Corsair Force Series MP700

Die neue Corsair MP700 Pro schmeißt bei den Maximalen Transferraten zahlen in den Benchmarks heraus, die einem definitiv ein Grinsen ins Gesicht zaubern. Die 10-12 GB/s ploppen gleich mehrfach in verschiedenen Benchmarks auf. Aber auch die beworbenen 1.6 MIO IOPS lassen sich ganz einfach über den Cryastaldiskmark im Random 4K IOPS Test nachweisen. All diese Tests sind natürlich das, was man mittlerweile als "Marketing Performance" bezeichnet. Sie spiegeln die Maximale Leistung der SSD wieder, die aber natürlich in realen Szenarien in der Regel nicht erreicht wird. Dennoch ist es beachtlich das eine Corsair MP700 Pro in der 1 TB Version quasi in 100 Sekunden komplett gelesen werden kann.

Es war die MP700 ohne Pro, also der direkte Vorgänger, welche mit dem Makel auf dem Markt kam, ohne Kühler nicht mehr zu funktionieren. Nun galt das für alle PCI-E-5.0-SSDs mit dem Phison-E26-Controller. Corsair hat jetzt mit der MP700 Pro aber nicht nur die Firmware aktualisiert, sondern bietet auch ein Modell mit mehr Leistung. Nervt der Lüfter noch immer? Wurden alle Bugs beseitigt? Lohnt sich endlich 5.0? All das und mehr klären wir im Test.

Seit die ersten Prototypen von SSDs mit PCIe5-Interface auf Veranstaltungen zu sehen waren, dominierte ein Thema besonders: Kühlkörper um die erzeugte Abwärme abführen zu können. Aus diesem Grund hatten wir bisher eine Reihe verschiedener Lösungen in unseren SSD-Reviews gesehen, monströse Konstruktionen aus Aluminium und Kupfer ebenso wie dem radikalen Ansatz, einfach keinen Kühler anzubieten und die SSD im Zweifelsfall abzuschalten. Corsair geht mit der MP700 Pro einen ebenfalls strittigen Weg und verbaut im Kühler einen kleinen Lüfter, um der Abwärme Herr zu werden. Wie gut das funktioniert und ob die Corsair damit einen Performance-Vorsprung ausbauen kann, klären wir mit unserem Review.

Corsair lässt auf die MP700 die MP700 Pro folgen. Das „Pro“ steht für noch mehr maximalen Durchsatz beim Lesen und Schreiben, aber auch für einen optional ab Werk montierten Kühler mit Mini-Lüfter. Der Test klärt die Unterschiede zur MP700 und liefert das Duell mit der auf dem Papier gleich schnellen Crucial T700.

This is one of the easiest reviews I’ve written in a while, as it’s just so damn good, that I have nothing to pick fault with. I mean, I guess I could argue that it is expensive, and I’m sure we would all buy one if it were a lot cheaper, but at the end of the day, you get what you pay for. Corsair promised flagship performance, and that’s exactly what it delivered. What I am surprised by is just how close we got to the theoretical maximum speed of the drive. Choices like what CPU you are using, your RAM speed, the quality and features of your motherboard, and even the overall ambient temperature can all affect drive performance, but we pretty much maxed out the drive on every benchmark run without fail. Of course, I suspect the powerful included cooler has a lot to do with this. Keeping a drive like this cool is not easy, they can easily get to 100c+ with sustained read and writes. Unless your motherboard has a decent heatsink system, or you have your own aftermarket cooling, I strongly suggest using the cooler that comes with the Pro version, as it’s very good at what it does. The only downside of the cooler is it is rather chunky, so it wouldn’t fit in a laptop or console for example. Overall though, it really is the sum of its parts, with the latest Gen 5 E26 controller from Phison, four 512GB High-Density 3D TLC NAND, and 4GB Hynix DRAM, all of which make it one of the most powerful and feature-packed SSDs to ever hit the market.

