Final Thoughts
As I mentioned at the beginning of this review we reviewed the non-heatsink version of this drive back in 2021, so internally this drive isn’t necessarily new. The new thing is of course the added heatsink. This makes this drive a viable option for those who want to install it in their PlayStation 5 or if you happen to have a motherboard that does not have M.2 heatsinks. In our initial review of P5 Plus we did see that not using a heatsink would cause the drive to thermally throttle, so with Crucial adding the heatsink you don’t have to worry about that. In our testing we did not see any thermal throttling, so the heatsink is definitely going its job.
When it comes to performance the P5 Plus with the heatsink performed slightly better than the non-heatsink version, which is good to see. In terms of overall performance this is not the fastest Gen4 drive out there, but with speeds of 6600 MB/s read and 5000 MB/s write it is going to be noticeably faster than your standard 2.5-inch solid state drive. This means fast boot up times for Windows and games loading faster.
Price is where I think Crucial needs to be a lot more aggressive, especially considering this is a completely in-house drive from them and they are not reliant on buying components from anyone else. Right now the 2TB version of this drive is selling at our favorite online retailer for $187.56, while you can pick up a Lexar NM790 with heatsink for $149, or a MSI Spatium M480 Pro Play for $129. This drive needs to be at least in the $130 – $140 range to be competitive. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Crucial P5 Plus (Heatsink) Gen4 NVMe Solid State Drive a 8 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Finally a heatsink version
– Solid thermal performance
– Performs up to specifications
– Sleek look
– 5-year warranty
Cons:
– Overpriced
– There are faster Gen4 drives out there
