Crucial T705 Review (vs. T700): Turning PCIe 5.0 NVMe Performance to Eleven

When it launched over a year ago, the Crucial T700 was undoubtedly the fastest consumer-grade SSD. Now, its successor, the Crucial T705—first announced on February 20, 2024, and officially available for purchase today—changes that.

In my testing, the new Crucial T705 edges out its predecessor as the fastest NVMe SSD on the market, making it an excellent alternative. For those looking for top performance, the drive is worthy of its comparatively high suggested retail cost—the street price will vary.

Still, the new internal SSD remains similar to its older cousin, and in real-world daily usage, chances are you won't notice the differences between the two. Both are incredibly fast.

Dong's note: I first published this post on February 20, 2024, as a preview and upgraded it to an in-depth review on March 12, 2024, after thorough hands-on testing.

Crucial T705: Another hot PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSD

The Crucial T705 is very similar to the previous T700. The two share the same Phison E26 controller, capacities, and endurance.

The new drive, however, now has faster speed across the board thanks to Micron's new B58R 232L 3D TLC NAND flash memory, which outputs more million transfers per second (MT/s) than the one used in the T700. And in real-world testing, it proved to be indeed faster, as you'll note in the performance section below.

Still, the two drives are essentially the same. The table below shows their hardware specs.

Crucial T705 vs. T700: Hardware specifications

	Micron Crucial T705	Micron Crucial T700
Capacities	1TB, 2TB, 4TB
Interface	PCIe 5.0 x4  NVMe 2.0 (compatible with PCIe 4.0/3.0)
Design	M.2 (2280)
Controller	Phison PS5026-E26
NAND Flash Memory	Micron B58R 232L 3D TLC NAND (2400 MT/s)	Micron 232-layer TLC NAND (2000 MT/s)
Security	AES-256 encryption, TCG Opal 2.01
Sequential Read (up to)	1TB: 13600 MB/s 2TB: 14500 MB/s 4TB: 14100 MB/s	1TB: 11700MB/s 2TB: 12400MB/s 4TB: 12400MB/s
Sequential Write (up to)	1TB: 10200 MB/s 2TB: 12700 MB/s 4TB: 12600 MB/s	1TB: 9500 MB/s 2TB: 11800MB/s 4TB: 11800MB/s
Random Read (IOPS)	1TB: 1400K 2TB: 1550K 4TB: 1500K	1TB: 1350K 2TB: 1500K 4TB: 1500K
Random Write (IOPS)	1TB: 1750K 2TB: 1800K 4TB: 1800K	1TB: 1400K 2TB: 1500K 4TB: 1500K
Endurance  (Terabyte Written)	600TBW (1TB) 1200TBW (2TB) 2400TBW (4TB)
Software	Crucial Storage Executive
Release Date	March 12, 2024	May 30, 2023
U.S. Suggested Price (at launch)	1TB: $240 or $260 (heatsink) 2TB: $400 or $440 (heatsink) or $484 (white heatsink) 4TB: $714 or $730 (heatsink) (Buy now)	$180 (1TB) $400 (2TB) $600 (4TB) (add $30 for the heatsink versions) (Buy now)
Warranty	5 years

A familiar SSD with fast speed and lots of heat

Like all PCIe 5.0 SSDs, the new Crucial T705 is expected to run hot. Generally, its performance will be throttled down when the drive gets hotter than 81^oC (178^oF), and at around 90^oC (194^oF), it might crash.

That's to say the heatsink version is required when you use the drive—or any PCIe 5.0 drive, for that matter—on a motherboard without a built-in heat-dissipating solution. The good news is that most PCIe 5.0 motherboards, not all, come with one for their M.2 slots. If so, you can get the naked version of the drive and save some money.

Other than that, the T705 shares the same feature set as its predecessor, including the helpful Storage Executive dashboard software (for Windows and Linux). The desktop dashboard app enables users to access the SSD's features, such as managing its security, over-provisioning, firmware updates, and more.

Clearly, you need a computer with PCIe 5.0 to get the most out of the new Crucial T705, but the drive will work with all existing motherboards with PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 3.0. When used with an older PCIe version, the heat is less of an issue, but you'll also get slower performance.

And the performance is where the Crucial 705 shines.

Crucial T705: Excellent peformance

As you might have noted in the table above, the new T705 is slated to be faster than the T700 in sequential performances, with a margin of around 18% to 20% on paper. In random access performance, the two are similar.

And that proved to be the case in my testing. I tested the 2TB heatsink version for over 10 days and was thoroughly impressed. The new SSD screamed speeds.

In real-world sequential tests, the T705 was stellar, easily topping charts with significant margins.

Specifically, it was the first I've used that could deliver over 10000MB/s of sustained speeds when reading or writing separately. When reading and writing simultaneously, it was the first to produce over 4000MB/s. Impressively, its performance didn't change much even when used with PCIe 4.0.

The drive's random access (IOPS) performance wasn't as jaw-dropping, but it also topped the charts in write performance. Its read wasn't the fastest, but it was still among the speediest.

It's worth noting, however, that in real-world, day-to-day usage, the T705 was essentially the same as its T700 predecessor. Yes, if you do a lot of raw data copy, you'll experience the benefit of reduced time thanks to the higher speed. However, for other types of work, such as content editing, gaming, or daily office tasks, the new drive made no difference. And that was because, for this type of general task, the T700 is already more than fast enough. There's just no room for improvement.

Conclusion

If you want the absolutely fastest NVMe SSD today, Micron's Crucial T705 PCIe Gen5 SSD is unquestionably the one. Get one today! However, considering the price, the slightly less-speedy Crucial T700, now with reduced costs, is a better deal. In most cases, you won't be able to tell them apart anyway.

If you want a PCIe 5.0 drive that balances performance and cost, the Samsung SSD 990 EVO will give you the best bang for your buck.