Crucial T700 2TB PCIe Gen5 M.2 NVMe SSD Review

Today we are looking at the Crucial T700 2TB SSD. This is the third PCIe Gen5 SSD that I have reviewed, following the Inland TD510 and the Seagate FireCuda 540. Both of those drives are definitely Gen5, but within that context, their read performance does not push the Gen5 envelope. The T700 looks to push that bar forward with the fastest rated read and write speeds seen yet, so I am very excited to see what this drive can do.

Crucial T700 2TB NVMe SSD

The Crucial T700 2TB comes in a double-sided M.2 2280 (80mm) form factor.

The T700 is available both with and without a heatsink, and today we have the bare drive version. With that said, right on the T700 packaging they state that a heatsink of some kind is required, so they are simply selling the T700 without a heatsink for users who wish to use their motherboard-integrated heatsink or some other solution.  The T700 features the same Phison E26 controller we have seen on the FireCuda and the TD510, paired with Micron-branded 232-layer TLC NAND and a DRAM cache. On paper, this drive looks very similar to the FireCuda 540 and the TD510.

As a double-sided drive, the back of the T700 is home to half the NAND.

Crucial T700 SSD Specs

The T700 comes in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities.

The Crucial T700 we have today is the 2TB model. Read speeds are rated at 12400 MB/s, and write speeds come in at 11800 MB/s. These ratings still do not fully utilize the output capabilities of a PCIe Gen 5 x4 connection, but they are a step above what we have seen drives rated at up until this point. Just as importantly, this gives the T700 additional distance from top-end Gen 4 drives.

Crucial sticks right to the line of what I consider good endurance ratings, at approximately 600 TBW per TB of capacity across the line. On the 2TB drive, that works out to 1200 TBW of endurance, which should satisfy almost everyone except the heaviest power users. The warranty is an industry-standard 5-year warranty, though it should be noted that Inland included an exceptional 6-year warranty with their TD510.

CrystalDiskInfo can give us some basic information about the SSD and confirms we are operating at PCIe 5.0 x4 speeds using NVMe 2.0.

Test System Configuration

We are using the following configuration for this test:

• Motherboard: MSI MAG X670E Tomahawk
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900X (12C/24T)
• RAM: 2x 16GB DDR5-6000 UDIMMs

Our testing uses the Crucial T700 2TB as the boot drive for the system, installed in the M.2_1 slot on the motherboard. This slot supports up to PCIe Gen 5 x4. The drive is filled to 85% capacity with data, and then some is deleted, leaving around 60% used space on the volume.

Next, we are going to get into our performance testing.