The Crucial P5 Plus (starts at $107.99 for the 500GB model, $179.99 for the 1TB tested), an internal solid-state drive from memory maker Micron Technology, is the heir apparent to last year's Editors' Choice award-winning Crucial P5. While that drive used the PCI Express 3.0 bus, the P5 Plus offers support for PCI Express 4.0, which when coupled with the proper hardware provides a considerable performance boost over the already highly respectable scores of the original P5. The new drive definitely deserves to join its predecessor as a PCMag Editors' Choice pick.

Hop on the PCI Express 4.0 Bus

Although the Crucial P5 Plus is backward-compatible with motherboards that support PCI Express 3.0, to get anything like the peak read/write speeds discussed here, you'll need a system with a motherboard chipset that supports PCI Express 4.0. This includes a select group of late-model AMD Ryzen desktop motherboards as well as Intel Z590-based boards built for 10th Generation and 11th Generation ("Rocket Lake") CPUs.

Laptops with upgradable and reachable M.2 slots supporting PCIe 4.0 are unfortunately few and far between. On the desktop side of things, you'll probably have to upgrade your motherboard if you have a prebuilt system more than a year or two old, as the M.2 slots of only the newest platforms currently support PCIe 4.0.

Both the P5 Plus's memory (176-layer TLC 3D NAND flash) and controller are Micron-built homegrown kit. The device uses the NVMe 1.4 protocol over its four-lane PCI Express 4.0 bus. Physically, the drive follows the M.2 Type-2280 (80mm long) "gumstick" format commonly seen in late-model internal SSDs. (Can't make sense of these terms? Be sure to check out our SSD dejargonizer.)

The P5 Plus is available in three capacities: 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. Based on list price, which matches its current Amazon pricing, the 500GB model sells for 22 cents per gigabyte and the 1TB and 2TB models each cost 18 cents per gig. This puts the drive in the middle of the pack for speedy PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Based on current retail pricing, the 500GB version of the Editors' Choice-winning, speed-demon Samsung SSD 980 Pro sells for 26 cents per gigabyte and the 1TB and 2TB models for 19 and 18 cents per gig respectively. Another, more value-oriented Editors' Choice award winner, the ADATA XPG Gammix S70, currently sells for 16 cents per gigabyte in both 1TB and 2TB flavors. The 1TB Mushkin Gamma costs 19 cents per gig, while the 2TB version goes for 17 cents per gig.

As for sequential read and write speeds, both the 1TB and 2TB models of the Crucial P5 Plus are rated for a maximum throughput of 6,600MBps read and 5,000MBps write. This is very fast; only a handful of drives—including the ADATA S70 at 7,400MBps, the Samsung SSD 980 Pro and MSI Spatium M480 HS at 7,000MBps, and the Mushkin Gamma at 7,175MBps—have higher rated read speeds.

The durability ratings for the P5 Plus, as measured in terabytes written (TBW), are 300TBW for the 500GB version, 600TBW for the 1TB model, and 1,200TBW for the 2TB drive. This durability rating is typical of similar drives of these capacities—for instance, the 1TB version of the Samsung SSD 980 Pro is also rated at 600TBW. That said, a few PCIe 4.0 drives offer considerably higher durability ratings—the Corsair Force Series MP600 and Silicon Power US70 are each rated at 1,800TBW for the 1TB and 3,600TBW for the 2TB model. At the other extreme, the Mushkin Delta—which uses less write-durable QLC memory—is rated at just 200TBW for 1TB, 400TBW for 2TB, and 800TBW for 4TB.

The "terabytes written" spec is an estimate, according to the manufacturer, of how much data can be written to a drive before some cells begin to fail and get taken out of service. (TBW tends to scale 1:1 with capacity, as it does here.) The warranty for this drive is good for five years or until you hit the rated TBW figure in writes, whichever comes first. 

The drive supports hardware-based AES 256-bit full-disk encryption. It also comes with the company's Storage Executive SSD-management software suite, which is one of the better such tools out there both in the scope of tasks it can run and its overall ease of use. The company also offers a download of Acronis True Image HD software for any disk-migration tasks you might need to run.

Testing the Crucial P5 Plus: Superb PCMark 10 Program-Loading Results

We test PCI Express 4.0 internal SSDs using a desktop testbed with an MSI X570 motherboard and AMD Ryzen CPU, 16GB of Corsair Dominator DDR4 memory clocked to 3,600MHz, and a discrete graphics card. (See more about how we test SSDs.)

PCMark 10 Overall Storage and Trace Testing

The PCMark 10 overall storage benchmark from UL—the world's leading independent benchmark developer—runs a full slate of typical drive-access tasks. The scores below tagged as the Overall Score are the software's sanctioned results, representing how well a drive does throughout the entire PCMark 10 run.

The Overall Score is followed by some more granular measures derived from PCMark 10's background "traces." These represent a simulation of how quickly a drive is capable of executing the key kinds of file reads to launch a particular program, or in the case of our first trace, the Windows 10 operating system, completing the startup procedure.

The Crucial P5 Plus's results in PCMark 10 testing were, in a word, magnificent. Its Overall Score of 3,022 was the best among our comparison group of drives, which included both PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 devices. Its closest rivals were the ADATA S70 and the Samsung 980 Pro. The P5 Plus also edged those two drives in launching Adobe Photoshop and finished between the ADATA and Samsung in loading Adobe Premiere Pro and Windows 10. In game loading, the P5 Plus took top honors in both Overwatch and Call of Duty Black Ops 4, while turning in a more mortal but still respectable score in Battlefield 5. Finally, it turned in the best file copy score of the group, while scoring third highest in the ISO copy test.

Sequential Speed and Copy Tests

The Crystal DiskMark 6.0 sequential tests provide a more traditional speed measure, simulating best-case, straight-line transfers of large files. After that come a trio of tests that involve copying large files or folders from one location on the test drive to another, using the SSD benchmarking utility AS-SSD.

The P5 Plus's sequential read and write scores in Crystal DiskMark were 5,969MBps and 5,017MBps. Although that read score is considerably lower than the drive's rated 6,600MBps, that's unusual among the elite PCIe 4.0 drives we've tested and is still plenty fast. While the drive's 4K read score was above average, its 4K write score was the second lowest in our group. (This is not unlike the original Crucial P5, which also showed inexplicably low 4K write results relative to its other test scores.) The drive's AS-SSD program, ISO, and game test results were all about average.

A Load-Speed Dynamo

The Crucial P5 Plus takes all that was good about the previous-generation Crucial P5 and adds PCI Express 4.0 compatibility, with a corresponding hike in performance—provided you have the proper hardware. The drive's PCMark 10 results, which measure drive-access and load-speed performance, were particularly impressive, at or near the top of our comparison group in almost every benchmark. Tack on a good software suite, a competitive price, and a five-year warranty, and you have an all-around excellent high-performance internal SSD and a new PCMag Editors' Choice winner.