Review cover Crucial X8 2TB External SSD (Hardware)
Official GBAtemp Review

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Up for review today is the Crucial X8 2TB external SSD. Featuring up to 1050mb/s sequential read speeds in a tiny form factor, the Crucial X8 is designed to give you fast access to important backups. Is it worth the cost though?

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Fast Storage...until.

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The Crucial X8 is a rugged, small external SSD, featuring a Silicon Motion SM2263 controller, 1050mb/s read speeds, USB 3.1 Gen 2 support, ~2TB’s of QLC NAND (with a ~275GB SLC cache), up to a 3 year warranty, and a current price point of $280. All in all, a pretty competitive package compared to similar spec’d external SSDs. Unboxing the SSD you’ll find the unit itself, a 9in USB-C to USB-C cable along with a USB-C to USB-A adapter (which is a nice touch), and a tiny little manual. The SSD itself is very sleek, attractive, and quite small, measuring in at 4.3in x 2in x 0.5in (110mm x 53mm x 12mm), and has been rated to survive up a 7.5ft (2.2m) drop. That’s nice, I suppose! 

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But what we really want to know is how it performs, which is what we’ll take a look at next. Crucial rates the sequential read speeds of the SSD at 1050mb/s, and during my usual quick testing this holds up. Write speeds don’t have an official rating from Crucial, but during my testing I was able to maintain an easy 900-1000mbps...at least, most of the time. As noted above, the Crucial X8’s NAND is mainly composed of QLC flash, which is the slowest kind of NAND used in SSDs these days, and utilizes a ~275GB SLC cache in order to maintain their rated speeds. But, as expected, if you ever happen to saturate that SLC cache before the controller can dump the data onto it’s QLC flash, your write speeds are going to end up tanking, and in this case your speeds will tank hard. Running my usual hardcore stress with iometer, after filling that ~275GB SLC cache in one go the write speeds on the X8 dropped from around 950mb/s allllll the way down to...150mb/s. Given that this is an external SSD and is meant for things like quick data backups and whatnot, it’s very possible you might see these kinds of speeds as you go backing up important data. Given that the whole point of an external SSD is that it’s faster than a standard mechanical hard drive, having one that will drop down to HDD level speeds after a certain amount of data is written is pretty off putting. But, so long as you’re not constantly pushing data over 275GB to the SSD all the time, you should be able to maintain decent speeds while writing to the drive, which is good. Temp wise, the X8 never saw more than 40C under those my torture tests, and thus is something that you should never have to worry about. 

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So is the Crucial X8 worth it? I suppose that depends. For an average everyday user looking for something small, rugged, and fast enough to move smaller files to and from various PCs, the X8 is definitely for you. The price per GB compared to competitor drives with similar specs is much more palatable than offerings from manufacturers like Samsung, WD or Seagate. But if you need to dump large amounts of data and you want something that can maintain fast speeds, you may be better off with something else.

Verdict

What We Liked ...
  • Able to maintain decent speeds for the most part.
  • Great form factor.
What We Didn't Like ...
  • Sustained writes tank to HDD level speeds.
  • Included USB-C cable is kinda short.
7
out of 10

Overall

Overall, the Crucial X8 is a decent external SSD so long as you're not looking for something to dump truckloads of data into. If you just want something that can quickly transfer images or videos to and from a few devices or something to expand storage on your game console, the X8 is definitely for you.
Nice Review,thank you.:)

May I ask please,how "warm" get this little Thing over a longer Time under Full Load ?

Thank you.:)
As noted in the review, I never saw temps hit more than 40C during my torture tests, which involves a ~30 minute run of 100% sequential writes with iometer. This basically hits the drive higher than any realistic workload (it wrote over 700GB IIRC), so you shouldn't see it hit more than 40C under long sustained loads
 
That is really impressive,I already suspected that the little Thing gets "very warm" under load.:huh:

Thank you.:)
Well, it's in an enclosure which presumably has a heatsink, and is using a low powered controller, and then of course the transfer rates do end up tanking pretty quickly once you're writing straight to QLC so it's not that surprising.

