It used to be that M.2 SSDs didn’t need much if any cooling but as speeds have improved that has changed and we have seen some situations where without cooling performance drops off or they fail completely. That along with the PS5 requiring a heatsink for M.2 drives has helped us see a lot of different SSD models that have heatsink and heatsinkless models. The Crucial P5 Plus which I took a look at back in 2021 is now included in those with the introduction of its own heatsink models. With drive prices dropping the P5 Plus was $179.99 when I originally took a look at it. The drive is now $54.99 or $67.99 for the heatsink model. I thought this would be a great time to see if the P5 Plus is still keeping up and to test out how the heatsink performs, so today I’m going to check it out. 

Product Name: Crucial P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink

Review Sample Provided by: Crucial

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

Photos and Features

The packaging for the Crucial P5 Plus with Heatsink looks different from the first time I took a look at the P5 Plus. The box front is now similar to what I saw on the T700 models with a picture of the drive on the left and a blue stripe with the model name in the largest font. Beyond the SSD itself being different the background for this drive is bright white whereas the T700 had a grey background. The Crucial logo is still up in the top left corner and the 5-year warranty seal is in the bottom right. There is a second blue stripe that shows the capacity of the drive using a clear sticker. This also lets us know that this is a Gen 4 drive and has the expected potential read speed listed as well. The box itself can be hung from a peg with a hole at the top and on the back they have another blue stripe which is on both the front and the back. The back of the box otherwise doesn’t have too much going on. There is a QR code that links to a setup guide and they touch on drive features like the heatsink that also gives PS5 compatibility. Like with the T700 with the heatsink, the box doesn’t have a window on the back like the non-heatsink model so we can’t see the drive sticker.

When you open the box up there is a clear plastic clamshell which has the drive sitting in the middle far away from all of the edges. It also comes with the generic Crucial M.2 SSD guide. 

With the drive out of the box, we finally get a good look at the design of the heatsink. From a top-down view, it looks almost the same as the T700’s heatsink model but it is very different. It just has the same wide center stripe and then two groves above and below that. But the T700 heatsink was twice the height and that styling came from the T-like shape of the heatsink that covered up the other heatsinks and was shaped like a pyramid. The P5 Plus with heatsink however doesn’t have any of that and is a flat design that is just designed to look similar. The aluminum heatsink has a black finish which matches the black PCB that we can see poking out at the ends. It has the Crucial logo on the left of the main center section and on the right it has the P5 Plus model name.

The back of the drive is also completely covered, this side has a thin steel sheet metal backplate that wraps up around the sides as well. This is what holds the heatsink on at the top with two small screws on each side attaching them together and clamshelling the P5 Plus SSD in between. The back also has two stickers on it. The right sticker has the model name and the drive capacity as well as its serial number printed and in QR code form. Then on the left, all of the certification logos are printed on the second sticker. All of this of course will be hidden when the drive is installed. Pulling the two screws out on both sides of the heatsink allows the heatsink to be pulled apart. But the drive does have grey thermal pads between the heatsink and the SSD and then the back of the drive to the backplate is completely covered in pink thermal putty. This means that all of the heat has a way to get to the heatsink in one way or another, it isn’t just there to look good.

With the heatsink pulled off, we could also get a good look at what the P5 Plus with Heatsink has going on. I did already review this drive back in 2021 but a lot of SSDs end up with different components as time goes on which is known to change drive performance so I didn’t want to just assume that nothing has changed and this drive is the same as before. Check out THIS page for pictures of our first look at the drive with no heatsink. Like with the previous design, there isn’t anything on the back of the drive which is good because that thermal putty is messy. The overall layout of the drive is the same with the controller on the far right near the M.2 connection, the DDR then two NAND chips on the left and I’m not seeing any of the smaller components changing locations at all. The controller is the same DM02A1 controller from Micron. The DDR in the middle has 3FF47 D8BMZ on it and our previous drive did also say D8BMZ but with a different initial code. Then the NAND here way 3GE2D NY124 and the NY124 matches with last time, these are Micron 176L 8-bit 3D NANDand are 512 GB each in capacity to reach the 1TB drive capacity of our sample. The P5 Plus with or without the heatsink is available in 512GB and 2TB models as well.

