs out of fake SLC cache.
Powerloss protection, MLC flash and lower price makes it a nobrainer against EVO.
You either get price/GB king or something a lot better (like 850pro or pci-e based solutions). Everything thats inbetween makes little sense, given how much more it costs.
I bought the drive, but Crucial failed to deliver. Got it on sale and even got an order confirmation from Crucial. Didn’t mean anything though, the next day they cancelled my order, telling me if I wanted to buy that drive I still could, but at a much higher price. I might be able to understand that if they hadn’t confirmed my order at the original price, but they did. For unethical companies that’s a bait-and-switch technique (and illegal) not what you’d expect from a company that wants you to think they’re reputable. No way I’d ever buy a product from a company with that much contempt for customers and customer service. If you can get a similar price for a similar product from any other company you’ll be better off. That or hope you never have problems with the product and need customer service. Ever.