Crucial BX100

The Crucial BX100 is a consumer-oriented SATA III (6 Gbps) solid-state drive (SSD) released by Crucial in early 2015 as the company's first entry in their budget-focused "BX" product line. Positioned below the mainstream MX series in both price and performance, the BX100 was designed to provide an affordable pathway for consumers upgrading from traditional hard drives while maintaining solid performance metrics.

The BX100 was a starting point in Crucial's market segmentation effort to introduce a clear differentiation between their budget ("BX") and performance ("MX") product lines. At launch, the drive competed directly with other value-oriented offerings such as the Samsung 850 EVO, OCZ ARC 100, and SanDisk Ultra. Crucial explicitly acknowledged that the BX100 "isn't the fastest drive on the market," instead focusing on delivering exceptional value through aggressive pricing. The 500GB model was typically selling for around $180 at launch – a substantially lower price compared to many competing drives.´

Manufacturer's Datasheet

Controller

Earlier, Crucial mainly relied on Marvell controllers, but the BX100 featured the Silicon Motion SM2246EN, an entry-level (four-channel) SATA 6Gb/s controller. Allegedly, Crucial worked closely with Silicon Motion to develop a custom firmware specifically for the BX100, to ensure that the drive wouldn't simply be another reference implementation of the SM2246EN.

The SM2246EN chip supports various error correction technologies including BCH ECC, and features like TRIM support, Active Garbage Collection, and SMART monitoring. However, unlike its MX-series siblings, the BX100 lacks hardware-based AES 256-bit encryption – a deliberate choice to reduce costs.

Cache Architecture

For DRAM caching, the BX100 uses Micron DDR3L-1600 memory chips (part number MT41K256M16HA-125 M:E). The cache allocation varies by capacity: the 120GB and 250GB models include 256MB of cache, while the 500GB features 512MB. The largest 1TB model includes 1GB of DRAM. This physical cache is a buffer for the drive's flash translation layer and helps maintain performance consistency in mixed workloads. DDR3L DRAM operates at lower voltages than standard DDR3, helping with power efficiency.

NAND Type

The BX100 uses Micron's 128Gb 16nm synchronous MLC (Multi-Level Cell) NAND flash memory, manufactured by IMFT (Intel-Micron Flash Technologies). These chips have part numbers such as MT29F512G08CMCCBH7-10:C (FBGA code NW744), with each package containing 64GB of storage capacity. This was a cutting-edge process technology at the time, as the 16nm node was exclusive to Micron among the major NAND manufacturers. The 16nm NAND utilized high-K gate dielectric technology, allowing for improved scalability compared to planar NAND designs.

The choice of synchronous MLC NAND provided a balance between performance, endurance, and cost. Unlike TLC NAND, the MLC flash offered much better write endurance and more consistent performance under sustained workloads.

Power Consumption

One of the BX100's highlighted features was its excellent power efficiency. Crucial used the term "Extreme Energy Efficiency" technology. Idle power draw measures just 0.38 watts, while maximum power consumption during write operations peaks at only 2.42 watts. This is approximately 2x better energy efficiency compared to typical hard drives and even outperformed many SSDs from the same time frame (including Crucial's own MX200 series which consumed up to 4.11 watts under load). The drive also supports the DEVSLP (Device Sleep) function, allowing compatible systems to further reduce power consumption during extended idle periods.