Final Thoughts
When PCI-Express 5.0 drives first came out they were the fastest drives that you could get, but they still did not take full advantage of the controllers they were using and the full speed of PCI-Express 5.0. Most of these drives ended up being 10 GB/s or 12 GB/s drives. A couple of months ago Phison sent us their PS5026-E26 Max14um preview drive to show what an optimized E26-based drive could do. It ended up being the fastest drive we’ve ever tested! Unfortunately this was not a drive you could buy. That is where Crucial comes in with their new T705, while it is based off the same E26 controller as their T700 it has much better performance.
In our testing we saw this drive have scores of 14164.69 MB/s read and 12078.61 MB/s write in CrystalDiskMark and a very similar 13220 MB/s read and 11360 MB/s write in ATTO Disk Benchmark. With this type of performance it traded blows with the Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um preview drive, beating it most of the time. That makes it the fastest retail drive we’ve ever tested!
Now we received the Limited Edition version of the drive that comes with a white heatsink. This is going to be excellent for those all-white builds out there. Now as I mentioned I would have really liked to have seen a white PCB on the drive as well. The normal version of the drive will come with a black heatsink and Crucial also will offer the drive without a heatsink, but keep in mind you will need some type of cooling on it to keep it from thermally throttling.
On our test bench that has no fans or air flowing over the drive we did experience thermally throttling. Once we added a single fan to this setup to have air moving over the drive we did not experience any type of throttling. So if you have this drive in a normal case with proper cooling you shouldn’t experience any of these issues.
Right now you can pick up the 2TB Limited Edition version of the drive for $346.99 at our favorite online retailer with the normal heatsink version being $314.99. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Crucial T705 Gen5 Solid State Drive a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Fastest retail drive we’ve ever tested
– Awesome white heatsink on the white version
– Available in capacities up to 4TB
– Can get it in a heatsink or non-heatsink version
Cons:
– If you don’t have air running over it, it will thermally throttle
