Jesper Berg
Corsair’s MP700 is the manufacturer’s first SSD to utilize the PCIe 5.0 interface. It uses the Phison PS5026-E26 controller along with 1600 MT/s 232-layer TLC NAND from Micron, enabling read/write performance as high as 10,000 MB/s.
Specifications
| Corsair MP700 Specifications | 1TB | 2TB |
|---|---|---|
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 |
| Interface/ Protocol | PCIe 5.0 x4/ NVMe 2.0 | PCIe 5.0 x4/ NVMe 2.0 |
| Controller | Phison E26 | Phison E26 |
| DRAM | 2GB LPDDR4 | 4GB LPDDR4 |
| Memory | 232-layer TLC (1600 MT/s) | 232-layer TLC (1600 MT/s) |
| Sequential Read | 9,500 MB/s | 10,000 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 8,500 MB/s | 10,000 MB/s |
| Random Read | 1.6M IOPS | 1.7M IOPS |
| Random Write | 1.3M IOPS | 1.5M IOPS |
| Endurance | 700 TBW | 1,400 TBW |
| Warranty | 5-Year | 5-Year |
| MSRP | $169.99 | $289.99 |
Like all of its competitors from the initial batch of Gen5 SSDs, the Corsair MP700 is equipped with Phison’s E26 controller (PS5026-E26) and Micron NAND memory chips. The 2 TB model is capable of 10,000 MB/s sequential reads and writes, while the 1 TB model is somewhat slower with 9,500 MB/s reads and 8,500 MB/s writes.
The situation is similar when it comes to random IOPS, where the 2TB model can reach 1.7M IOPS (read) and 1.5M IOPS (write), compared to the 1TB model’s 1.6M/1.3M read/write IOPS.
Even though the E26 controller supports NAND speeds of up to 2,400 MT/s, production of these chips (by Micron) has initially been unable to keep up with demand. As a result, most first-gen PCIe 5.0 SSDs including the MP700 uses NAND running at 1,600 MT/s. This restricts the drive’s performance to 10 GB/s. By comparison, Crucial’s (a Micron subsidiary) T700 Gen5 SSD presumably uses faster 2,000 MT/s and reaches sequential speeds of up to 12,400 MB/s.
Both the 1TB and 2TB versions use a considerable amount of LPDDR4 DRAM to boost performance: 2 GB and 4 GB, respectively. The power consumption is reported to be 10 W for the 1 TB and 10.5 W for the 2 TB drive. Endurance ratings are slightly above average at 700 TBW for the 1 TB model and 1,400 TBW for the 2 TB model (versus 600/1,200 TBW for the Crucial T700).
Although Corsair initially advertised the MP700 as having a heatsink, it was released without one. It is strongly recommended, however, to at least use the motherboard’s M.2 heatsink (or an aftermarket cooler) to avoid thermal throttling. When using the MP700 with third-party cooling solutions, users should also keep in mind that the drive is double-sided.
Corsair has specifically advertised the MP700 in conjunction with Microsoft’s DirectStorage technology, which uses GPU decompression to enhance game loading speeds. This is however not a hardware-specific technology as it will also work with other high-end M.2 SSDs (including those using the PCIe 4.0 interface).
MSRPs for the two Corsair MP700 capacities are $169.99 for 1TB and $289.99 for 2TB. These prices are significantly higher compared to the average high-end Gen4 SSD but still undercut some if not most Gen5 competitors (although most competitors also include cooling solutions).
Reviews
… Synthetic performance results of the Corsair MP700 are very impressive, especially when it comes to sequential transfers. We can confirm that Corsair’s “up to 10 GB/s” claim is accurate, we actually peaked at slightly above that.
… With the Corsair MP700 running into EXT4 file-system errors when simply setting up the test system without any extra heatsink, I’d be quite frightened to use this in production even with the extra heatsink
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