Crucial has a super-fast SSD in the works that will offer the fastest speeds we’ve ever seen from an M.2 drive, according to the latest leak. The new Crucial T705 is reportedly so fast that it must be close to maxing out the realistic bandwidth of the 4x PCIe 5 interface, and there’s also apparently a limited edition of the drive with a white heatsink.
If the claims are true, then the new Crucial T705 will be a strong contender for our best gaming SSD guide, and the reported speeds would make this drive even faster than the TeamGroup T-Force GE Pro, and a long way in front of the Corsair MP700 Pro.
According to the rumors, the top Crucial T705 speed is 14,500MB/s for maximum sequential reads, which is over 2GB/s faster than the Corsair MP700 Pro, as well as Crucial’s current flagship, the T700. That top read speed is only quoted for the 2TB version of the drive, along with a 12,700MB/s sequential write speed. That read speed reportedly drops down to 13,600MB/s on the 1TB version of the T705, and to a still very fast 14,100MB/s on the 4TB T705.
These speeds are incredible for a PC SSD, and we must be very close to the maximum speed achievable using the 4x PCIe 5 interface. You can theoretically get up to 15,760MB/s of bandwidth from four PCIe 5 lanes, but realistically you’ll never hit this figure, as some of the bandwidth is taken up by communication between the components. Given that PCIe 4 SSDs peaked at 7,450MB/s with the Samsung 990 Pro, and 7,300MB/s with the WD Black SN850X, we don’t think PCIe 5 SSDs are going to get much faster than the Crucial T705 if the claims stand up to scrutiny.
The leaks come from two places, with X (formerly Twitter) user momomo_US posting photos of the drive with and without a heatsink, including both black and white versions. Another X tech leaker, Deepbluen, then chimed in on the thread with a leaked table of specs for the new drives, which you can see below.
If the table is legitimate, then it looks like the Limited Edition T705 SSD with the white heatsink will only be available with a 2TB capacity. The table also reveals the model numbers for the drives, showing that T705 SSD3 drives will be plain, so you’ll need to use your own hefty SSD cooler if your motherboard has one. The T705 SSD5 drives will have the corrugated black heatsink, while the T705 SSD5A is the 2TB model with the white heatsink.
The new Crucial T705 SSD is reportedly based on Micron TLC 232-layer 3D NAND, which makes sense, given that Micron now owns Crucial. Meanwhile, the quoted 4K IOPS figure tops out at 1,800,000 IOPS, compared with 1,500,000 IOPS on the Crucial T700.
We’ll have to wait and see whether these claims about a new flagship Crucial SSD bear fruit, but in the meantime check out our guide to the best SSD guide if you want to find the best storage options available right now.