Crucial MX300: Good Linux Performance, 525GB SSD For Only $120 USD
This week I was shopping for a solid state drive to replace a hard drive on one of my backup/archival systems and ended up settling for the Crucial MX300 in getting 525GB of storage for just $120 USD. Here are some benchmarks of the Crucial CT525MX300SSD1 compared to some other SSDs on Linux for those curious.
The Crucial MX300 525GB is rated for sequential reads up to 535 MB/s and sequential writes up to 510 MB/s, random reads up to 92K IOPS and random writes up to 83K IOPS. The Crucial MX300 uses Micron's 3D NAND tech. The MX300 series comes in 2.5-inch SSD and M.2 SSD versions while the one I had bought was the CT525MX300SSD1 SSD.
This was my first time using a MX300 SSD but have used other Crucial SSDs on various Linux benchmarking test systems to fine success. I turned to this SSD for its rated performance while offering a half terabyte of storage that should be fine for my purposes and costing just $120 USD. The MX300 can be found at Amazon.com (where I purchased it, of course) as well as NewEgg.com. A 1TB version of the MX300 is available for under $250 or the 750GB version for $170.
I ran some tests of the Crucial MX300 525GB SSD on my common Ubuntu 16.10 x86_64 Intel Skylake Xeon test setup with the Linux 4.8 kernel and using an EXT4 file-system. The performance was compared to the PNY CS1211, Corsair Force LX 256GB, OCZ Trion TR150 120GB, Intel 600P NVMe 256GB SSD, and Samsung 950 PRO NVMe 256GB SSD.
All of these Linux solid-state drive benchmarks were carried out in a fully-automated manner using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.