Crucial T700

The Crucial T700 4TB is one of the fastest SSDs on the market, with 12,400 MB/s reads and 1,500K random IOPS. It's DRAM-less, which is a weird choice for a flagship, but real-world performance is still excellent. If you have a Gen5 motherboard and want maximum speed plus 4TB of space, this is a top pick, just shop around since prices swing by USD 214.

The numbers are silly. 12,400 MB/s read and 11,800 MB/s write put this in the 96th percentile for speed in our database. Random IOPS hit 1,500K for both read and write, which lands it in the 97th percentile. That's best-in-class territory. The heatsink keeps things from thermal throttling during long transfers, which is a real concern with Gen5 drives. The DRAM-less design is the one asterisk here. Under sustained heavy workloads, you might see dips that a DRAM-equipped competitor wouldn't show. For gaming and everyday creative work, it's a non-issue.

Against the Samsung 9100 PRO, the T700 trades blows on raw speed but Samsung's drive has a more established track record and better user sentiment. The WD_BLACK SN850X is a Gen4 drive that's significantly cheaper and still fast enough for 99% of users, though it can't touch these sequential numbers. The Kingston Fury Renegade and Seagate FireCuda 530R are both solid Gen4 options that undercut the T700 on price. If you're on a PCIe 4.0 motherboard, any of those Gen4 drives make more sense. The T700 only justifies its price if you have a Gen5-capable board and a workload that actually saturates that bandwidth.

Pricing is all over the place right now. We're seeing USD 615 to USD 829 across four US listings, which is a USD 214 spread. That's a huge range for the same drive. If you're buying, shop around. The lower end of that range is competitive for a 4TB Gen5 drive with a heatsink. The higher end? You're paying early-adopter tax. Compared to a solid Gen4 4TB drive that might cost half as much, you're paying a premium for speeds most people won't fully use. But if you're moving massive files daily or want the absolute fastest load times, the price per gigabyte isn't outrageous at the low end.

The Crucial T700 4TB is one of those drives that makes you wonder if you actually need this much speed. 12,400 MB/s sequential reads put it in the top tier of PCIe 5.0 drives, and the 4TB capacity means you won't be uninstalling games to make room for the next 100GB patch. It's built on Micron's 232-layer TLC NAND with a Phison E26 controller, and it ships with a proper heatsink that actually does its job.

But here's the thing: this drive is DRAM-less. For a flagship Gen5 drive, that's a bit of a head-scratcher. It still hits those crazy numbers thanks to HMB, but sustained heavy writes might not be as smooth as a drive with dedicated cache. For most people, you'll never notice. For the spec-obsessed, it's worth knowing.

Skip this if you're on a PCIe 4.0 or older motherboard. You're paying for Gen5 speeds you can't use. Also skip it if you're budget-conscious, a quality Gen4 4TB drive will cost significantly less and still feel fast for gaming and everyday tasks. And if you're not comfortable checking which M.2 slot on your board supports Gen5, save yourself the headache and get something simpler.

This is a drive for people who want the fastest thing available and have the hardware to support it. If you're running an Intel 13th Gen or AMD Ryzen 7000 system with a Gen5 M.2 slot, the T700 delivers ridiculous speed and a ton of capacity. The heatsink version is the one to get unless your motherboard already has serious M.2 cooling. It's not the best value play, but it's one of the fastest drives we've tested.