Crucial T710 2TB SSD Review: A Subdued Lion

Comparison Products

We’re taking a more deliberate approach in selecting which drives to compare. We will also continue to avoid throwing one hundred drives into the mix, as that distracts from valuable differences between drives, and the goal with our SSD reviews is to help you further narrow the field when making a decision.

The Crucial T710 is a direct follow-up to the company’s older T705 and is designed to compete with the newest crop of high-end PCIe 5.0 drives, including the Sandisk WD_Black SN8100, the Samsung 9100 Pro, and upcoming drives built on Phison’s E28 controller. Drives in its orbit include those using the same class of controller but with older flash, like the Acer Predator GM9000, which compete on price. For the budget-minded, there are also mid-range PCIe 5.0 options based on Phison’s E31T, like the Corsair MP700 Elite, which can be a fallback choice to save even more money.

From the previous generation, we have the Kingston Fury Renegade, an E18-based drive with DRAM and the newest firmware update. This is a common and mature platform from which you might be upgrading. The next most popular Gen 4 solution would be budget drives built on the MAP1602 or E27T controllers, like the Teamgroup MP44, which, with new builds, might feel like outdated technology. If you’re considering an upgrade or are building a PCIe 5.0 system, you might still opt for a PCIe 4.0 drive to save money on other components, so we want to show what you’re giving up if you choose to go that way.

Trace Testing — 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams. Future gaming benchmarks will be DirectStorage-inclusive and we also include notes about which drives may be future-proofed.

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The T710 uses the same flash as the T705, and we would expect similar results from the drive in many, if not most, benchmarks. 3DMark is a good example, as the two drives perform very similarly. The WD_Black SN8100, which has the same controller as the T710 but uses BiCS8 TLC flash, is noticeably faster. We would expect the results to skew differently if we were testing 1TB drives.

Trace Testing — PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The results are particularly useful when analyzing drives for their use as primary/boot storage devices and in work environments.

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PCMark10 lines up with what we see in 3DMark, with the T710 and T705 being neck-to-neck, with the WD_Black SN8100 coming out on top. The GM9000, with older flash, remains behind, showing the difference a single generation of flash can make. The mid-range Gen 5 MP700 Elite and the PCIe 4.0 drives have no chance of keeping up.

For PCIe 5.0, the 9100 Pro performs well enough but does not break away from the pack. Instead, we see the Phison E28 engineering sample give the WD_Black SN8100 a run for its money. This is one of the rare cases where PCMark 10’s results differ significantly from 3DMark’s, which perhaps suggests some optimization on Phison’s part for the E28 and this benchmark in particular.

Transfer Rates — DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We write 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos, to the test drive, then make a copy of that data to a new folder, and follow up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file. This is a real-world type workload that fits into the cache of most drives.

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The T710’s DiskBench results are a little bit more disappointing, as the drive reads and writes fine, but performs more weakly in copying. Generally speaking, you are more likely to be reading or writing to the drive than copying data on the drive itself, but the copy performance provides some indication of the combined read and write performance. When dealing with various file sizes in such a workload, the Phison E28 and WD_black SN8100 are simply faster.

Synthetic Testing — ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes and at different queue depths for both sequential and random workloads.

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ATTO is useful in looking for drive performance anomalies, although such incidents don’t always translate to any real-world issue. Nevertheless, we can see that the T705 – with the Phison E26 – dips at the 2MiB block size while the SM2508-based T710 does not. The GM9000, with the T710’s controller and the T705’s flash, has only a minor drop here, and that matches what we see with the WD_Black SN8100. This makes it seem to be a controller nuance, worth pointing out since the Phison E28 is perfectly smooth. The T710 is also generally pretty smooth, indicating that Micron has improved on its 232-Layer TLC flash, possibly making it perform more consistently across a more diverse read workload.

The CDM results line up with these conclusions, with the T710 breaking away from the T705. Sequential performance at low queue depth is improved. 4K random latencies are also better and, in fact, quite good, but the T710 still falls behind the E28 on both. More blatantly conspicuous is that the WD_Black SN8100 destroys the competition with its low random read latency for 4KB QD1, a very important metric when considering real-world responsiveness and feel. However, it’s best not to rely too heavily on this result alone, as PCIe 5.0 drives are designed primarily for bandwidth.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of pseudo-SLC (single-bit) programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC (three-bit) or QLC (four-bit) flash. Performance can suffer even more if the drive is forced to fold, which is the process of migrating data out of the cache in order to free up space for further incoming data.

We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds. This process shows the performance of the drive in various states as well as the steady state write performance.