The Corsair MP700 Pro is an upgraded version of the MP700 that we reviewed a few months ago. Just like the predecessor it is based on the Phison E26 controller, paired with Micron 232-layer TLC NAND. The biggest change is that the NAND chips are rated for 2000 MT/s instead of 1600 MT/s, which means the transfer rates reach up to 12 GB/s (vs 10 GB/s on the original MP700). We've previously tested several other Gen 5 12 GB/s SSDs—these are all identical, both in terms of hardware components and the firmware version (I checked). In my original review of the MP700 I complained that Corsair is not offering a heatsink with their drive. Looks like they've listened and a heatsink option is now a first-class citizen—no need to buy an aftermarket cooling solution. You still have the option of purchasing the MP700 Pro without heatsink, so you can save $20 and use your own heatsink or the one provided by the motherboard.

Mit der neuen Corsair MP700 PRO SE testen wir heute eine neue Vertreterin der aktuellen PCIe5-Generation. Mit einer Lesegeschwindigkeit von bis zu 14 GB/s verspricht Corsair maximale Performance bei gleichzeitig optimierter Hitzeentwicklung. Wie gut das im Alltag klappt und ob die MP700 PRO SE die Spitze unserer Vergleichslisten erklimmen kann, prüfen wir mit unserem Test.

The Corsair MP700 Pro SE SSD hits a grand slam with 14GB speeds, 4TB high capacity and 5-year limited warranty. Definitely an SSD for those high end applications.

In our performance testing, the MP700 PRO SE did extremely well, usually surpassing the other drives in the areas it got to stretch its legs. That’s not to say it was completely undisputed, but it varied by workload. This is a nice progressive step for the Phison-powered drive, it’s just a shame this “better” NAND wasn’t available at the initial launch. Having so many drives, especially two Gen5 SSDs launched less than half a year from one another, can be confusing to consumers. In the end, the MP700 PRO SE helps to highlight what Gen5 SSDs can look like for consumers. The radiator heatsink and liquid loop might be excessive, but they do add a visual panache for those who enjoy such things. Most users will be better off saving a few bucks and going with a Gen4 drive for gaming systems and PCs, but for those who want to wring every last drop of performance out of their rigs, the Corsair MP700 PRO SE does stand as a willing deputy for the task.

