Crucial T700 Pro 2TB

For whom the benchmark tolls

- ZAK STOREY

THIS IS WHY benchmarking is important. From the outset, the Crucial T700 Pro 2TB looks like another incredible PCIe 5.0 drive at the cutting edge of what’s possible right now. It’s advertised with 12,000 MB/s sequentials, a big chunky heatsink to dissipate all that warmth, and a slick design, too. Combine that with 2TB of storage at a more than affordable $270, and it’s well on its way to being a dead-set winner.

Except, it isn’t. Sadly, the CT2000T700SSD5 (catchy name, we know) doesn’t quite hit the same speeds as some other PCIE 5.0 drives right now. In fact, in our testing, it fell significantly under par in comparison. CrystalDiskMark’s sequential testing at a queue depth of 32 recorded read and write performance of just 7,084 and 6,841 MB/s respectively. Still impressive numbers, no doubt, but a far cry from the up to 12,000 MB/s listed on the product page. This is a fresh-out-of-the-box experience; there’s no OS installed on it, it’s running formatted and tested within minutes of one another, and is located in the top PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot in the MSI MEG Z790 Ace Max motherboard, covered in a massive M.2 heatsink (temps top out at 66C according to HWMonitor).