At our first review of the Crucial T700 NVME SSD, we mentioned we liked the product for its extreme read/write speeds, especially under the PCIe Gen5 slot. We also mention, that while Gen4 drives are very fast already, a serious use of Gen5 drives, would be to write between them to get real-life use and reduce writing times between subsystems of your system. Today we tested this scenario, under Windows 11 Pro x64, with all the latest updates and stock Microsft NVME driver, and at least with the AMD X670E platform, that supports two Gen5 PCIe drives, we weren't impressed as much as we would. Using Microsoft's build-in copy/write operation, either via Explorer or with the drag & drop function, we did notice around 3-4GB/sec writing speed, when we knew that performance should have been much better. While testing with Windows 10 x64 or an Intel-based system could have shown different test results, third-party applications, like FastCopy, can certainly accelerate the write function, when transferring very big files. Within the FastCopy software we did see up to 11GB/sec writing performance, which confirms Crucial's claims and for sure is what users would have expected after all from Windows 11 stock performance.

Looking at the Crucial T700 NVME SSD, as a product, it delivers its promises and the barebone version does need for sure extra cooling, It is better to invest in an air cooled SSD cooler, which will keep the T700 drive at normal running working temperatures. In fact, motherboard manufacturers should start implementing air cooling solutions to their stock passive heatsinks for NVMEs, since for example, if you decide to fill all the NVME slots of the Asus ProArt X670E motherboard, will have three NVMEs (2xGen4 and 1x Gen5) under the same heatsink, which of course isn't ideal. The Crucial T700 barebone version is priced $30 less compared with the Crucial T700 heatsink version, and we feel it is a fair price, considering that you can find air NVME coolers at $15~20 which will perform much better than the T700 stock heatsink.

So after installing two T700 drives in one system, can we recommend them for all user categories? Until Windows OS does fix its reduced reading/writing issues, we cannot. Especially with the recent price drops, we feel that Gen4 drives do have a lot of performance depth and will fulfill most users. However, if you are willing to use the third-party software, to accelerate writing performance, a scenario, where you need to backup/transfer huge single files, will benefit the two T700 drives. The Crucial T700 is also futureproofed since it includes the latest technologies from Microsoft (DirectStorage), which is offered only under Windows 11 and promises even faster loading of games. The Crucial T700 series supports 1200TB (TBW) endurance and has 5 years of warranty.

Concluding this review, the Crucial T700 is a product that aims for power/enthusiast users who wish to have the latest/fastest and possible best components for their systems. The retail price is still very high, compared with Gen4 2TB products, and if you want to jump on the PCIe Gen5 wagon, then this product will be your next best friend.