With the MP700 Pro SE, Corsair is releasing a 14 GB/s PCIe Gen 5 SSD, which offers incredible performance right up to the limit of the new Gen 5 interface. These speeds are only possible thanks to Micron 232-layer NAND chips running at 2400 MT/s. The 10 GB/s and 12 GB/s Gen 5 SSDs use the same NAND, but at lower speeds of 1600 MT/s and 2000 MT/s. Unlike many other vendors, Corsair isn't bundling a heatsink with their drive, which isn't completely unreasonable, because there's probably a lot of people that will use their motherboard's cooling solution anyway. Just like on all other Gen 5 SSDs in the market, the MP700 Pro SE uses the Phison E26 controller. Synthetic performance results of the MP700 Pro SE are impressive, and as expected, sequential read and write is increased, but we noticed a small performance regression in sequential mixed. We can confirm that Corsair's "up to 14 GB/s" claim is accurate (for sequential writes at QD8 and higher). Marketing materials for Gen 5 all focus on blazing fast sequential transfers. The reason is that random IO performance is virtually identical to the results of PCIe Gen 4 drives, like the Phison E18-based Kingston KC3000. Phison has a long history of optimizing their controllers for typical synthetic reviewer workloads on an empty drive. That's why it's important to also include real-life testing. We're even running those tests with the drives filled to 85% capacity, not empty. This approach puts additional strain on the various algorithms and the SLC cache, just like in real-life. With this review, we're introducing our new 2024 SSD Test Suite, which updates the game selection and adds new tests like AI and Git on a new hardware platform with native Gen 5 slot. Here the Corsair MP700 Pro SE does excellently and comes out as the fastest SSD we've ever tested. Compared to the Corsair MP700 Pro (which uses the same hardware, but with slower 12 GB/s maximum), the performance uplift is around 2%, which is expected, because very few real-life workloads scale with such high sequential transfer rates. Compared to Gen 4 SSDs, the performance uplift is around 5-10%, which is a repeat of what we've seen from the first Gen 4 drives, when compared to Gen 3 SSDs. Corsair's drive comes with an SLC cache size of 30%, or 400 GB, which is enough to soak up nearly all bursts of write activity, and it has the benefit that sustained rates are much better. First-gen PCIe 5.0 SSDs had a bigger SLC cache of 600 GB, but got penalized when that cache was full, so they filled their whole capacity at an average of 1.5 GB/s, whereas Corsair's new SSD more than doubles that to 3.3 GB/s—very impressive. Our power consumption testing confirms that the Corsair MP700 Pro SE really uses a lot of power. We've measured up to 11 W, which is essentially 50% more than what we've seen on Phison's E18 Gen 4 controller. Hitting 11 W is quite rare though, you should rather plan with 5-6 W during typical loads, which is still a lot for an M.2 SSD. Of course, you're getting higher performance at the same time, but our numbers show that even when running at only 1 or 2 GB/s, the power consumption is still high. It seems that once the controller goes out of idle, it will always use 4 W at least, no matter how little actual work it does (same as earlier Phison E26 models that we've tested). Read operation energy efficiency appears lower, because in our testing, the sequential reads are limited to 6 GB/s (same as in the synthetic read workload). According to Corsair, the MP700 Pro SE 4 TB will be priced at $635, there's only a 4 TB model available at this time. No doubt, the speeds are impressive, and 4 TB is tons of space, but that's a lot of money for just storage. I'm not sure how Corsair came up with $635, because the Crucial T705 4 TB, which uses the exact same hardware as the MP700 Pro SE is currently listed online for $543—almost $100 cheaper! I asked Corsair and their reply was that $635 is the MSRP and the actual street price will be lower than that. If you can live with "only" 12 GB/s, then you could grab a Crucial T700 for $400. Still, even $400 is A LOT of money for a 4 TB SSD, but the M.2 options are limited, especially in this capacity range. An interesting option is the WD Black SN850X 4 TB, which sells for $320, the Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB for $310, or the Lexar NM790 4 TB for $250, all of which are considerably less expensive, yet offer very similar performance using a PCIe Gen 4 interface.

The Corsair MP700 Elite is the first SSD that we're testing that's based on Phison's new E31 controller. This is Phison's second Gen 5 controller for the consumer space—a cost optimized design, also taking into account lessons learned from one year of market dominance with the E26. While the high-end E26 will still be around as the flagship, the E31 is for drives that come at a price point between the high-end E26 drives and the best Gen 4 drives. One of the major requirements for that is DRAM-less operation, because it lets SSD vendors save some cost and design complexity. The DRAM cache does not store your data, it stores the mapping tables of the SSD that tells the controller where to find a certain piece of information. On DRAM-less SSDs, a small portion of the system's main memory can be used for the mapping tables. The Phison E31 uses 64 MB for that, similar to what other competing controllers use. The NAND flash used is Kioxia 218-layer 3D TLC.

Ultimately, the Corsair MP700 Pro stands out in the market due to both its performance and cooling options. This SSD, available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, is powered by the Phison PS5026-E26 controller while utilizing 3D TLC NAND for a balance of performance, endurance, and cost. Its standout visual feature is an active cooling system encased in a sleek black heatsink, crucial for maintaining optimal operating temperatures.

Enthusiasten, welche die maximale Performance wollen, mussten bei PCs schon immer tief in die Tasche greifen und das ist bei SSDs nicht anders. Mit der Corsair MP700 Pro SE in der 4 TB Version bekommt man aktuell das schnellste was der Comsumer-SSD-Markt zu bieten hat. Insbesondere Anweder die extrem viele und große Dateien schreiben können natürlich von einer solchen SSD profitieren.