Review Crucial P310 SSD review: High capacity and more speed for M.2 2230

[Admin]

The Crucial P310 is a bit of a surprise for the M.2 2230 SSD market. The powerful Phison E27T controller and Crucial’s newest QLC come together to create a surprisingly performant, power-efficient drive.

Crucial P310 SSD review: High capacity and more speed for M.2 2230 : Read more

 

[SonoraTechnical]

How can you say it has strong overall performance... and then list QLC limitations as a CON... Seems they've compensated for the 'qlc limitations' by providing strong overall performance....

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

How can you say it has strong overall performance... and then list QLC limitations as a CON... Seems they've compensated for the 'qlc limitations' by providing strong overall performance....

Because as fast as this drive performs, the same controller with TLC NAND can do better. QLC means lower endurance, often slower writes, and lower sustained writes.

The Corsair MP600 Mini E27T 1TB drive for example has sustained writes of 781 MB/s, compared to 336 MB/s on the P310. A 2TB MP600 could hypothetically double that result (probably not quite that high, but certainly higher than 781 MB/s).

 

[vijosef]

Is this real? 6 Gb/second without dram for 100$?

I remember when I ran RAID-0 of hard disks, and I was living dangerously.

 

[cyrusfox]

Its all about sustained writes for these small drives that invariable thermal throttle, and truly this one is the worst.

I am surprised it has received such high marks in the summary if you stress it, will slow to slower than a 7200RPM HDD for seq writes.

From what I have seen the SN770M looks to be the best rounded 2230 SSD. For budget I still choos sn740 off aliexpress. QLC native speed needs to be hid behind more pSLC. 70 seconds is much too short of a time to fill cache.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Its all about sustained writes for these small drives that invariable thermal throttle, and truly this one is the worst. I am surprised it has received such high marks in the summary if you stress it, will slow to slower than a 7200RPM HDD for seq writes.

From what I have seen the SN770M looks to be the best rounded 2230 SSD. For budget I still choos sn740 off aliexpress. QLC native speed needs to be hid behind more pSLC. 70 seconds is much too short of a time to fill cache.

If you want sustained performance, it's more useful to use the bar chart:

As discussed in the review, for a QLC 2TB drive, 400GB of pSLC cache is 1600GB of total space, leaving a final 400GB for QLC use. And the drive sustains 336 MB/s. No hard drive will come anywhere near that mark, not empty and certainly not half full. Literally every other QLC M.2 2230 drive has one third that level of performance after the pSLC cache is full — which a decent HDD could actually beat. Your suggestion that "truly this one is the worst" is completely wrong and shows a gross misunderstanding of the M.2 2230 market.

Yes, the SN770M and SN740 are "better" in sustained performance. But in real-world testing, not write saturation, the P310's new E27T controller and 232-layer QLC NAND often beats those drives. It's at or near the top in virtually every other test. You've basically picked the one weak element and decided to elevate that to being the most important aspect.

If you're putting this into a gaming handheld, which is the most likely scenario, this is an excellent choice (assuming pricing comes down to where it ought to be). If you have a device that can take 2242 or even 2280 form factor, then there are dozens of SSDs that will be a far better choice.

 

[cyrusfox]

If you want sustained performance, it's more useful to use the bar chart:

I prefer the hysteresis shown when zoomed in, obvious that SN740 is not tuned well initially, interesting that it wins at the 15 minute mark.

As discussed in the review, for a QLC 2TB drive, 400GB of pSLC cache is 1600GB of total space, leaving a final 400GB for QLC use. And the drive sustains 336 MB/s. No hard drive will come anywhere near that mark, not empty and certainly not half full. Literally every other QLC M.2 2230 drive has one third that level of performance after the pSLC cache is full — which a decent HDD could actually beat. Your suggestion that "truly this one is the worst" is completely wrong and shows a gross misunderstanding of the M.2 2230 market.

There are some HDD which do offer 400+MB/s sustained write performance, odd niche, and you are right, it is not the norm. Also I am crapping on the drive a little, because it did not surpass WD efforts, same has been true since the beginning of 2230 drives (WD SN520/530 easily best Micron's 2100 to the 2450). Micron firmware updates may help, they helped a bit with 2100 but that is still a hot running 2230 drive.

Yes, the SN770M and SN740 are "better" in sustained performance. But in real-world testing, not write saturation, the P310's new E27T controller and 232-layer QLC NAND often beats those drives. It's at or near the top in virtually every other test. You've basically picked the one weak element and decided to elevate that to being the most important aspect.

If you're putting this into a gaming handheld, which is the most likely scenario, this is an excellent choice (assuming pricing comes down to where it ought to be). If you have a device that can take 2242 or even 2280 form factor, then there are dozens of SSDs that will be a far better choice.

All depends on the intended use case, for a handhed maybe this is great(but is it perceptibly better than the lowest grade 2230? Handhelds IO are they even capable of maintaining full IO stress themselves?)
My use case is CFeB adapters, and the only factor of importance there is sustained write speed, Don't care about gen 4 speeds, or how well it burst, but how does it hold up when the cache runs dry and/or the thermals go out of bounds. 2230 thermals are always going to be important, and I am quite sensitive if it can't perform long enough with a required data write rate.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

My use case is CFeB adapters, and the only factor of importance there is sustained write speed, Don't care about gen 4 speeds, or how well it burst, but how does it hold up when the cache runs dry and/or the thermals go out of bounds. 2230 thermals are always going to be important, and I am quite sensitive if it can't perform long enough with a required data write rate.

Oh yeah, that's a very niche use case and I can totally see why overheating and throttling would become a serious issue there. I suspect the E27T 2230 drives will throttle less, as they're (I think?) 7nm node compared to 12nm, or maybe it's 12nm instead of 28nm? But higher speed would also make them potentially more likely to throttle. For maximum sustained throughput right now, probably the Corsair MP600 Mini 2TB (E27T) model would be what you'd want. We're working to get one of those for testing, as the sustained throughput (thanks to double the NAND) might be twice as high as the 1TB drive, give or take.

 

[Notton]

2230 is an interesting market.
It's clear end users don't like the size and use adapters to get a 2280 to fit in the device, but the manufacturers love it for some reason.

Any chance of getting the Micron 2400? It seems to be an endurance focused 2230 QLC.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Any chance of getting the Micron 2400? It seems to be an endurance focused 2230 QLC.

We would have to purchase one, and while the 2TB has 600TB of endurance, it also has a 3-year (instead of 5-year) warranty. It’s a first gen PCIe 4.0 2230 QLC drive as well, often used by ORMs in laptops. I’d expect it to perform about the same as the various E21T QLC drives we’ve tested, even though it uses a different SM2269XT controller.