Crucial BX500 - 2.5" SATA SSD - 2TB

The Crucial BX500 is the cheapest way to get off a hard drive. It uses Micron 3D TLC NAND and a Silicon Motion SM2259XT controller without DRAM, hitting 540/500 MB/s sequential read/write. Those are standard numbers for the SATA interface and more than enough for the job it's designed to do.

DRAMless Design

No dedicated DRAM cache. The controller relies on Host Memory Buffer, borrowing a small slice of system RAM for the mapping table. For a boot drive or secondary storage in a system that just needs to not be slow, the lack of DRAM is rarely noticeable. Under sustained random writes it will fall behind DRAM-equipped competitors like the MX500, but that's not the BX500's game.

Endurance and Warranty

Endurance scales with capacity: 80 TBW (240GB), 120 TBW (480GB), 360 TBW (1TB), 720 TBW (2TB), and 1,000 TBW (4TB). These are the lowest endurance figures in this category, and the 3-year warranty is shorter than the 5-year coverage on most DRAM-equipped SATA drives. Crucial keeps costs down by trimming here.

Best for: HDD-to-SSD upgrades where budget is the primary concern. Older laptops and desktops that just need a basic boot drive.

Avoid if: You need sustained write performance, long warranty coverage, or are choosing between this and the MX500. The MX500's DRAM cache, better endurance, and 5-year warranty are worth the price difference for anything beyond light use.