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Micron’s latest NVMe solid-state drive, the Crucial P5 Plus, first announced on August 3, 2021, is a formidable rival to the Samsung 980 PRO.
This is the second PCIe 4.0 I’ve tested, and it delivered excellent performance, even when working with an older PCIe 3.0 motherboard.
That, plus the friendly cost — $80, $140, and $310 for 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB, respectively — means this new NVMe SSD is a clear winner in the pricing contest. The two deliver about the same performance and have similar features.
If you’re looking for a top-notch NVMe SSD, the new Crucial P5 Plus is an easy recommendation. It works best with a PCIe 4.0-ready computer, but it’ll do well, too, with any existing NVMe-ready supported motherboard. Get one!
Dong’s note: I first published this post on August 4, 2021, when the SSD was launched as a new piece and upgraded to a full review on August 13, 2021, after thorough hands-on testing.
Table of Contents
Micron Crucial P5 Plus: A Solid Next-Gen Solid State Drive
Like most high-end NVMe SSDs, the P5 Plus takes the standard 2280 NVMe design — it’s 80mm long and 22mm wide.
Apart from PCIe 4.0, the drive also works with a PCIe Gen 3 M.2 slot, which is still popular in most computers.
| PCIe Gen | Commercially Available | Rate per lane (rounded) | x1 Speed | x2 Speed | x4 Speed | x8 Speed | x16 Speed |
| 1 | 2003 | 2 Gbps | 250 MB/s | 0.5 GB/s | 1.0 GB/s | 2 GB/s | 4.0 GB/s |
| 2 | 2007 | 4 Gbps | 500 MB/s | 1 GB/s | 2.0 GB/s | 4 GB/s | 8.0 GB/s |
| 3 | 2010 | 8 Gbps | 984.6 MB/s | 1.97 GB/s | 3.94 GB/s | 7.88 GB/s | 15.8 GB/s |
| 4 | 2020 | 16 Gbps | 1969 MB/s | 3.94 GB/s | 7.88 GB/s | 15.75 GB/s | 31.5 GB/s |
| 5 | 2022 | 32 Gbps | 3938 MB/s | 7.88 GB/s | 15.75 GB/s | 31.51 GB/s | 63 GB/s |
Note: 1 Gigabyte per second (GB/s) = 1000 Megabyte per second (MB/s) | 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) = 125 MB/s
Needless to say, but you need PCIe 4.0 to get the best performance out of this new SSD. The table below shows the differences in throughputs of different PCIe generations.
On the inside, it houses Micron’s home-grown Advanced 3D NAND flash memory and has a rated MTTF greater than 2 million hours.
Micron Crucial P5 Plus vs Samsung SSD 980 PRO: Hardware specifications
| Micron Crucial P5 Plus | Samsung SSD 980 PRO | |
| Capacities | 512GB, 1TB, 2TB | 250GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB |
| Interface | PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.3c | PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.3c |
| Design | M.2 (2280) | M.2 (2280) |
| Controller | Crucial home-grown | Samsung Elpis Controller |
| NAND Flash Memory | Micron Advanced 3D NAND | Samsung 1xx-layer V-NAND 3-bit MLC |
| Security | Full-drive encryption capable (TCG OPAL 2.0 | AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption, TCG/Opal V2.0, Encrypted Drive (IEEE1667) |
| Sequential Read | Up to 6600MB/s | Up to 7,000 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | Up to 5000MB/s (2TB, 1TB) Up to 4000MB/s (500GB) | Up to 5,000 MB/s |
| Endurance (Terabyte Written) | 1200TBW (2TB) 600TBW (1TB) 300TBW (500GB) | 1200TBW (2TB) 600TBW (1TB) 300TBW (500GB) 150TBW (250GB) |
| Software | Crucial Storage Executive | Samsung Magician |
| Release Date | August 3, 2021 | September 2020 |
| Cost (at review) | $80 (500GB) $140 (1TB) $310 (2TB) | $90 (250GB) $150 (500GB) $230 (1TB) $430 (2TB) |
| Warranty | 5 years | 5 years |
Useful features and software, similarly modest endurance
According to Micron, the new Crucial P5 Plus’ advanced features include:
- Dynamic write acceleration
- Redundant array of independent NAND (RAIN)
- Multistep data integrity algorithm
- Adaptive thermal protection
- Integrated power loss immunity
- Active garbage collection & TRIM support
- Self-monitoring and reporting technology (SMART)
- Error correction code (ECC)
- NVMe autonomous power state transition (APST)
- Full-drive encryption capable (TCG OPAL 2.0)
To manage all those, the Crucial P5 Plus comes with the familiar Crucial Storage Executive software toolbox that’s comparable to the Samsung Magician of the 980 PRO.
The software is useful for checking the status, firmware update, overprovisioning/cache management, and other tools.
On top of that, the Crucial P5 Plus shares the same endurance level as the Samsung 980 PRO.
