Crucial P5 2TB 3D NAND NVMe Internal Gaming SSD, up to 3400MB/s - CT2000P5SSD8

the software that came with the drive made my life easier, I copied from a standard ssd drive the whole system as it is to this drive. (I know its not recommended to do it that way but Im lazy).

This is my first M.2, upon reading reviews and doing a little research I decided on Crucial and I do NOT regret my decision!!! I’ll likely be picking up another one because what’s better than 1 2TB Crucial SSD??? 2 of them. I run my OS and my biggest game on mine. Use 2TB Seagate for storage.

I put this in a new, custom ITX build. Its on an MSI b450i Gaming Plus Max motherboard with 32GB Crucial RAM and a Ryzen 3 3200g. Installation was easy. Its mounted under the motherboard, so I added extra fans to circulate the air. Again, this is squeezed into a custom case. Before adding the fans, I was reaching about 70 degrees, now I max out at 64, but stay under 60 most of the time. Since this was a new build, I didnt have to transfer data over from a previous drive. I have the 500GB version paired with a 1TB mx500.

I probably should have known this, but there are no supporting screws to secure this drive to the motherboard. I had to scrounge around my garage to find the smallest screw possible. Not a very professional job, but it works.

In 2016 I bought my first NVME - a Samsung 950 PRO 512GB. Microsoft had no Windows 10 driver for NVME and Linux would not have one in a standard distro for at least another year. It took me an entire day to coax a Windows installation as a boot drive for a Dell Precision laptop and another whole day to install a second one in a Alienware laptop. Fast forward 4-5 years and this install into a new Lenovo T15g could not have been more uneventful. Now, 6 months later, this 2TB drive is still running perfectly without any tweaks and without a hiccup. The Crucial Storage Executive software is full featured and stable. I realize that this ease of use is not limited to Crucial. I am running Samsung, WD Black, and Seagate Firecuda NVME in my other boxes. But if you are wondering how Crucial is doing in this space, their NVME drives are as reliable and stable as the better known brands. I am waiting for 4TB NVME drives to become more plentiful before diving in to build a small NAS - and I am looking forward to seeing what comes out from Crucial.

One of the first things to know about the Crucial P5 NVMe drive is that Crucial is made by Micron (of Idaho), one of the leading memory chip makers in the world. Theyve been a consistent top performer for decades. Most of all, unlike other brands, you can know that all Crucial products consistently use Micron chips, so you can expect consistent, high performance results. (Brands switching the chips in their SSDs is an industry problem at the time of this writing) The P5 drive - the top performer in their line - is designed for gaming, number crunching, video and other workstation tasks, so it was an easy choice for my system that would be doing all of that. And it didnt disappoint. The build quality is excellent. It installed easily and has performed without a hitch since Day One. If youre coming from anything less than a different high performance NVMe (and there are a couple of solid competitors), you WILL notice the zippy load times and data transfer times. Another nice feature - likely because Crucial is using their own chips - is that the price is very good for the size and performance of the drive. It isnt dirt cheap, but it can be less than equally performing NVMe drives from big-name competitors. Personally, I bundled this with Ballistix RAM and have been very, very pleased with the flawless performance.

If you already have a SATA SSD, this drive isnt going to blow you away, especially for games. The scenarios where you will see the most benefit are from sequential transactions such as reading and writing large files. You will get a noticeable improvement all around, but the difference will be minor. Also, no screws are included. I dont see why they couldnt include at least one screw and standoff. I had to buy a mounting set because my motherboard didnt come with any.

I have been using this memory card for months and it works reliably.

Bought this drive as a fast access storage drive for video games that require a lot of disk use. At time of review I’ve had it in use for 6 months, great speed and reliability so far. This is my first crucial purchase and I’d definitely do it again.

Makes your system run much smoother in terms of performance, than your regular ssd 2.3. This is definitely something I would recommend for a gaming PC or any system that you need performance out of. This was a definitely a great upgrade. My system would stall at times. It has an old Samsung SSD. 840.