Well, it finally happened. A couple of months ago Crucial’s P5 NVMe SSD arrived on my desk,
and it was and still is a fantastic little M.2 drive
for anyone looking to upgrade from their SATA or spinning rust drives.
But, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, it was missing just one CRUCIAL feature. Ugh,
that didn’t feel good to say. Anyway, that feature was PCIe 4.0, and not long after I
reviewed the P5, those lunatics at Crucial went ahead and released the Crucial P5 Plus, their
first PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, and in this review we’re going to see what this speedy boi can really do.
But not before I thank MSI for sponsoring this video.
MSI’s new Clutch GM41 Lightweight gaming mouse comes in wired and wireless flavors,
and both stay true to their name, providing great gaming performance without compromising weight.
Both versions feature high-end Pixart optical sensors capable of running
at up to 16,000 or 20,000 DPI, OMRON switches rated for 60 million clicks,
durable side grips and PTFE feet, and both look phenomenal.
I especially love the addition of the RGB-illuminated dragon logo,
and high-quality braided cables MSI paired with the Clutch GM41 Lightweight range.
So if any of that sounds good to you, then you should definitely check it out.
For my South African friends, if you want to grab the mouse or any of MSI’s other parts, head down
below for a link to MSI’s dedicated section of the Takealot store. You won’t be disappointed.
Now, just like the regular P5, the P5 Plus keeps things super simple when it comes to aesthetics.
And by that I mean they’d look pretty much identical if not for the “plus” part.
Luckily, unlike me at a bodybuilder competition, it’s a good look.
The black PCB and black sticker with simple, concise branding should look super clean in
any build, while also not being so stealthy as to blend into the background entirely.
And I don’t know why, and I don’t know if it’s just me,
but I love the way the traces and contacts look on the back of these things.
Anyway, the P5 Plus also shares the same M.2 (2280) form factor as the P5,
and on at least the 1TB model we’re working with here,
it has all of its important bits on just one side of the drive. So if you wanted to
rock this thing in one of those ultra thin notebooks then you should be just fine.
The drive also ships with an M.2 screw included right in the box which, now that I think about it,
I can’t believe this isn’t standard practice for all of these things.
I’ve literally lost every single M.2 screw I’ve ever gotten in my motherboard boxes,
so I’m all for this becoming more of a thing.
Crucial ships the P5 Plus in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities,
so no 250GB flavors this time around, which makes sense since 250GB wouldn’t last all too long
when it comes to PCIe 4.0 drives, and it’s backed by a 5-year warranty.
And since this is Crucial we’re talking about,
the drive gets first pick of Micron’s NAND and controller tech,
which I’m sure goes a long way to explaining the drive’s blisteringly fast top speed.
All three of the P5 Plus drives feature sequential read speeds of 6600MB/s almost doubling the speed
of the regular P5, and all but the 500GB version sport sequential write speeds of 5000MB/s,
with the 500GB model coming in a little slower at 4000MB/s.
Oh, and just because I know some of you are probably wondering, even though the drive is
built for PCIe Gen 4, it’ll work just fine in a Gen 3 slot (it’ll just run at Gen 3 speeds).
So if you want to level up your storage game before you grab a new motherboard or CPU,
you’ll still have a very speedy drive that’ll only get speedier as you upgrade.
And while we’re on the topic of things you’re probably wondering,
the drive also crushes Sony’s requirements for upgrading the PS5’s storage. Very cool.
The P5 Plus also comes with a couple of other very handy extras tossed in,
including a host of data protection, encryption, security, and efficiency features,
and even more via Crucial’s Storage Executive software.
The software is surprisingly comprehensive, showing you all of the information you’ll
ever need for your drives, has a section for updating drive firmware, formatting drives, and
a few other useful tools including Momentum Cache which I’ll demo when we get to the benchmarks.
The last, and probably one of the most important specs to note here
is pricing, and on that front the P5 Plus is actually surprisingly competitive at $180
or R3,800 here in South Africa for the 1TB model.
That’s actually $20 more than it was selling for on Amazon when I started working on this review,
but even without that discount the drive lands firmly in the middle of the pack.
It’s a fine position to be in, but if Crucial cut the price by even $10 or so, the P5 Plus
would’ve essentially been a no-brainer compared to 90% of its direct competition.
But enough talk. Let’s get to why we’re all here, and watch this thing in action,
going head to head with the regular P5, a SATA SSD, and a 7.2K hard drive.