Specifically, if you write some 100GB, which is a lot of data, a day and do that every day to the 1TB version, it’ll take some 15 years to wear the drive out. If you use the 500GB or 2TB versions, you’d need 7.5 years and 30 years, respectively.
And those are a very long time — generally, you won’t need to worry about wearing the drive out. However, compared to many PCIe 3.0 drives, the P5 Plus’ endurance is still modest. The Samsung 970 PRO, for example, has twice the longevity.
But what the Crucial P5 Plus lacks in endurance, if at all, it more than makes up in performance, which is the most important thing anyway.
Micron Crucial P5 Plus: Stellar performance
Indeed, I tested the Micron Crucial P5 Plus with both PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0 motherboards, and it excelled in both cases.
In copy tests via PCIe 4.0, the new drive is a tad slower than the Samsung 980 PRO at almost 5400MB/s in sustained reading. However, it did so much better in writing at close to 4500MB/s.
And in my combined test, where the drive performed both reading and writing simultaneously, it topped the charts with almost 1700MB/s. In tests with PCIe 30., the Crucial also beat the Samsung by a small margin with the read/write combo sustained score of over 1600MB/s.
The Crucial P5 Plus did excellently in random access tests, too, topping the charts in reading tests. In writing, it was a bit slower than the Samsung rivals.
In all, both drives are excellent performers. But for the cost, the Crucial P5 Plus clearly had an advantage.
In real-world usage, though, I found no differences at all between the Samsung 980 PRO and the Crucial P5 Plus. Both delivered excellent storage experiences. For example, my test host computers — PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 3.0 machines — took just seconds to boot up, and all apps launched quickly.
No, neither delivered “instantaneous” app launching — that’s never gonna happen — but I had no issues at all on this front. And trust me when I tell you that I’m of the impatient type when it comes to tech.
Micron Crucial P5 Plus' Rating
Pros
Excellent performance
Affordable
PCIe 4.0 support, backward compatible with PCIe Gen 3
Helpful Storage Executive software
5-year warranty
Cons
Comparatively modest endurance
Capacities cap at 2TB
Conclusion
The Micron Crucial P5 Plus is an excellent NVMe SSD and a clearly better choice than the Samsung 980 PRO, mostly thanks to its significantly more affordable pricing.
If you’re looking for a well-performance, feature-laden SSD for your gaming or professional rig, this is the drive to get. In fact, it’s a must-have if you use a motherboard that features PCIe 4.0.
Yes, you can spend more and get the Samsung 980 PRO, and you’ll love it, too — it’s an excellent SSD itself! But, in this case, you get nothing extra for the additional cost.
Hello Dong,
Great article! I really found difficult to find something related to the use of Crucial P5 plus on a PCIe 3.0 board.
I wanted to ask you some more info about it since I intend to purchase it.
I have a 10th gen intel with a motherboard that suppoort PCIe 3.0. For what I understood it should not be a problem being the Crucial 5 plus compatible although running at lower speed.
I was wondering, how about the heat dissipation o the Crucial P5 plus runnning on PCIe 3.0 laptop base? I would use a thermal pad anyway, but in theory, shouldn’t it couse less heat even for heavy workload? Running basically at PCIe 3 speed it should not run hot as its max performance. Could you confirm?
My mainly use involve softwares like Lightroom, Photoshop, Davinci Resolve, QGIS and ArcGIS. I mainly was interested in the Crucial P5 plus since it has DRAM compared to the Samsung 980. Do you think I would beneft the specs of the crucial or better saving money on the Samsung 980 (base model not PRO).
Thanks in advance.
It’ll work great, Alex, and in fact, better in terms of heat — 4.0 drives are generally hotter when running on a 4.0 machine. I tested it using both PCIe 4.0 and 3.0, as noted on the charts, and I’ve been using it on one of my PCIe 3.0 machines since. I’d go with whichever that’s cheaper.
Hello,
Just installed this drive and I see it runs somewhat hot (55C in standby,with nothing but background operations). In comparison my older INTEL NVme is at 35C and both of the older 2.5″ SSds at 27C.
Have not tried a drive-taxing procedure,but wondering if you are finding similar temps in your setup.
Thanks and thanks for all the great reviews.
Dusan.
You can see my drive’s temperature in the screenshot, Dusan. And I was testing it. I’d say that’s quite normal. Temp depends a lot on your environment, too.
Apologies, I do see it. My set up is well cooled. I have added the bequiet! Mc1 pro M.2 cooler and the drive now runs at 30-34C. Much happier.
Dusan
No worries, Dusan. I appreciate your input. In fact, thanks to your question, I checked on the drive again just now — in my standard testing, I always use the device for an extended amount of time after the review — and its temperature seemed OK. Yes, it gets warm but not warmer than most other NVMe SSDs, including the Samsung 980 PRO. No, heat is never good but you can’t avoid it. 🙂