Whether you’re a gamer, content creator, or run a business from home, we all struggle to find space on our storage devices. We are always searching for a drive that will provide us with the space we need for our precious data while being able to access it as fast as possible. Thanks to the ‘Crucial T500 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 2280 SSD’ by ‘Micron’ we’ve now got a storage solution that is fast and reliable but also the perfect expansion for your PS5.

Built with Micron 232-layer 3D TLC NAND the T500 2TB SSD boasts a tonne of features that are the perfect fuel for performance, speed and reliability. Featuring Microsoft DirectStorage optimised by Phison I/O+ technology which is perfect for playing games like ‘Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’ without those pesky stutters and load screens. Highly compatible with a range of devices including laptops, desktops and PS5 consoles. In regards to using this drive in a laptop, you’ll need the model without the heatsink.

Keep your data safe and secure thanks to the Multi-layer data integrity algorithms, adaptive thermal protection and data protection for power loss events. The integrated low-profile heatsink will keep your drive nice and cool, perfect for upgrading your PS5 storage. Access your data and load your games lightning-fast with Sequential read/write speeds up to 7,400/7,000MB/s and Random read/write speeds up to 1.18/1.44M IOPs.

Being the first time I’ve added a new SSD to my PC, I was a little nervous about the installation process. Crucial has done a brilliant job making the installation process as simple as possible with their video tutorial, which guides you through every step of the setup. If you are looking to replace your tired old SSD, Crucial gives access to the base version of Acronis True Image for Crucial software.

This will allow you to create an exact clone of your existing drive, easily replacing your existing Windows installation without the need for all of those pesky system restarts. Also included on the support page, is a copy of Crucial Storage Executive, a suite of tools that monitor your drive’s health, and formatting, perform firmware updates, self-testing and more. This app was incredibly useful throughout the testing process, allowing me to easily monitor SSD temperatures.

While testing out the T500 SSD using Crystal Disk Mark 8, I realised that my current motherboard is only PCIe Gen 3 NVMe and thankfully the T500 is backward compatible. Even though I wasn’t able to get the most out of the SSD’s PCIe Gen 4 NVMe performance, when stacked up against my Adata PCIe Gen 3 NVMe SSD the results speak for themselves. Running a series of benchmark tests looking at Sequential read/write speeds, Random read/write speeds and Random read/write IOPs (Input Outputs per second). Here are the results.

Adata PCIe Gen 3 NVMe 500GB SSD

Crucial T500 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 2280 SSD

What does all of this mean for you the consumer? It means that with the Crucial T500 2TB SSD your apps will run faster and smoother than ever before. Gaming on my PC has never felt so good, given that I didn’t have a load of space to play from the SSD majority of my titles are loaded from a SATA HDD. This often caused a load of headaches with stuttering, long load times and never really being able to get the most out of my system.

I play a lot of ‘Beat Saber’ on my PC with heaps of custom tracks and would often spend almost 5 minutes waiting for everything to load. Now playing from the SSD, everything was ready to play in just under a minute. Playing ‘Forza Horizon 5’ on the PC no longer had buffering issues and I was finally able to enjoy a very stable 4k 60HZ all day long. ‘Deus EX: Mankind Divided’ saw massive gains in load times and textures loaded much faster making for a very smooth gameplay experience. The integrated heatsink did a fantastic job dispersing heat, never reaching above 42 celcius even after an intense 5-hour run on ‘Fortnite’.

Moving the drive over to my PS5 now and I was very eager to see just how it stacked up against the Firecuda 530 1TB SSD that I had installed. Starting ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’ from the resume activity button would typically load in at 10s from the Firecuda. The Crucial T500 loading into the same point coming in at 8-9s, securing its first win for SSD supremacy. ‘Beat Saber’ also saw a 1-2s boost in load times from the T500.

What I found more interesting here was that with some maps that used to drop a few frames no longer had the issue. ‘HELLDIVERS 2’ loaded in at the same time but did feel a little more fluid. Even running older PS4 titles from the SSD saw improvements to load times and a reduction in texture pop-in. Open-world titles like ‘Just Cause 4’ and ‘Dead Island Riptide’ felt like completely new games. Transferring games from the internal storage was much faster to complete, doing the massive 260GB of ‘Call Of Duty: MW3’ in a very impressive 90 seconds, as opposed to the 120 seconds on the Firecuda.

Overall I’ve experienced nothing but joy with the Crucial T500 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 2280 SSD. Whether you are looking to expand your storage on your PC or PS5 this SSD is the perfect addition to your system. Delivering lightning-fast load times on games, transferring files with ease and keeping your data nice and safe with its protection features. The integrated heatsink keeps things nice and cool and makes this the must-have SSD for PS5 extended storage. Pick up yours today, you won’t regret it.

Product Highlights:

• Sequential read/write speeds up to 7,400/7,000MB/s
• Random read/write speeds up to 1.18/1.44M IOPs
• PCIe 4.0 NVMe 2280 M.2 SSD
• Built with Micron 232-layer 3D TLC NAND
• Available with a low-profile integrated heatsink, perfect for PS5™ console upgrades
• Spacious capacity: 2TB
• Micron LPDDR4 DRAM, 1GB per 1TB of NAND flash
• Phison® PS5025-E25 Controller
• Microsoft DirectStorage optimized with Phison® I/O+ technology
• Works with laptops, desktops and PS5 consoles
• Backward compatible with PCIe 3.0
• 5-year limited warranty

Advanced Features:

• Static and Dynamic SLC caching
  • Variable by user capacity, up to approx. 20%11
• Redundant array of independent NAND (RAIN)
• Multi-layer data integrity algorithms
• Adaptive thermal protection
• Data protection for power loss events
• Active garbage collection
• TRIM support
• Self-monitoring and reporting technology (SMART)
• Error correction code (ECC)
• NVMe® autonomous power state transition (APST) support

Written by: Gary Nielsen