Crucial BX500

Micron's consumer brand Crucial launched the BX500 in 2018. It is Crucial's entry-level SATA SSD and the successor to the BX300—which used MLC NAND with a DRAM-equipped controller. The BX500 is DRAM-less throughout its production run and has used multiple NAND generations: early units shipped with Micron 64-layer 3D TLC, later batches moved to 96-layer TLC. More recent production on some capacities controversially uses 176-layer QLC NAND. The controller also varies by production run, with Silicon Motion SM2258XT and SM2259XT2 variants documented. QLC batches will see a steeper performance drop once the SLC write cache is exhausted – under sustained sequential writes, throughput can fall substantially.

TBW endurance is low at 40 TBW (120GB), 80 (240GB), 120 (480GB/500GB), 360 (960GB/1TB), and finally 720 TBW at 2TB. Additionally, the drive shipped with a three-year warranty instead of the 5-year industry standard. It was also sold in an M.2 SATA (2280) form factor under the CT*BX500SSD4 prefix but with identical specifications. By comparison, the higher end MX500 includes a DRAM cache and delivers higher sustained write and random I/O performance at a higher price point.