Crucial with the T710 series has a third PCIe Gen5 NVME SSD that is introduced to the market, this time again with better reading/writing performance and most importantly improved behavior/thermal response under heavy load, compared with the previous T700/T705 series. As it seems the new Silicon Motion SM2508 SSD Controller does help with lower power consumption and now you can use a Gen5 drive with a good standalone heatsink or with what Crucial offers for their T710 series.

We did test the barebone version, meaning it came without a passive heatsink. For our tests, we used a well-established NVME cooler from be quiet! (MC1 Pro) that managed even without airflow to manage the T710 2TB drive under 80 Celsius even at a constant load that resulted in high reading/writing speeds and no performance loss/drop in all scenarios. With the previous T700/T705 series we had witnessed performance loss since the drive overheated, resulting in thermal throttle and therefore reduced performance. The solution to that issue would be an air-cooled NVME SSD, which while isn't a big expense isn't always a solution since systems are packed and there isn't much space to work with such NVME coolers. On the other hand, the Crucial T710 series would be just fine even with a basic NVME SSD heatsink.

As it currently stands, the Gen5 prices are very high and for comparison, the Crucial T700 2TB series comes at €205,00, The Crucial T705 2TB series comes similar price of €199,99 and the new Crucial T710 2TB is expected to cost an around 274.99 Euro. All NVME Gen5 prices are high and while the T710 has the best performance, it also comes with a higher retail price as well. We assume prices will drop as time passes and all Crucial NVME Gen5 series come with 5 years of legendary Crucial warranty and 1200TBW writing endurance. We can highly suggest the Crucial T710 2TB model for its constant reading/writing performance manageable thermal output, and power consumption.