'Fastest SSD on the planet': Crucial's T705 tops benchmarks as reviewers rave about its performance — but it is far too expensive and a RAID-0 setup may beat it

Crucial's new T705 SSD certainly looks impressive on paper - it claims to be 25x faster than SATA and nearly 2x faster than Crucial's fastest Gen4 SSD, with sequential reads/writes up to 14,500/12,700MB/s.

The drive, which is available in capacities up to 4TB, is engineered with Micron's 232-layer TLC NAND3 and compatible with Intel Core 13th-14th Gen desktop CPUs & AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPU. Additional features include an aluminum and copper heatsink, adaptive thermal protection, and hardware encryption for storage security.

If you’ve had your eye on the SSD ever since it was announced, the good news is that the first reviews are in, and it’s every bit as impressive as you might hope, but with some important caveats.

Fast, but expensive

ServeTheHome's review reveals the exceptional performance of the Crucial T705, stating that it is "right at the limits of what a PCIe Gen 5 x4 link can sustain." The review notes that the SSD's performance in testing was "the best sequential read and write performance" the reviewer has ever seen, despite a slight dip in sequential write speed on the larger CrystalDiskMark test. The review concludes by saying that the T705 "sits in a class all by itself" and is a "serious contender" for anyone wanting the fastest SSD available.

PC World expressed the same view, stating that the T705 is "booking" in terms of performance. It highlighted that while the drive "posted some gaudy numbers in benchmarks, these don’t always translate to the real world. A lot depends on your system and CPU”, although it raved over the synthetic benchmark testing’s "glorious sequential results." It summed up its review with “If you want the absolute best performance from your PCIe 5.0 system, then yes, the T705 is the best thing going.”

Tom's Hardware had more reservations, stating that while the T705 is "the fastest SSD on the planet," it “comes with a big price tag”. It also highlighted that the “T705 can be a suitable upgrade from an SATA or PCIe 3.0 SSD, sure, but right now PCIe 4.0 SSDs make more sense for most users.” If you’re still considering buying it, the site warns “Even with rising SSD and NAND flash prices, the low gigabytes per dollar factor here is quite underwhelming. You will have to pay dearly for cutting-edge SSD performance.”

HotHardware's review gushed that “All things considered, the Crucial T705 is the best all-around performing consumer-class SSD we have ever tested.” Like the other reviews, it agrees that the “only real downsides to the Crucial T705 are pricing and the requirement for adequate cooling”, although it points out that the latter shouldn’t be an issue “in any properly-configured, enthusiast-class system, which is where the T705 belongs.” It ends on a highly positive note, stating “Ultimately, if you’re building a top-end system and want the fastest M.2 SSD money can buy, at this moment the Crucial T705 is it.”

TweakTown was also highly impressed, stating that the “T705 is the ultimate enthusiast storage platform, delivering the most where it matters the most.” Backing up that claim with its test scores, the site said “We rank SSDs in terms of overall user experience as expressed by PCMark 10 storage and 3DMark gaming storage tests. We consider a user experience score of 15K or more to verify an SSD as a TweakTown Elite performer. Crucial's 2TB T705 is the first flash-based SSD of any kind, retail or ES, to cross the 22,900 plateau. Epic.”

If you’re excited to buy Crucial’s T705 SSD, you can pick it up here. The 1TB model costs $259.99 with a heatsink, or $239.99 without. The price rises to $439.99 (with) or $399.99 (without) for the 2TB model, and then jumps to $729.99 (with) or $713.99 (without) for the 4TB model.

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