Micron Crucial P510 Review (vs. Samsung SSD 9100 PRO): A Fast, Cool and Afforable PCIe Gen 5 SSD

Micron’s new Crucial P510, first announced at the beginning of the year, is kind of special.

It’s the company’s third PCIe Gen 5×4 solid-state drive (SSD) after the T700 and T705, but the first designed to be a mainstream drive. As the name suggests, it continues the P series and, in this case, continues the success of the Crucial P310, which is currently one of the fastest PCIe Gen 4×4 SSDs.

As a frill-free SSDs, the Crucial P510 proved speedy in my testing and, most importantly, produced much less heat compared with its older PCIe Gen 5 cousins. All that makes its affordable pricing of $120 (1TB) and $200 (2TB)—higher capacities and heatsink version will be available later—the icing on the cake.

Here’s the bottom line: If you want PCIe Gen 5-class performance without the excessive heat, the Crucial P510 is your best pal. It’s an excellent deal compared to the similarly low-heat but much more expensive yet not-necessarily-faster Samsung SSD 9100 PRO.

Crucial P510: The PCIe Gen 5 performance you want sans the heat you don’t need

Like all first-generation PCIe Gen 5×4 NVMe SSDs, Micron’s first SSDs of the standard always had thermal issues. The T700, for example, won’t work for more than half an hour before crashing if used without a heatsink. The T705 did better but could still become quite hot.

This excessive heat has been the biggest obstacle to the adoption of the PCIe Gen 5×4 standard for SSDs in general. Samsung, for example, initially opted for 2-lane drives, the 990 EVO and 990 EVO Plus, until its recent 4-lane 9100 PRO drive, where the heat issue was sorted out.

From the thermal perspective, Micron’s Crucial P510 is the answer to Samsung’s 9100 PRO. The new SSD is said to use some 25% less power, and in my testing, it produced significantly less heat, enough to remain relatively cool to the touch during heavy operation. And I tested the “naked” version. (The heatsink version is not yet available at the time of this review.)

So, the first and most important thing to note is that with this Crucial P510, you won’t need to worry about a random thermal shutdown, and that’s a good thing.

As shown in the hardware specs, the Crucial P510 is slated to be a tier lower in terms of features and performance grade, being frill-free and DRAM-less. However, that turned out to be a good thing considering its lower cost and faster real-world performance—more on that below.

Micron Crucial P510 vs. Samsung SSD 9100 PRO: Hardware specifications

	Micron Crucial P510	Samsung SSD 9100 PRO
Interface	PCIe 5.0×4
NVMe Version	NVMe 2.x
Older PCIe Backward-Compatible	Yes	Yes
Form Factor	M.2 2280
Heatsink Option	Yes
NAND Storage Memory	Micron G9 276-layer 3D NAND	Samsung V NAND TLC (V8)
Controller	Phison PS5031-E31T	Samsung In-house Controller
Capacity	1TB, 2TB	1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB
DRAM (LPD DDR4)	Dram-less	1GB per TB
Sequential Read Speed (up to)	11000 MB/s	14,700 MB/s
Sequential Write Speed (up to)	9500 MB/s	13,300 MB/s
Random Read Speed (QD32) (up to)	1.5M IOPS	1TB, 2TB: 1.85M IOPS 4TB, 8TB: 2.2M IOPS
Random Write Speed (QD32) (up to)	1.5M IOPS	2.2M IOPS
Management Software	Crucial Storage Executive	Samsung Magician
Data Encryption	AES-256 / TCG Opal 2.02	Class 0 (AES 256), TCG/Opal v2.0, MS eDrive (IEEE1667)
Endurance (terabytes written)	600 TBW per 1TB
Warranty	5-year
US Launch Price (Check street price!)	1TB: $119.99 2TB: $199.99	1TB: $199.99 2TB: $299.99 4TB: $549.99 8TB (TBD) (add $20 for the heatsink version)

A typical Crucial NVMe SSD

Like the mainstream Crucial P310, the Crucial P510 has no built-in DRAM cache, but it does support hardware encryption. Still, it’s only available in the 2280 design without the shorter 2230 option.

In return, it has a higher endurance rating, comparable to that of the Samsung SSD 9100 PRO. Specifically, the drive can handle up to 600 terabytes written for each TB of capacity.

Specifically, you can write 600TB to the 1TB version or 1200TB to the 2TB before it becomes unreliable. That’s generally the standard endurance of most NVMe SSDs.

To put things in perspective, we usually write less than 100GB a day on average, but if you do, it’ll take you 30 years to wear out a 1TB Crucial P510. That’s a lot of years.

Other than that, the new drive shares the same Storage Executive dashboard software as the rest of the Crucial family. Similar to Samsung Magician, this desktop application is an excellent tool for users to manage their Crucial SSDs, including health monitoring, firmware updates, and other advanced features, such as Over-provisioning.

Micron Crucial P510: Excellent performance

Considering the Crucial P510 is a frill-free SSD, I didn’t expect much from it, and that turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The new SSD proved to be one of the fastest NVMe drives on the market.

In fact, it was the fastest in the most critical real-world test, where I made it write and read a large amount of data simultaneously. At over 4100MB/s, it even edged out the T705 and T700.

The new drive also did well in random performance, being faster than the Samsung SSD 9100 PRO.

Still, in real-world usage, the two drives “felt” the same. I used both alternately as the primary boot drive of my work computer for almost a week and never knew which one was being used. Generally, at a certain speed grade, faster no longer brings in noticeable differences.

Again, like the case of the Samsung SSD 9100 PRO, the Crucial P510 remained cool even during extended and heavy operation. This lack of excessive heat is by far the most significant aspect of this drive since you can safely use it in places where another hot drive can’t, such as a laptop, or anywhere a heat-dissipating solution is not available.

Conclusion

Micron’s Crucial P510 is an excellent PCIe Gen5x4 NVMe SSD. It’s fast and, most importantly, doesn’t produce a lot of heat. Additionally, the comparatively friendly street price never hurts. Get one today!