Corsair MP700 Micro SSD review: PCIe 5.0 meets the 2242 form-factor to good effect

Price When Reviewed

2TB: $250 I 4TB: $485

Best Prices Today: Corsair MP700 Micro PCIe 5.0

There are a number of gadgets on the market (Lenovo/HP laptops, Nvidia DGX Spark) that sport smaller 2242 (42mm lengthy) PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots. If you’ve one, then the brand new Corsair MP700 Micro, successor to the MP600, can leverage a lot of the additional bandwidth.

I say a lot of, as a result of the MP700 Micro’s sequential benchmark numbers are about 60 % of what you’ll see from full 2280 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs. That stated, it’s actually quicker than any quick PCIe 4.0 SSD I’ve examined — by quite a bit.

Read on to be taught extra, then see our roundup of the best SSDs for comparability.

What are the MP700 Micro’s options?

The MP700 Micro makes use of Phison’s E31T host reminiscence buffer (HMB) controller to harness 4 lanes of PCIe 5.0, delivering knowledge to and from its 218-layer TLC (Triple-Level Cell/3-bit) NAND.

Jon L. Jacobi

Corsair warranties the MP700 Micro for 5 years, or 600TBW (terabytes which may be written) — whichever arrives first. Unless you’re terribly lively writing knowledge, that ought to be the previous simply.

How a lot is the MP700 Micro?

The MP700 Micro is available in 2TB/$250 and 4TB/ $485 capacities (although, as of this writing solely the 4TB choice is out there). That’s not discount bin, but in addition not absurdly out-of-line pricing. You do pay a bit further for the shape issue, however much less is extra, as they are saying. (Yes, I do know…)

How quick is the MP700 Micro?

There’s excellent news and dangerous information in regards to the MP700 Micro’s efficiency. It’s far quicker than 2230/2242 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs. But it’s additionally significantly slower in some methods than a full 2280 PCIe 5.0 SSD.

As that is our first small-fry PCIe 5.0 SSD, we’ve no different outcomes for the category. Instead, we’ve in contrast our 4TB MP700 Micro check unit to it’s top-of-the-line 2280 cousin — the MP700 Pro XT (2TB) — and the PCIe 4.0 drive the MP700 Micro is changing — the MP600 Micro (1TB).

In CrystalDiskMark 8’s sequential throughput exams, the distinction between the three drives is blatantly apparent.

When it got here to CrystalDiskMark 8’s 4K file exams, nonetheless, the competitors was a lot nearer. The elevated throughput of PCIe 5.0 over 4.0 doesn’t make practically as a lot of a distinction with small recordsdata. What is a bit stunning is that the MP700 Pro XT, which is a DRAM design, didn’t skewer the opposite two drives.

When it got here to real-world 48GB transfers, the MP700 Micro held its personal below Windows Explorer. But with Fast Copy, the higher potential of the MP700 Pro XT is clear, as is the slower throughput of the MP600 Micro.

As for the longer 450GB write, the MP700 Micro held its personal towards the MP700 Pro XT, however not less than partly as a result of it’s a 4TB unit and the Pro XT is just 2TB.

Writing 450GB to the MP700 Micro revealed some pace fluctuations, with it dropping to round 1GBps to 1.5GBps close to the top. I can dwell with that.

If you’ve the PCIe 5.0 port to assist it, then the MP700 Micro gives each higher capability, and good efficiency. It’s a worthy improve in case your unit doesn’t already sport a PCIe 5.0 SSD.

Should you purchase the MP700 Micro?

Absolutely. Buy the MP700 Micro when you have a small 2242 PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot that you want to fill. But don’t purchase it since you suppose it’ll look cute in a slot that accepts bigger 2280 SSDs. The latter will provide you with higher sustained throughput. Much higher if you happen to leverage Fast Copy.

How we check

Drive exams at present make the most of Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit operating off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Crucial 64GB DDR5 5600MHz modules (128GB of reminiscence complete).

Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are built-in into the motherboard and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. Internal PCIe 5.0 SSDs concerned in testing are mounted in an Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 adapter card sitting in a PCIe 5.0 slot.

We run the CrystalDiskMark 8.04 (and 9), AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 artificial benchmarks (to maintain article size down, we report solely the previous) to search out the storage gadget’s potential efficiency. Then we run a sequence of 48GB switch and 450GB write exams utilizing Windows Explorer drag and drop to point out what customers will see throughout routine copy operations, in addition to the far quicker FastCopy run as administrator to point out what’s potential.

A 25GBps two-SSD RAID 0 array on the aforementioned Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 is used because the second drive in our switch exams. Formerly the 48GB exams had been finished with a RAM disk serving that goal.

Each check is carried out on a NTFS-formatted and newly TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency could lower attributable to much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different components. This situation has abated considerably with the present crop of SSDs using extra mature controllers and much quicker, late-generation NAND.

Note that our testing MO evolves and these outcomes could not match these from earlier articles. Only comparisons contained in the article are 100% legitimate as these outcomes are gathered utilizing the present {hardware} and MO.