Introduction

Today, we are reviewing the Crucial BX300 SSD, which is the successor to the Crucial BX200 we reviewed about a year and a half ago. The BX200 was the first drive to introduce Micron TLC flash memory to Crucial's lineup. This move successfully helped bring down SSD pricing significantly - people were demanding cheaper SSDs. However, the BX200 traded a lot of performance (especially during write operations) for lower pricing and ended up falling short of drives using Hynix TLC flash, which came out later and were faster and cheaper as well.



With the Crucial BX Series being budget-oriented, you would expect the BX300 to use TLC too, but that's not the case. Instead, Crucial is using their 1st-generation 3D MLC NAND, which stands in contrast to the MX300 that uses 3D TLC NAND. Surprising decisions here.

What's also surprising is that Micron offers the BX300 in capacities of 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB. A 1 TB option is not available, and I wonder if anyone still buys 120 GB SSDs.

The controller on the drive is a Silicon Motion model, the SM2258 which uses four flash channels and requires a DRAM chip (unlike the SM2258XT variant).

In order to boost flash write performance, Micron designates a small, fixed amount of memory as SLC cache, which writes a single bit to each flash cell instead of two. While much faster, such a setup is basically a speed vs. size tradeoff.

Packaging and Contents

The Drive

The drive conforms to the dimensions set forth by the 2.5" form factor. It is made out of metal to improve its durability and is only 7 mm thick, which makes it compatible with Intel's Ultrabook specification.


Like most recent SSDs, the Crucial BX300 uses the SATA 6 Gbps interface. It is compatible with any older SATA standard, but will, in such a case, work at reduced performance.


You will find the SSD controller and eight flash chips on the PCB. A DRAM chip is also present; it provides the SSD controller with RAM.


The Silicon Motion SM2258 is a four-channel SSD controller with support for Opal/TCG, which Crucial chose not to enable on the BX300, though. The SM2258H variant seems to be a new revision I haven't seen on any other drives yet.


The eight MLC flash chips are produced by Micron and are built on a 16 nanometer 3D NAND process.