Packaging and Closer Look
The Crucial MX200 SSD comes in a very familiar packaging. The company has been using the same box art design for quite some now, with just some minor changes depending on the model and capacity.
The package includes only a 9.5mm spacer and an Acronis True Image HD software activation key. One thing that I like about Crucial’s packaging is that they put the SSD in an anti-static wrap to protect the SSD from electrical discharge that may damage the component.
The Crucial MX200 500GB SSD, like most of SSDs nowadays, is only 7mm thin. The casing is made out of aluminum and is basically the same enclosure design used with the BX100 and previous SSD series. The front portion is partially covered with an MX sticker, while at the back information about the SSD’s model number, serial number and other information can be read.
Like the other models, opening the MX200 is easy and there are no screws to remove to open it up. By the way, opening will void your warranty, so don’t do this unless you know what you are doing or you have a reason to open it. Still, it voids your warranty!
Inside, you will see 8x 64GB NAND flash chips that makes up the 500GB capacity. It is 512GB to be exact but the omitted amount was used for provisioning. Using Micron’s FBGA Part Marking Decoder reveals that the NW662 code has a product number of MT29F512G08CKCCBH7-10:C. It’s a 16nm synchronous MLC NAND flash. There’s also a 256MB LPDDR2 memory, part number MT42L256M16D1GU-18 WT:A, just above the 8 channel Marvell 88SS9189 controller.
There’s nothing to see on the other side of the PCB since this is only a 500GB model. The 1TB model has 16 NAND chip, 8 on both sides.
On the next page, we’ll take a look at Crucial’s Storage Executive tool and see how the Momentum Cache feature works.
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