Corsair MP700 Pro 2 TB

[W1zzard]

Corsair is updating their MP700 PCI-Express Gen 5 SSD. On the "Pro" model you now get speeds of up to 12 GB/s and a great heatsink is included, too. Our review confirms that the cooling solution can handle the controller's heat output easily, even when heavily loaded. Performance is excellent, too.

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[FreedomEclipse]

Shame about the 3 year warranty. Noticed that about this SSD and on the team group Z540 review. Meanwhile the Adata Legend 970 offers 5 year warranty and cost about the same as the MP700.

 

[W1zzard]

It should be 5, let me double check

edit: 5 years warranty confirmed. Review updated

 

[Kapone33]

I recently bought the 1Tb version of the MP700 and absolutely love the performance uplift I did not expect. In day to day usage you will notice a difference vs 4.0 drives. The heatsink is a bit of a gimmick as HWinfo shows my temps as 54 52 57 53 C. I do have the X670E-E that has a huge heatpipe on the NVME MB heatsink. I am impressed by the lack of fan noise though. I could see these making more sense on boards that have no heatsink but that really doesn't because that is usually budget boards.

 

[PLAfiller]

Fan is actually blowing over the fins on this thing and it shows with peak temps at ~60s.

 

[Dristun]

I wonder if it's possible to make a small test re: how SSDs compare in Ratchet and Clank, in those sequences with portals, where HDD's just die and SATA SSD's struggle, haha. While it doesn't use all the bandwidth available, latency and random reads are probably important, so maybe those 5.0 drives can finally make the experience as smooth as it is on PS5.

 

[Chaitanya]

Never thought Corsair would buy cheap Aliexpress SSD coolers for their "flagship" SSD after having designed some of the better heatsinks on their PCI-e 4.0 drives.

 

[W1zzard]

I wonder if it's possible to make a small test re: how SSDs compare in Ratchet and Clank, in those sequences with portals, where HDD's just die and SATA SSD's struggle, haha. While it doesn't use all the bandwidth available, latency and random reads are probably important, so maybe those 5.0 drives can finally make the experience as smooth as it is on PS5.

I have plans for a new 2024 test platform with new tests and games, but it'll take a while to figure out and retest everything .. just retesting takes like a day per drive, so x30 drives .. you do the math

 

[Rowsol]

Why are the most recent Addlink and Lexar drives missing from the performance list?

 

[AusWolf]

First, we had m.2 to do away with any SATA cables. And here comes Corsair, powering the cooling of their latest m.2 drive through a SATA cable. How pointless...

 

[Chrispy_]

First, we had m.2 to do away with any SATA cables. And here comes Corsair, powering the cooling of their latest m.2 drive through a SATA cable. How pointless...

I'd rather these SSD fans were powered by a short PWM header. There's usually a system fan header or two very close to the M.2 slots on most boards. If people REALLY want to power an M.2 slot with a SATA cable, cheap $0.99 adapters exist all over Amazon, Ebay, Aliexpress etc.

 

[HairyLobsters]

Would be nice to see how much of a difference there is between having the fan on vs off.

 

[W1zzard]

Why are the most recent Addlink and Lexar drives missing from the performance list?

They are the same drive, I typically only include on controller+NAND combo. MAP1602 is represented by Acer Predator GM7. I guess Lexar NM790 is the more popular drive and could replace GM7 ?

 

[AusWolf]

I'd rather these SSD fans were powered by a short PWM header. There's usually a system fan header or two very close to the M.2 slots on most boards. If people REALLY want to power an M.2 slot with a SATA cable, cheap $0.99 adapters exist all over Amazon, Ebay, Aliexpress etc.

All my case fan headers are occupied. No, I do not want ANY cable sticking out of my m.2 drive!

 

[Deesider]

They are the same drive, I typically only include on controller+NAND combo. MAP1602 is represented by Acer Predator GM7. I guess Lexar NM790 is the more popular drive and could replace GM7 ?

I was also keeping an eye out for the Lexar comparison - which seems to have a price performance of twice the Acer GM7 - so perhaps more relevant for the more miserly among us?

 

[W1zzard]

Done, charts have been re-rendered

 

[Space Lynx]

The more gen5 drives I see the more gen5 makes 0 sense to me, all the extra heat and power for literally no real world performance difference over say a 2tb p44 pro, i mean that you would actually be able to notice realistically I should say. and a passive heatsink is all you need there, and the solidgm lightweight driver to increase its iops

 

[Chrispy_]

I was also keeping an eye out for the Lexar comparison - which seems to have a price performance of twice the Acer GM7 - so perhaps more relevant for the more miserly among us?

Indeed.
If two drives are identical but one is half the price, it makes the expensive drive utterly pointless with zero reason to exist in the market.

The more gen5 drives I see the more gen5 makes 0 sense to me, all the extra heat and power for literally no real world performance difference over say a 2tb p44 pro, i mean that you would actually be able to notice realistically I should say. and a passive heatsink is all you need there, and the solidgm lightweight driver to increase its iops

The successor to the E26 and competing controllers from Samsung, Silicon Motion, and presumably WD/Sandisk are due soon. The E26 was rushed to market on an ancient 12nm process node that simply can't handle the heat. If they use a more efficient node from TSMC or Samsung, Phison will likely cut the power draw in half.

As far as I'm aware (and I could easily have missed some) all of the PCIe 5.0 drives so far are based on the one Phison E26 controller. The next PCIe 5.0 controller we're expecting to see is the Silicon Motion one SM2508) but I think that's Q2 2024. WD and Samsung play their cards close to their chest so it's possible we'll get a surprise product announcement before Silicon Motion hit the market with theirs....

 

[MachineLearning]

Well this thermal design looks far more effective than the PNY CS3150 drive announced earlier today. Still, I don't think it makes any sense to buy this 1st generation of Gen5 drives.

NM790 and similar Maxio drives embarrass them for both thermals and price/perf.

 

[mechtech]

I recently bought the 1Tb version of the MP700 and absolutely love the performance uplift I did not expect. In day to day usage you will notice a difference vs 4.0 drives. The heatsink is a bit of a gimmick as HWinfo shows my temps as 54 52 57 53 C. I do have the X670E-E that has a huge heatpipe on the NVME MB heatsink. I am impressed by the lack of fan noise though. I could see these making more sense on boards that have no heatsink but that really doesn't because that is usually budget boards.

What drive did it replace?

 

[Imouto]

Going by the thumbnail I thought it was an EHEIM Innovatek PCPS pump and my brain shorted into thinking we were back in the 2000s.

 

[Sunlight91]

How does the thermal write test work? 7.5GB/s for 10 minutes is 4.5 TB of data for a 2TB SSD.
Even the 200GB SLC cache can only write at 7GB/s.

 

[Garrus]

still waiting for a good gen 5 drive

i bought 2TB for $70 Gen 4
i even bought a 1TB Samsung Gen 4 drive for $70, that cost twice as much
1TB PCIe 5 drive should be $100 or it is a non starter imo

 

[Kapone33]

What drive did it replace?

Seagate 530 Firecuda 2TB.

 

[Dimitriman]

Thanks for the great review. For me, I'm still on AM4 so won't be buying, but I will not upgrade to Gen5 anyway until it's more mature and active cooling for drives is not required.