The test system used in this review was an HP 8200 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250312AS 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB PCIe graphics card and an Intel 82579-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Enterprise.
To test the performance of Samsung's 500GB T5 SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark, HD Tach RW, ATTO Disk Benchmark, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro, Anvil's Storage Utilities, Iometer and PCMark 8. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Crucial MX500, Crucial BX300, ADATA Ultimate SU900, Plextor S3C, Toshiba OCZ VX500, ADATA Ultimate SU800, Plextor S2C, Crucial M300, Plextor M7V, PNY CS1311, OCZ Trion 150, PNY CS2211, Plextor M6V, Crucial BX200, OCZ Trion 100, Kingston HyperX Savage, Crucial MX200, OCZ Vector 180, Kingston BX100, Samsung 850 EVO M.2, Samsung 850 EVO mSATA, AMD Radeon R7, Silicon Power Slim S80, Samsung SSD 850 EVO, OCZ ARC 100, SanDisk Ultra II, Crucial MX100, SanDisk Extreme Pro and Samsung SSD 850 PRO.
As I mentioned earlier, the T5 is based on Samsung's MGX controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 Samsung T5 500GB |
 Samsung 850 EVO 1TB |
According to Samsung, the T5 is capable of reading at 540 MB/s and writing at 515 MB/s when connected to a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port. While the drive had no problems reaching its rated read speed, it came up a bit short in CrystalDiskMark's sequential write speed test.
 Samsung T5 500GB - USB 3.0 |
The T5 can also be plugged into a USB 3.1 Gen 1 (USB 3.0) port. However, with half the bandwidth, its sequential read and write speeds aren't quite as fast.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the T5's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Samsung T5 500GB
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the T5 had average read and write speeds of 321.4 MB/s and 333.1 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 247.6 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the T5's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 Samsung T5 500GB |
 Samsung 850 EVO 1TB |
When tested with ATTO, the T5's read speeds topped out at about 560 MB/s and its write speeds at 527 MB/s.
