2TB Crucial T705 M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD
The world’s fastest PCIe 5.0 drive?
WELL, FOLKS, that’s it. The PCIe 5.0 standard and its SSDs have been around for almost a year, and we’ve finally hit peak sequential throughput with the Crucial T705. That’s a phenomenal achievement in and of itself.
The latest SSD from Crucial, the T705, is a slightly tweaked variant of the T700. It still features the same E26 Phison controller and the same 232-layer TLC NAND from Micron at its core, but all of it is ramped up to 11, with a mixture of binning and firmware adjustments necessary to hit those 14GB/s numbers. That’s no small feat to achieve, and just goes to show how rapidly SSD tech is improving year on year.
The T705 is available in two primary variants: with or without a heatsink. You can also pick one up as a ‘limited edition’ white heatsink version, too. As for capacities, they range from 1TB to 4TB respectively, with the 2TB being the best performing drive, topping out sequentials at 14.5 GB/s read versus the 1TB’s 13.6 GB/s and the 4TB’s 14.1 GB/s. IOPS are also slightly improved for the 2TB variant, reaching 1,550K.
Endurance rating is fairly solid at 600 TBW per TB on the drive (our 2TB drive has that at 1,200 TBW respectively), combined with a five-year warranty. The heatsink is nothing if not chunky, though. Very similar in design to the T700, it still has that massively tall block of aluminum, complete with thick dense fins to encourage suitable airflow. One thing to note: unlike the T700, you can no longer remove the heatsink simply by taking off the small T5 torx screws on either side of the heatsink. If you do intend to take it off, we highly recommend buying the stock variant instead, and saving yourself some cash as you do so.
Speaking of price, it’s not entirely unreasonable that you can pick one up for around $282 or so. It’s had a huge drop in price since its debut only a month ago (at time of writing), dropping all the way down from $400 for the 2TB variant. Because of that, it’s actually really reasonable, particularly with the performance you get for that outlay.
In our testing, Crystal Disk Mark reported QD32 Sequentials at 14,027 MB/s read and 12,280 MB/s write—not far off those advertised numbers. Access time was high, too, with a read speed of 0.015 ms. Under load, with the integrated heatsink, it topped out at around 74 C or so, making it fairly mid-range on the cooling front, all things considered, certainly among the 5.0 drives, with only the Aorus Gen5 12000 hotter at 78 C.
Random 4K performance, however, was somewhat disappointing, with Crystal Disk Mark reporting 86MB/s read and 303MB/s write. That’s slower than Gigabyte’s Aorus Gen5 12000 and Crucial’s own T700 Pro, and more notably the T500 and the Kingston Fury Renegade we reviewed in this very issue.
We’re seeing that happen a lot— sequentials do seem to be the driving force behind the majority of drive development. On the one hand, it makes sense, as performing large dataset file transfers takes the longest. On the other, game loading times are similar, often associated with Random 4K performance, and are now at a point where we’re talking just a few seconds, even with read and write speeds at 86 and 303 MB/s. Still, holding back has a knock-on effect, both in terms of more advanced game development and the trickle-down tech effect limited to sequential performance.
So then, how do we wrap up a review like the T705? Well, it’s seriously quick. Combine that with a decent heatsink, solid pricing (finally), and fairly decent all-round performance, and it might just be one of the best drives out there to date. Where do we go from here? Our guess: 300-layer TLC, a Phison E27 controller, PCIe 6.0 and 30 GB/s drives. Let’s just hope those Random 4K figures go with them.
2TB Crucial T705 M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD
CRUCIAL Top-tier sequential performance; Solid heatsink; Aggressive pricing; Good access time.
OPTIONAL Random 4K beaten by 4.0 SSDs; Heatsink non-removable.
$282, www.crucial.com