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The 2TB T710 first writes in a superfast, single-bit pSLC mode at just over 13.1 GB/s for 30 seconds, resulting in a 394GB cache. This is a moderate-sized cache, larger than what’s on the T705 but smaller than the WD_Black SN8100’s. The cache is small enough that the T710 can match the T705’s steady state speed at around 4 GB/s. This is very fast for a TLC-based drive and only beaten by the Sabrent Rocket 5 Plus. The cache is larger than the T705’s, though, which means it hits its slowest folding state more quickly. This state is when the drive is forced to migrate data from the cache to free up the real amount of space. As the drive is filled, the cache will become correspondingly smaller, which means each state lasts for a shorter period of time.

If sustained writes are your thing, though, you can get away with the GM9000 or Rocket 5 Plus. The newer and faster Gen 5 drives don’t offer much improvement here aside from power efficiency. This is good news if you’re planning a multi-drive monster system reliant on transfers, as competition will drive the price down, especially on older parts.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre stock storage. Desktops may be more performance-oriented with less support for power-saving features, so we show the worst-case.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption but performance-per-watt, or efficiency, is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

For temperature recording we currently poll the drive’s primary composite sensor during testing with a ~22°C ambient. Our testing is rigorous enough to heat the drive to a realistic ceiling temperature.

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If there is one area the T710 truly impresses, it’s with its power efficiency. This is the most efficient PCIe 5.0 drive to date, leaving the original E26-based drives in the dust. We think even the E28 is efficient enough to be reasonable without significant cooling, but every bit helps. Crucial markets the T710 as using up to 25% less power than the T705, with a power draw of 8.25W, both numbers being off in our testing. The T710 is significantly more efficient than Crucial suggests, but our peak power consumption, at 8.83W, is also higher than the 8.25W stated by Crucial. We suspect the 25% number is referring to peak power usage, considering the T705 peaks at 11W or more. For the record, S.M.A.R.T. pegs the maximum T710 power state at 10W.

We also logged the drive temperature during our write test, which tends to get the drive fairly warm. We saw a peak temperature of 81°C, which is hot but is below the 86°C primary throttling point. We would recommend a heatsink for this drive, especially if you plan to really hammer it with writes. In everyday use, it could probably manage without one, particularly if used in, say, a laptop’s PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, Windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Crucial T710 Bottom Line

The Crucial T710 is a very fast drive that delivers solid, but not chart-topping, numbers in our performance tests. This is disappointing to those who are expecting a significant uplift from the T705, but given the vastly improved power efficiency and relatively tame price tag, we think Crucial comes out all right. Anybody wanting high-end PCIe 5.0 storage performance already has some good choices to pick from, and the drives using older hardware have been coming down in price. Likewise, there are many more affordable PCIe 4.0 drives. This leaves the T710 in a tight spot where its best features will probably only appeal to a limited number of buyers.

We’d boil this down to three areas. First, the 1TB SKU is far and away the best among high-end PCIe 5.0 SSDs, thanks to the hardware being used. If you want PCIe 5.0 throughput but don’t need more capacity, the T710 is the top choice. Second, its power efficiency is second-to-none, which will be meaningful in some cases. These cases would include laptop or HTPC use, or in situations where you’ll be running multiple drives, where added power consumption and heat production might be worthy of concern. Third and lastly, the T710 has a decent cache layout with good TLC write speeds. The Rocket 5 Plus is faster, and you can achieve this level of performance with some less expensive drives, including the T705. However, if you want the whole package, the T710 is currently the best option.

If you’re instead looking for the best high-end PCIe 5.0 SSD on the market, we would still recommend the Sandisk WD_Black SN8100. SanDisk has already been aggressive with its pricing, which helps make the case. We think that upcoming E28-based drives will disrupt this dominance, but for now, that drive is hard to beat. That said, you’re out of luck if you want an 8TB drive, and there are many mature Gen 4 drives that are good enough for most builds. The WD Black SN850X and Samsung 990 Pro remain excellent drives, with the former being the best option for 8TB. If you’re on a budget or are looking for a laptop drive, then the T710 really isn’t in contention anyway. You could thread the needle with an E31T-based drive like the Crucial P510, a drive that seems designed for the indecisive, as well.

The Crucial T710 may be unable to claim the crown as the best drive yet tested, but it’s good enough in the right areas to merit attention. It’s worth getting at 1TB, or if you want the best power efficiency in this segment. You’re not going to buy this drive and end up regretting it. It’s simply an iterative improvement over the T705, which we believe justifies its existence but doesn’t warrant celebration. If you’re dead set on a high-end PCIe 5.0 SSD, then it’s yet another worthwhile option in a growing field of very fast drives.

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