Introduction

Crucial is one of the biggest players in the SSD market due to their ability to use their own NAND chips, which are manufactured by their parent company Micron. The Crucial BX500 SSD was announced just a few weeks ago, and everybody expected it to use the new QLC flash technology. This isn't the case, though. The Crucial BX500 is built around Micron TLC flash and a Silicon Motion SM2258 controller in the XT variant.

BX500's special feature is that it does not use a DRAM chip, which reduces component cost significantly for new price points that were previously impossible with even TLC-based SSDs. Of course, the lack of DRAM comes with a performance hit, but since the BX500 is targeted at a market where every dollar counts, this shouldn't be much of an issue for consumers looking for an affordable entry-level SSD that will deliver better performance than any HDD out there. For more demanding users, Crucial has the MX500 in their lineup, which is our favorite when you're looking for a good mix of price and performance.

The BX500 comes in capacities of 120 GB ($29), 240 GB ($48), and 480 GB ($80), which is the version we are covering in our review today. Warranty is set to three years for all these models.

We recently reviewed the Mushkin Source, which is a similar design: competitively priced and with the same controller and no DRAM, it'll be interesting to see how the Crucial BX500 does in comparison.

Packaging and Contents

The Drive

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


The Crucial BX500 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 four flash chips on the PCB. As mentioned before, a DRAM chip is not included; more details on that later.


The Silicon Motion SM2258 is a four-channel flash controller; the used XT variant denotes support for DRAM-less SSD designs.


The four 3D TLC flash chips are made by Micron, Crucial's parent company. The NW913 markings decode to MT29F1T08EMHAFJ4. Each chip has a capacity of 1 Tbit (128 GB).

DRAM-Less SSD Technology

The Crucial BX500 has no DRAM chip on the PCB, which helps optimize cost even beyond what is possible with TLC as a significant portion of the BOM cost comes from the DRAM memory, in the order of about $8 per GB of DRAM.