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
