The Crucial T705 almost drove me mad – here’s what happened

Kevin Hofer

19.4.2024

Translation: Eva Francis

Testing hardware isn’t always easy. Sometimes things just don’t work. Here’s an example.

I’ve been testing SSDs for Digitec Galaxus for several years. To be honest, it gets boring after some time. However, testing the T705 by Crucial wasn’t boring it all. It drove me up the wall! The test just wouldn’t work.

Nevertheless, I’m putting it on my test bench which served to test its predecessor, the T700, too. After booting, the CrystalDiskInfo program shows me that although the SSD supports PCIe 5.0, it only runs with PCIe 3.0.

What’s going on here? I suspect my PCIe plug-in card’s the culprit. To add some context, my Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero test motherboard supports PCIe 5.0, but only with the included ROG Hyper M.2 Card. In order for PCIe 5.0 to work, the card needs to be connected to a specific slot – and the other M.2 SSDs must be in the correct slots, too. What on earth was Asus thinking when it designed this motherboard that costs over 500 francs?!

I check my setup against the mainboard manual. Nothing’s wrong. The BIOS settings are also correct. I try out various connections anyway, but the T705 only ever runs with PCIe 3.0. A quick test with CrystalDiskMark confirms this – the serial read speed is 3,500 megabytes per second (MB/s). That’s just not the level of PCIe 5.0. It should at least be over 10,000 MB/s. For a moment, I consider throwing the test bench out of the window, but then change my mind.

When I carry out the test again, I get the same result. Running another benchmark doesn’t reveal any improvements either. The write performance, which I assess by writing a 10-gigabyte file from a RAM disk to the SSD, is pretty mediocre at just under 3,500 MB/s. When empty, the T705 should be capable of 5,500 MB/s. Even formatting the SSD and leaving it for half an hour does nothing. Suspecting something’s amiss with my test sample,

I get myself a new T705 from our range. Nevertheless, the result’s the same. Wtf? I’m slowly beginning to doubt myself. However, unwilling to give up, I try completely reinstalling Windows 11. That doesn’t help either. Noooo! If I weren’t already half bald, I certainly would be now.

I’ve spent tens of hours troubleshooting, and added a similar number of extra wrinkles to my face. I’ve also been ranting about the experience to my colleagues for days on end. They must be getting sick of hearing about it. But it’s not just occupying my brain space at work. In my free time, too, my thoughts continue to wander to what else I might have missed. Four days of unsuccessful attempts later, I’ve decided to throw in the towel. T705, I surrender!

Kevin Hofer

Senior Editor

kevin.hofer@digitecgalaxus.ch

From big data to big brother, Cyborgs to Sci-Fi. All aspects of technology and society fascinate me.

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