The Crucial P3 (starts at $49.99; $174.99 for 2TB as tested) solid-state drive is much faster than the Crucial P2, the model it replaces as the value choice among Micron's PCI Express 3.0 internal SSDs, and is available in much higher capacities (up to 4TB) at a very competitive price. The P3 offers the right combination of affordability, capacity, and performance to earn a PCMag Editors' Choice award as a budget PCIe 3.0 internal drive. It's a great general-use upgrade pick for older PCs that have an M.2 slot but no PCIe 4.0 support.
A DRAM-Less Drive With QLC Flash
As mentioned, the Crucial P3 is an internal PCI Express 3.0 NVMe solid-state drive. The drive is in the ubiquitous M.2 Type-2280 (80mm long) "gumstick" format. Like its sibling the Crucial P3 Plus, it pairs homegrown Micron 176-layer quad-level cell (QLC) 3D NAND flash with a Phison PS5021-E21T controller. (Puzzled by these terms? Be sure to check out our SSD dejargonizer.)
Also like the P3 Plus, as well as several other recently reviewed SSDs including the HP FX900, the WD Black SN770, and the Editors' Choice honoree the ADATA XPG Atom 50, the Crucial P3's controller lacks a DRAM cache, instead using your PC's main memory as a host memory buffer (HMB). This helps keep the drive's cost down. Micron notes that both Windows 10 and 11 provide native HMB support.
The P3 is available in four capacities ranging from 500GB to 4TB. QLC-based drives tend to support high capacities (up to 4TB or even 8TB), while most recent drives with TLC NAND flash—including the Crucial P5 Plus, the Acer Predator GM7000, and the ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade—max out at 2TB. There are exceptions: the TLC-based Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, for instance, is available in sizes up to 8TB.
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A downside that the Crucial P3 shares with other QLC drives is a relatively low write-durability rating as measured in terabytes written (TBW). Its ratings match those of the P3 Plus and are similar to those of the Teamgroup Z44Q, the Sabrent Rocket Q4, and the Mushkin Delta. Those three are each rated at 400TBW at their 2TB capacity and 800TBW at 4TB. The "terabytes written" spec is a manufacturer's estimate of how much data can be written to a drive before some cells begin to fail and get taken out of service.
Drives with TLC (triple-level cell) flash memory tend to have much higher TBW ratings. The WD Black SN770, the Crucial P5 Plus, and the Samsung SSD 980 Pro are all rated at 600TBW and 1,200TBW for their 1TB and 2TB models respectively. The Kingston KC3000 has even higher ratings at 800TBW for 1TB and 1,600TBW for 2TB. The XPG Atom 50 is rated at 650TBW for 1TB.
Because of their relatively low TBW ratings, QLC-based drives are best for read-intensive tasks in which new data is not being constantly being written to the drive. Typical customers include everyday users, students, office workers, casual gamers, and entry-level designers. Micron warranties the Crucial P3 for five years or until you hit the rated TBW figure in data writes, whichever comes first.
As for software, Micron offers a free, downloadable Crucial Storage Executive utility which checks drive status and health and enables firmware upgrades. Also downloadable is Acronis True Image for Crucial, cloning software that works with compatible Crucial SSDs. One thing the P3 lacks is the gold-standard 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption.
Testing the Crucial P3: Above-Par Results for a PCIe 3.0 Drive
We test Serial ATA (SATA) and PCI Express 3.0 SSDs on PC Labs' earlier-gen storage testbed, which is built on an Asus Prime X299 Deluxe motherboard with an Intel Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition CPU. The system has 16GB of DDR4 Corsair Dominator RAM clocked to 3,600MHz and an Nvidia GeForce graphics card. PCIe 4.0 SSDs are tested on a different, AMD Ryzen-based testbed with 4.0 support.
We put the P3 through our usual internal SSD benchmarks, comprising Crystal DiskMark 6.0, UL's PCMark 10 Storage, and UL's 3DMark Storage Benchmark, which measures a drive's performance in a number of gaming-related tasks.
In Crystal DiskMark testing, the P3's read score was a few hundred megabytes per second short of its rating, and its write score was just over 100MBps short. Its 4K read score was middling; it effectively tied the P3 Plus but trailed several PCI Express 3.0 SSDs including the Lexar NM620 and the Editors' Choice recipient Intel SSD 670p. Its 4K write score was excellent, lagging only the NM620 (by a hair) and beating out our PCI Express 4.0 comparison drives.
The P3's PCMark 10 Overall score was good, slightly trailing the P3 Plus and beating all the other PCI Express 3.0 drives. Its trace tests (for games, creative apps, and OS bootup) were generally in the top third of our comparison group.
As the Crucial P3 is the only PCIe 3.0 SSD to have run our 3DMark Storage gaming benchmark to date, we didn't provide a chart or table for that test. But its score of 2,581 fell just shy of its P3 Plus stablemate (2,606), essentially a tie, within about 1%.
A Winning Combo: Low Price, Good Performance, High Capacity
As the successor to the Crucial P2, the P3 offers higher capacities and much higher throughput speeds at a lower cost per gigabyte, thanks to Micron's switch from TLC to QLC flash memory for this drive. The drawback is that the change lowers the P3's write-durability rating, making it best for tasks that don't consistently write large amounts of data to the drive.
Our current Editors' Choice among PCI Express 3.0 SSDs is the Intel SSD 670p, which is also a QLC-based drive. The Crucial P3 outperformed the 670p in the PCMark 10 overall benchmark; it lacks the 670p's hardware-based encryption, but has a much lower cost per gigabyte. The Crucial steps into its place as an Editors' Choice winner as a budget PCIe 3.0 internal SSD.
The Crucial P3 provides good performance in a PCI Express 3.0 NVMe SSD. Its QLC NAND flash memory keeps the P3's price down while allowing capacities up to 4TB. It's a spot-on pick for upgrading older PCs that don't support PCIe 4.0.
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