If you want to see high temps though, you should wait for our next SSD review where I check out a PCIe 4.0 NVMe that gets...well, very hot under sustained loads :lol:

Coming soon ;)
 
L
should've done a teardown to make sure it has a heatsink, because if sustained writes slow it down to hdd level speeds something seems messed up
 
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should've done a teardown to make sure it has a heatsink, because if sustained writes slow it down to hdd level speeds something seems messed up
As noted in the review, it's because it's using QLC NAND for the majority of the flash, which has incredibly slow sequential writes.

40C isn't remotely hot enough to throttle anything down.
 
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L
As noted in the review, it's because it's using QLC NAND for the majority of the flash, which has incredibly slow sequential writes.

40C isn't remotely hot enough to throttle anything down.
that could also just be radiant heat, the outer shell could be just 40, but it could also be much hotter inside if it doesn't have direct contact with the ssd, air isn't the best heat transfer medium
but qlc could also do the trick i guess, i've got no real idea what the difference between mlc and qlc is
 
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that could also just be radiant heat, the outer shell could be just 40, but it could also be much hotter inside if it doesn't have direct contact with the ssd, air isn't the best heat transfer medium
but qlc could also do the trick i guess, i've got no real idea what the difference between mlc and qlc is
Temperatures are taken directly from probes on the NAND, the outer shell isn't 40C (it wasn't even warm to the touch), the NAND packages themselves are measuring at 40C. It's definitely using a heatsink of some type.

QLC = 4 bits per cell, MLC = 2 bits per cell (SLC = 1, TLC = 3). It takes more time to write to a cell that holds more bits, SLC is faster, QLC is slowest. QLC generally tops out around 180mb/s, vs SLC which hasn't even reached a strong limit yet (AFAIK, anyways). Once you fill that SLC cache, the drive then has to go and write data directly to the QLC, which causes the massive dips in write speed. Has nothing to do with temperature in this case.
 
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L
Temperatures are taken directly from probes on the NAND, the outer shell isn't 40C (it wasn't even warm to the touch), the NAND packages themselves are measuring at 40C. It's definitely using a heatsink of some type.

QLC = 4 bits per cell, MLC = 2 bits per cell (SLC = 1, TLC = 3). It takes more time to write to a cell that holds more bits, SLC is faster, QLC is slowest. QLC generally tops out around 180mb/s, vs SLC which hasn't even reached a strong limit yet (AFAIK, anyways). Once you fill that SLC cache, the drive then has to go and write data directly to the QLC, which causes the massive dips in write speed. Has nothing to do with temperature in this case.
alright makes sense, and upon google searches, the thing is a pain in the ass to take apart anyway, not even anandtech managed to get pictures of one taken apart
i'd say that's a con for user repairability
 
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If I had to guess, I'd say it's just using an NVMe drive inside. I get the same exact speeds with my 500GB Samsung 970 EVO in a usb adapter.
 
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It's USB 3.2 Gen 2 now. Yeah, I know, it's confusing. But if you're gonna use the long name, get it right :P
I hate the USB naming scheme. Now USB 3.0 is the same exact thing as USB 3.1 gen1. At least USB 4 will be type C only, and they have a fresh name slate, so I'm hoping they don't fuck it up, because USB 3's naming conventions are just a fuster-cluck mess.
 
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I hate the USB naming scheme. Now USB 3.0 is the same exact thing as USB 3.1 gen1. At least USB 4 will be type C only, and they have a fresh name slate, so I'm hoping they don't fuck it up, because USB 3's naming conventions are just a fuster-cluck mess.
I just call them USB 3.0/3.1/3.2, it makes much more sense. I mean they kept the decimal point but they just retconned USB 3.0 and 3.1 which makes it even more confusing. Could've just called it USB 3 Gen 1 and Gen 2, that would've been acceptable.
 
After comparing this with another review is not so bad. And I actually prefer shorter cables, they damage less.
 
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