Test Rig and Procedures

Performance

Before getting into testing the Crucial P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink I did check the drive out using CrystalDiskInfo just to confirm that it was connected using the correct interface. It was connected at PCIe 4.0 x4 so we are good there. I also like to do this to document the firmware revision we are running on for testing because those do change from time to time as well. I did also check the firmware compared to the original P5 Plus that I covered and it has moved up from P7CR402 up to P7CR403 so it is a new revision.

My first round of testing was to run the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink through Crystal Disk Mark 8. Sequential testing is usually a best-case scenario and is what companies use for their specifications and on the front of the box to advertise drive speeds which in the case of the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink the box and the specifications both touch up speeds of up to 6600 MB/s read speed for all three capacities and the specifications have the read speed at up to 5000 MB/s for the 1TB and 2TB models and lower at 4000 MB/s for the 500GB model. For the read speed, the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink reached that mark hitting 6699 MB/s, this was right in line with the original drive as well and above most of the other PCIe 4.0 drives tested. For the wrist speeds the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink hit 5041 MB/s which was a hair faster than the original and not the fastest PCIe 4.0 drive but still up there with the Renegade and the MM800 being faster.

While testing in CrystalDiskMark 8 I did also check out the drive’s IOPS performance with the random 4k queue depth of 32 and 1 thread results. I stacked the read and write performance together here because I do believe that the overall drive performance is important, not just one result or the other. The P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink struggled here coming out close to the bottom of the pack when both results were combined. I did highlight where the original came in and while I did this test a few times I don’t know why the performance has dropped other than potentially the different firmware.

In AS SSD, I skipped over the standard test because it is very similar to the CrystalDiskMark tests I prefer to check out one of its sub-tests, the copy benchmark. This moves three files, one that is an ISO, one that is a program, and then a game, and times how long each takes. With these being timed, lower is better here. I have all three results stacked to see which drives are best overall. The P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink did well here, improving on what I saw on our original testing even with just the new T700 PCIe 5.0 drive testing faster.

Next up with PassMark Performance Test 10, I ran their combined synthetic benchmark to get a look at their DiskMark rating. The P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink was right with the original results for the non-heatsink P5 Plus here which puts both drives up near the top with just two drives testing faster.

I then changed my focus back over to IOPS performance and ran the NM710 in Anvil’s Storage Benchmark focusing on the 4k queue depth of 16 results from the main test. The read IOPS for the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink dropped noticeably from what I saw when we tested the original drive previously. The write IOPS weren’t too far off but with the read results it dropped the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink from up in the top of the chart down to the middle.

Sticking with Anvil’s Storage Utilities I did a few more tests. Here I wanted to check out how the drive would react to different queue depths so with the file size set to 4K I ran tests ramping up double each time starting at 1 and up to 128 for reads and 64 for writes. This lets us see if the controller gets overloaded. For the read, queue depth tests the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink started off a little slower than the original testing but ended up in the same 2669 MB/s range at the highest queue depth. This put the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink in the main pack of drives but is one of the slower of that group. For the write test, it once again started off a little slower than the original test but this time came in around 100 MB/s lower. Performance does scale up but drops off just slightly when going from a queue depth of 32 up to 64.

For ATTO Benchmark I set it to a queue depth of just 1 but ramped up the file size slowly to see how it would affect performance. For the read test in ATTO, the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink starts off slow when compared to the lot but runs right with and just slightly ahead of the original P5 Plus 1TB test results. There are a few small hiccups where it doesn’t gain much in performance but only one is a drop in performance. In the end, the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink ends up in that top pack that sits well below the new T700 PCIe 5 drive. The write performance in ATTO was similar only the group that both P5 Plus drives end up in is extremely clumped together and a few of the older PCIe 3.0 drives are up above them all at the top end. The P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink does peak out near the 1MB range and drops by a small amount each result after that.

Next up I wanted to look at more real-world performance and for this, I started with PCMark 10 which has an overall full system benchmark for storage, and then one focused on data storage drives. In the full system drive benchmark, the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink dropped in performance in both results compared to the original test results from two years ago. This was especially true on the data drive benchmark. For the full system drive result still puts it up in the top half of the results but it is interesting how performance has dropped.

