Crucial P310 2TB Review: M.2-2230 Gets Fast (at last)

While Crucial’s competitors have been treating the words “Steam Deck” with great optimism over the past two years, we saw the device as a stepping stone to faster and more capable models such as the Asus ROG Ally amd MSI Claw. Thus, while drive marketers focused on the original Steam Deck’s slow drive performance and limited capacity as reasons to upgrade, we’ve been scanning the range of devices that use the small M.2 2230 form factor exclusively, including a few ultrathin notebooks already equipped with better drives than the original Steam Deck. If nothing more, Crucial marketing’s slow shift towards handheld gaming has given it a chance to burst onto the seen with the latest controller and flash memory, though we’re still viewing the P310 as a potential solution for all M.2 2230 NVMe needs.

Regardless of the device you’re putting it into, the recently-released Phison E27T controller assures that the super-fast Micron 232-layer QLC NAND gets maximum access to the PCIe 4.0 interface…supposedly. We are, after all, still dealing with a single NAND IC and no DRAM cache. There’s simply no room on the 2230 IC for more hardware.

Today we’re going to compare the P310 to the fastest 2230-sized drive we’ve ever tested, along with Crucial’s budget-performance P500 full-sized (2280) drive and a few of its 2TB/PCIe Gen4 contemporaries.

Test Hardware
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 7950X: 16C/32T 4.5-5.7 GHz, 64MB L3 Cache, Socket AM5
CPU Cooler	Alphacool Core 1 Aurora, VPP655 with Eisbecher D5 150mm, NexXxoS UT60 X-Flow
Motherboard	ASRock X670E Taichi, Socket AM5, BIOS 1.11 (10-21-2022)
Graphics	Powercolor Red Devil Radeon 6750 XT: 2324-2623MHz GPU, 12GB GDDR6
Power	be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 850W: ATX12V v2.3, EPS12V, 80 PLUS Platinum
Memory	Lexar Thor OC DDR5-6000 2x16GB (32GB) CL32-38-38-96 1.30V
Sound	Integrated HD Audio
Network	Integrated Wi-Fi

Test Results

Our first test is one that tends to go against high performance drives: Thermals. Faster controllers tend to make a drive run hotter, which can then cause it to throttle back to stay under its designed thermal limit. A heatsink is the typical solution on desktops and even a few stationary consoles like the Playstation 5, but slender things like handhelds tend not to have space for such devices.

Sandra’s overall disk score is a fairly solid indicator of where the P310 stands in comparison to the 1TB Sabrent drive in the same form factor as well as the longer 2280 drives. We’re surprised that the tiny P310 even gets this close to the larger drives, which have two NAND ICs and a DRAM CACHE.

3DMark’s storage score puts the P310 into the same relationship to the longer drives as Sandra’s overall disk score, but the scores of various 2280 drives jockey for position.

Meanwhile, PCMark’s test patterns exaggerate the results we saw in 3DMark, with the 2230-sized P310 emerging victorious over one of the larger 2280-sized drives.

Both of the 2230 drives perform very well in ATTO’s 128K transfers, which show the P310 leading the award-winning T500 on occasion.

The P310 chases all of the larger form-factor drives in CrystalDiskMark, but at least it’s close enough to compete. Suffering the combinations of fewer ICs of an older flash type on an earlier storage controller, the 1TB Sabrent drive trails everything.

We’re surprised to see the P310 trailing the Rocket 2230…but equally surprised to see the larger form factor NM800 Pro trailing both, in DiskBench: That one bench makes up the “File Transfer” portion of our combined average chart, but since all benchmarks are file transfers perhaps we should rename it “large file transfer”?

Regardless of the labels, the P310 is around 15% faster than the previous-fastest 2230 entry, Sabrent’s Rocket 2230. As the 2280 drives won’t even fit into the P310 or Rocket 2230’s target devices, the larger drives merely show how far the technology supporting 2230 drives has advanced.

Crucial P310 2TB CT2000P310SSD2
Pros	Cons
Fastest M.2-2230 drive to date	Reduced 440 TBW rating
The Verdict
While seriously fast, the P310’s relatively low 440 terabytes-written endurance rating (compared to 1200 to 1400 for typical 2TB drives) could be problematic for certain buyers.

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