Crucial M500 480GB SSD Review – A New Benchmark For Incredible Affordability And Performance

CRUCIAL M500 CLOSER LOOK

The printed circuit board is quite interesting as it has a few subtle changes between the various storage sizes of the Crucial M500. In this case, the 480GB version has eight Micron 20nm MLC NAND chips (MT29F256G08CECABH6-6Q:A) on the top-side at 32GB per module:

The underside has an additional eight at the same capacity bringing the total NAND to 512GB, but with a user capacity of 480GB. The Marvell FPU and 256MB Micron DDR3 SDRAM cache (MT41K256M16HA-125 M:E) are also found nestled here:

Of course the defining factor of the M500 is the Marvell 88SS9187 controller, which made quite a name for itself recently via Plextor’s M5 Pro SSD line. The third-generation 88SS9187 FPU makes an encore appearance in the M500 this time around, but unlike the PCB layout of the M5 Pro, the processor is not excluded from the rest of the components:

The Marvell 88SS9187 6 Gb/s SATA controller supports high-speed NAND flash interfaces up to 200 MB/s per channel. The 88SS9187 integrates a dual-core  Marvell 88FR102 V5 CPU with shared DTCM and ITCM SRAM. The 88SS9187 also includes a high-performance ECC  engine, as well as low power consumption at a high performance level.

The aforementioned 256MB Micron DDR3 cache has a clock rate of 800MHz and 16x width: