14 DAY TRIAL // Having already seen some entry-level PCI Express solid state drives, courtesy of Plextor, it only makes sense that we check out what reasonably-priced SATA drives are coming our way. Crucial has some for us.
Known collectively as the BX100 series, the drives are four in number, told apart by their capacities of 120 GB, 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB.
Crucial took an unusual approach to their creation, providing high read speed and capacity but leaving write speed rather low and forgoing some of the fancier stuff that SSDs like to offer sometimes.
This was in line with its plan to produce NAND Flash-based storage devices that wouldn't break the banks of whoever bought them.
Thus, the newcomers are made for consumers who aren't looking to play the latest hardware-demanding game. Supposedly.
In truth, the speed of the storage device doesn't have much bearing on the performance of a game, save when loading and saving. So if you get decent memory and graphics, you'll more than be satisfied with the BX100. Especially with the read speed so high, but we'll get there in a jiffy.
The Crucial BX100 specifications
The BX100 marks the first time that the Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller is used in a Crucial solid state drive.
The sequential read speed is of up to 535 MB/s, which is actually very good and will mean your games will load quickly. However, the writing speed is considerably more limited, and we're not just talking about a 100 MB/s difference.
No, the 120 GB drive can manage 185 MB/s at most, while the 250 GB and the 500 GB ones can go up to 370 MB/s and 450 MB/s. The 1TB drive doesn't show any improvement over the 500 GB drive.
Meanwhile, the random performance is of 70,000 4K read/write IOPS (input/output operations per second), save for the write IOPS on the 120 GB drive which are 43,000.
Availability and pricing
The Crucial BX100 solid state drives feature the standard 2.5-inch form factor and have the following prices: $70 / €60 for the 120 GB model, $110 / €92 for the 250 GB drive, 200 / €170 for the 500 GB and $470 / €400 for the 1 TB one.
Shipments will begin at some point this quarter (Q1 2015) and Crucial will also provide buyers with the Crucial Storage Executive tool, a software which will check drive health, temperature, status, etc. The tool will work on M500, M550 and MX100 SSDs as well, plus the new MX200 which we'll examine separately soon enough.