End of an Era: Crucial Discontinues its MX500 SATA SSD

Crucial is calling time on its popular MX500 SATA SSD, a long-time favorite among PC gamers. This drive has consistently topped the charts for almost seven years and will be missed. The discontinuation of the MX500 was confirmed by ComputerBase and, while not entirely unexpected due to the dominance of NVMe M.2 SSDs, it marks the end of an era. Why the MX500 Was So Popular The Crucial MX500 was a popular choice for its combination of performance and price, offering several advantages: It used faster TLC NAND memory chips, unlike cheaper SATA SSDs that rely on QLC NAND. It included a reasonable amount of DRAM, improving performance compared to DRAM-less drives. It consistently outperformed most competition, rivaling all but Samsung's pricey 850 Pro. While SATA SSDs are slower than NVMe drives, the MX500 provided more than adequate performance for most gaming needs, especially once games were loaded. What's Next? While not all variants of the MX500 are discontinued yet, with the 500 G…