Crucial MX300 and MX300 M.2 Reviews (525GB & 1TB)

Test Setup

The motherboard in our SSD test system is the Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha. As well as a slew of full speed SATA 6Gbps ports, this motherboard supports U.2 SSDs, full-length (22110) PCI-E x4 and SATA M.2 SSDs, as well as, of course, drives that connect directly to PCI-E expansion slots. This means we can test all manner of PCI-E storage devices without bandwidth restrictions.

The CPU is overclocked to 4.5GHz (45 x 100MHz) with a vcore of 1.28V and it's paired with 16GB (4 x 4GB) of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 clocked at 3,000MHz. All CPU power saving features are disabled and the system is ran in the high performance power mode, ensuring that storage devices are always operating at peak performance.

Test System

• CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K at 4.5GHz (45 x 100MHz)
  
• Motherboard: Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha
  
• Memory: 4 x 4GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2,800MHz DDR4 at 3,000MHz
  
• PSU: Corsair AX1500i
  
• SSD: OCZ Arc 100 240GB
  
• Case: Corsair Graphite Series 760T
  
• CPU cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H100i GTX
  
• Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit

All SSDs are reset to factory performance prior to testing by issuing a secure erase command, either from the appropriate software where available or from our motherboard's BIOS.