And first up is CrystalDiskMark and its sequential read and write benchmark, which is where we’re
seeing the single biggest difference between the P5 Plus and the rest of the stack. The P5 Plus
actually manages to easily blow past its quoted max read speed of 6600MB/s, while coming in right
on the money when it comes to write speed, while our HDD barely even makes it onto the board. Sad.
When it comes to these sequential tasks, Crucial’s Momentum Cache feature (found
in the Storage Executive suite) does some fantastic work. It, in very basic terms,
allocates a portion of your RAM to speed up the SSD even more, and the result of that speaks
for itself. That’s almost 10 GIGABYTES per second. Just be warned that with Momentum Cache turned on,
there’s a risk of file corruption and data loss if your desktop system unexpectedly shuts down.
Moving on to random workloads, the P5 Plus’ lead does narrow by a large margin, but even so does
still come out with a 17% win over the regular P5, and almost a 170% win over our SATA SSD.
I also took some time to play around with Premiere Pro to see whether storage speed would
make a huge difference, and at least in my case working with 1080p footage and minimal effects,
storage speed is definitely not a bottleneck once you go SSD.
But as fun as staring at those big numbers is, it’s time to move on to real-world benchmarks,
and first up is a launch to Windows, where the P5 Plus just misses out on a 10-second boot.
It’s almost too fast, honestly, I don’t even have time to grab a Monster before I get into Windows.
Now that we’re here, we might as well take a look at some game launch and load times,
and as we’ll see, not much has changed since my review of the regular P5.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider the P5 Plus did manage to launch the game significantly
faster than the rest of the drives, but when it comes to loading into the world,
the difference between the two P5’s is almost non-existent.
Horizon Zero Dawn comes in with pretty much the opposite result with the game
launching about as fast on the P5 Plus as on the regular P5 and our SATA SSD,
but when it comes to loading into the world, the P5 Plus comes in with a very noticeable win.
Next up is Cyberpunk 2077, which surprisingly gave us some of the most boring results,
with there being almost no difference between the two P5 drives in our load or launch times.
It was so boring that I even decided to test the fast travel time in the game between the
drives, and it was a snoozefest again, with essentially no difference between the two SSDs.
Our final and newest game is Humankind, which, if you needed any more convincing to ditch
your old hard drive, is the game that’ll do it. While we again see almost no difference
between the P5 brothers, those launch and load times for the HDD are really tough to look at.
What might also be ever so slightly tough to look at are the drive’s thermals, with it hitting a max
temp of 76 degrees Celsius, one degree hotter than the regular P5. That’s not hot enough to cause
any real issues, it just irks me a little when any of my PC parts go above the 70 degree mark.
Which is why I’m glad MSI’s X570 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard comes with M.2 heatsinks in the
box. With the heatsink in place, the drive only maxed out at a much more manageable 66 degrees.
Now, what all of this shows us is that the P5 Plus performs as well,
and in some cases even better than advertised, although a little hot,
but unfortunately (or fortunately if you’re on a budget), when it comes to gaming we’re still
seeing the same result we’ve already seen. That being that it doesn’t seem to matter
all that much what SSD you’re using, just that you’re using an SSD at all.
That’s still something we’re expecting will change soon as more and more developers make
more and more games better optimized for high-speed SSDs moving forward,
especially with Microsoft’s DirectStorage tech promising to be a game changer,
but as far as I can see, we’re not quite there yet.
We are however there when it comes to the PS5,
which is probably one of the best use cases for a drive like the P5 Plus right now.
And even if you’re not looking to future proof your rig for gaming,
and don’t plan to drop this thing into a PS5, it’s not like you
won’t see real world performance and other gains coming from the P5 Plus.
You’ll still get the fastest game loading times possible with current games, an unbelievably
snappy user interface, near-instant booting into your operating system and
apps launching in seconds, and even the biggest file transfers will become far less of a chore.
All in all, the P5 Plus is a great first step into Gen 4 for Crucial,
and even though it runs a little hot, it’s manageable. The only thing that has me
hesitating a little is the pricing versus some of its competitors, but if it goes on sale again for
$160 bucks like it did when I started work on this video, or even $170 it’s an instant buy for me.
Anyway, big thanks to Crucial for sending the drive over for me to check out,
and thanks to everyone who made it this far into the video.
And remember to check out MSI’s Clutch GM41 Lightweight series using the links in the
description, especially the one to MSI’s dedicated Takealot storefront if you’re in South Africa.
If you liked the video, hit that button, get subscribed to see more of my face,
and I’ll see you all in the next one.
Cheers.