Corsair MP700 Pro SSD: PCIe 5.0 excellence

Price When Reviewed

1TB: $190 I 2TB: $325 ($10 extra with fan-cooled heatsink)

Best Prices Today: Corsair MP700 Pro PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD

Though PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots are nonetheless comparatively uncommon, if in case you have one, a premium SSD such because the Corsair MP700 Pro will present a pleasant bump in general efficiency.

When I say premium, I’m speaking about efficiency that’s proper there with the most effective NVMe SSDs we’ve examined. And sure, I additionally imply it’s priced like a top-tier performer.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best PCI3 4.0 SSDs to find out about competing merchandise.

What are the Corsair MP700 Pro’s options?

As intimated, the MP700 Pro is a PCIe 5.0 x4, NVMe SSD within the 2280 (22mm extensive, 80mm lengthy) type issue. The controller is a Phison PS5026-E26 and the NAND is 232-layer TLC (Triple-Level Cell/3-bit). There’s a whopping 2GB of DRAM major cache for each 1TB of capability–double the norm. Nice.

The 2280 MP700 Pro is offered with or with out a relatively hefty and tall, fan-cooled heatsink (proven under with the ability cable for the fan). Either method the drive is warrantied for 5 years or 700TBW (terabytes which may be written) per 1TB of capability.

Jon L. Jacobi

If you weren’t conscious, TBW mitigates the guarantee time period as miles do in an vehicle guarantee. Corsair’s 700TBW is 100TBW above common, however nowhere close to the Seagate FireCuda 540 or Seagate Game Drive PS5‘s degree, which is nearly double that also.

How a lot does the Corsair MP700 Pro price?

The Corsair MP700 Pro with heatsink is at present out there in 1TB and 2TB (examined) variations, for $190 and $325, respectively. Sans heatsink, it’s $180 and $315.

Corsair didn’t ship us the 1TB model, therefore we’re undecided if it sports activities a smaller heatsink/cooler that’s price solely half the premium. No pricing was introduced for an upcoming 4TB capability.

How quick is the Corsair MP700 Pro?

Corsair’s MP700 Pro traded blows with the fast-in-the-real-world Adata Legend 970 to an general statistical draw.

If we ranked solely on CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential take a look at the MP700 would’ve dominated the Adata, regardless that it misplaced by a small margin to the also-formidable Crucial T700.

CrystalDiskMark 8 4K file efficiency was a barely completely different story with the Adata besting the the MP700 Pro by greater than just a little, largely due to the latter’s drop-off within the 32-queue write.

None of the opposite drives might match the Seagate FireCuda 540 within the 48GB transfers. It wasn’t even notably shut, although the MP700 Pro remains to be among the many quickest. For some motive, late-model host reminiscence buffer (HMB) designs (none proven) do very properly on this and the 450GB write exams.

As you possibly can see under, there’s little distinction between the primary three late mannequin PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs within the 450GB write take a look at–properly inside the regular statistical variance. Having known as out the Seagate FireCuda 540 for its superior 48GB transfers, I have to additionally word that it was relatively slothful for a PCIe 4.0/5.0 SSD on this take a look at.

Note that lots of the quickest drives within the 450GB write take a look at are PCIe 4.0 with, once more, some being host reminiscence buffer (HMB) designs.

We did discover some oddities: It took the MP700 Pro practically 30 seconds to format relatively than the conventional 5 to 10 seconds. There was additionally a momentary steep dip at finish of the 450GB write to round 950MBps. That’s hardly tragic, but it surely was noticeable.

Also, after we wrote a further 1.35TB in two massive recordsdata to fill the 2TB MP700 Pro to close capability, writes vacillated between 120MBps and 3.2GBps although largely in direction of the latter. No doubt the dip and vacillations had been the sensible caching allotting extra secondary cache on the fly (NAND written as SLC as a substitute of TLC).

The MP700 Pro lastly leveled off at about 950MBps across the 1200GB mark of the second write. Note that writing 1.35TB in two massive recordsdata is a situation few will ever topic the MP700 to, and practically 1GBps remains to be fairly quick within the grand scheme, so most customers can ignore that conduct.

Should you purchase the Corsair MP700 Pro?

The Corsair MP700 is a superb NVMe SSD that can present top-flight efficiency in any system sporting a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot. However, the Adata Legend 970 and Crucial T700 are proper there with it performance-wise, so I’m calling the shopping for determination a decide’em primarily based on present pricing and model choice.

How we take a look at

Drive exams at present make the most of Windows 11, 64-bit operating on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence whole). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch exams make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking over 58GB of the 64GB of whole reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro which additionally runs the OS.

Each take a look at is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency might lower resulting from much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different components. This may be much less of an element with the present crop of SSDs with far quicker late-generation NAND.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can range by capability resulting from extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND out there for secondary caching. Vendors additionally often swap elements. If you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.