For more real-world resting, I did our file transfer tests. You don’t get any more real-world than this. For each drive, I copied the folder filled with files to the drive tested documenting what its transfer rate is near the end of the transfer. I used three file types, movies which are large single files, a folder filled with RAW and JPG photos, and then a folder filled with Word documents. Starting with the movie files the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink transferred the movies at 2580 MB/s, this was a lot better than our original testing, and overall while not the highest still up near the top. For the pictures which are smaller but not too small, the speed drops down to 1570 MB/s but this again was 570 MB/s faster than the original P5 Plus 1TB testing and is up with the fastest drives tested. Then the last test was Word documents which are small and always much slower, here it transferred files at 17.4 MB/s which was slower than the MM710 but still solid.

Before finishing up my testing I did of course want to check out if the heatsink was helping at all. For this, I ran a linear read test for a half hour using AIDA64. During that, I tracked the drive temperature and I also took thermal images. I also did the same test using our old heatsinkless drive as well. I included the transfer speeds in the pictures below because it was interesting that the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink had consistent read speeds when running for the half hour but the P5 Plus 1TB without the heatsink started in the same transfer speed but immediately dropped down to the 3100 MB/s range. This would most likely also mean less heat being generated. Given that the P5 Plus 1TB without the heatsink went right to 63/64c where the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink stayed at 44c this is most likely the drive throttling down right away. It would explain why in some of our tests the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink transferred files faster, but doesn’t explain the older drive being much better in IOPS tests. The thermal images also show how the drive without a heatsink has all of its heat concentrated at the controller. With the heatsink, there is heat there but it is spread out more and also 20c lower. The thermal imagines also match up with what the sensor on the drives were showing us in the temperature graphs as well.

P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink

P5 Plus 1TB No Heatsink

Overall and Final Verdict

With most reviews at best I have an idea of how something will perform because of the specs, but with the Crucial P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink, we have had the original P5 Plus in for testing a few years ago with its launch. Crucial however has added a heatsink model which gives PS5 compatibility and also helps keep the drive cool for PC use in situations where you don’t have a heatsink built into your motherboard. If you do, the original drive without the heatsink is still an option, but it's nice that Crucial has opened up the options for the popular P5 Plus drive. It also gives us a chance to check out the performance once again to see if anything has changed and to also see how it fits in the market today. With the original launch the drive was $179.99 and the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink is now just $67.99 with the non-heatsink model even cheaper at $54.99.

So first off, does the heatsink help? Well, our thermal images showed how the heatsink pulls the heat out across the drive better and doesn’t have all of the heat right on top of the controller. The heatsink model in my tests ran over 20c cooler than the original and even in our relatively short benchmarks, there were a few situations where it seemed to perform better because of that. The drive looks great with the heatsink on it as well and while more compact matches the styling that Crucial went with on their new T700 PCIe 5.0 drive as well.

As far as performance goes, like with what I saw previously, the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink is still a great performing PCIe 4.0 drive, and in some of the cases including the real-world tests it performed better this time around. Our drive seemed to have the same controller, RAM, and NAND but did have a new firmware. I did however see lower performance when it came to the IOPS benchmarks when compared to the original results from two years ago. Other than the firmware change I don’t have any reason for it but in IOPS-heavy applications the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink may not be the best option. The file transfer, sequential tests, and our real-world Windows file transfer tests however it did well sitting up in the upper end of the PCIe 4.0 drives.

For pricing the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink is currently selling for $67.99 and the non-heatsink 1TB model is 54.99. The 2TB model is $119.99 and $109.99 as well. I will say that while I was writing this, originally the drive was priced at $59.99 and $49.99 for the non-heatsink model so it was a bummer to see that go up. The P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink is designed to be competitive with drives like the WD Black SN850X and even the Lexar NM710 that I just recently reviewed and performance wise it is competing with them. The SN850X is $59.99 without a heatsink and $79.99 so the P5 Plus 1TB W/Heatsink is competing there same with the NM710 which is $64.99 without a heatsink.  So as much as I would like to see those original sale prices, even at the current prices the P5 Plus is still a good value with or without the heatsink depending on what you need.

Live Pricing: HERE

Author Bio

Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org

Editor-in-chief

You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.