Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
Crucial has always been a company that is all about business, and similar to the X8 I reviewed last year, the X6 is there to help you keep that impression. The rounded corners and curved surfaces look classic and conservative. A piano black strip at the top contains Crucial's logo. Meanwhile, a distinct line in the plastic enclosure shows where the SSD can be disassembled. The matte black finish is mostly fingerprint resistant. All in all, I found this slim and sleek solid state drive to feel relatively solid, although it is not as good as the X8, which is made out of aluminum for the most part.
The Crucial X6 2TB weighs about 42g without the cables and measures in at 69mm wide, 64mm deep, and 36mm thick. This is considerably smaller than the Crucial X8. According the company, the X6 is designed to handle drops up to 6.5 feet on carpeted floors, although there is no guarantee there will be no cosmetic damage. That said, if you are paranoid about the appearance of your electronics, the Crucial X6 2TB should have no problems holding up to everyday use; unless, of course, you do something extreme to try to intentionally cause damage to it. The company claims it was tested against extreme temperatures, shock, and vibration, but there is no official IP certification.
As it is with the front of the Crucial X6 2TB, the plastic back has a matte finish. A series of regulatory logos and the unit's serial number is found at the back as well. On the inscriptions, you will see this is the 2TB model and the SSD is a product of Thailand. There is also a 1TB variant of the Crucial X6.
A USB Type-C port is on the right. Because the X6 has an SATA solid state drive inside and uses the USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface, the port already provides all the power it needs; no external AC adapter is required. One thing about the X6 is it features no activity LED. This is a strange omission to me, since there is no way for you to tell whether the Crucial X6 is receiving power or is active or not. That aside, one short USB Type-C to USB Type-C cable is included, although it is too short at 15cm in my opinion.. As I said on the previous page, if you heed a USB Type-C to Type-A adapter, it is $3 from the company's website.
Inside the Crucial X6 2TB, there is a Crucial BX500 series drive with a custom firmware. The interface controller is ASMedia's ASM235CM. The Crucial BX500 2TB is a SATA solid state drive rated at 540MB/s read, 500MB/s write, and 720TBW total write endurance. This translates to about 394GB per day for five years, which is very good.
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.60GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D15 (Single fan)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5
RAM: Kingston HyperX Savage Black HX426C15SBK4/64 4x16GB
Graphics: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 970 4GB
Chassis: NZXT H710i
Storage: OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB; Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB; SanDisk Extreme PRO 480GB
Power: Seasonic PRIME Ultra Titanium 850W
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Crucial X6 2TB (Solid State Drive)
- ADATA DashDrive Elite UE700 64GB (Flash Drive)
- Crucial X8 1TB (Solid State Drive)
- Crucial X8 2TB (Solid State Drive)
- Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 64GB (Flash Drive)
- Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G3 32GB (Flash Drive)
- Kingston HyperX Fury 64GB (Flash Drive)
- LaCie Mobile SSD 500GB (Solid State Drive)
- LaCie Rugged SSD 1TB (Solid State Drive)
- Lexar Professional SL100 Pro 500GB (Solid State Drive)
- Patriot Supersonic Magnum 64GB (Flash Drive)
- Patriot Supersonic Magnum 2 256GB (Flash Drive)
- Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 256GB (Flash Drive)
- SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB (Flash Drive)
- SanDisk Ultra Fit 256GB (Flash Drive)
- Silicon Power Blaze B05 64GB (Flash Drive)
- Western Digital Black P50 Game Drive SSD 1TB (Solid State Drive)
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 7.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
8. Conclusion
