Corsair MP700 Elite 2 TB

[W1zzard]

The Corsair MP700 Elite marks our first test of an SSD built around Phison’s new E31 controller. The E31 supports PCI-Express 5.0 but is specifically designed to minimize power usage, enabling fan-free operation. Our review confirms: no thermal throttling and excellent performance.

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[csendesmark]

Why these producers are seemingly aiming for a 1GB/s sustained write speed?
The last 9 SSD tests were mostly around 1GB, except the Pro verion of this.
Also when it comes to the top speeds R/W ~6GB/~7GB - nice gen4 speeds for a gen5 SSD
What is the benefit for gen5, other than they selling a more pricy drive.

 

[Chaitanya]

Drive does get quite hot even with that massive stock heatsink which is quite surprising, though it does tame the drive. Also unlike the previous gen MP600 atleast this time around Corsair has kept DRAM cache on their Elite series.

 

[chrcoluk]

Think I would like to see the drive tested in a gen4 slot, and then compared to a gen 4 drive, and we see power and heat metrics comparing both in a gen 4 configuration?

Why is this relevant? with all these manufacturers seemingly now only interested in releasing gen 5 products, we might one day only have a choice between gen 5 drives, and I expect the vast majority of people buying SSDs today still only own gen 3 or 4 systems.

The throttle test for this drive as an example without a heat sink only runs after a few seconds at gen 3 speeds, I dont recall gen 4 drives having that problem.

 

[Bwaze]

Why these producers are seemingly aiming for a 1GB/s sustained write speed?
The last 9 SSD tests were mostly around 1GB, except the Pro verion of this.
Also when it comes to the top speeds R/W ~6GB/~7GB - nice gen4 speeds for a gen5 SSD
What is the benefit for gen5, other than they selling a more pricy drive.

View attachment 370551

Well yes, but 400 GB is really a large cache, you only hit that when copying large portion of a drive. It used to be a couple of GB, which was hilarious, since those SSDs were only fast with sequential transfers of large files - but not too large! But the explanation in reviews was alway that it isn't a real world scenario, as if people never transfer large folders between drives!

 

[Shadowjump]

@W1zzard

You have the prices wrong in the first page.

comes in capacities of 1 TB ($260 / $270) and 2 TB ($150 / $160),

 

[Onasi]

Hey, first Gen 5 SSD that actually looks like something usable. It still makes no sense paying double over a similar size Gen 4 drive, but at least there’s progress.

 

[_roman_]

Thanks for the tests. I'll be more interested when I see the slowest writing rate of 2500mb/s @ pcie 4.0 - 4 lanes M2 nvme slot.

I do not want to see a drive writing with ~600MB/s. If I want a trash drive I get a PCIE 3.0 NVME.
I'm only interested in the scenario when the drive is 95% full. That is my use case.
When I have a drive with 80% free space - I bought the wrong device for the task. I could went for a device which is cheaper and much smaller than.

Write speed starts out at 6 GB/s, which is very impressive for single-threaded write speeds. These speeds are sustained until 407 GB have been written, which means the drive will fill 60% of its capacity in SLC mode first. Once the SLC cache is full, write speeds drop to 1.4 GB/s. Once 1.15 TB have been written, there's another drop, to around 700 MB/s.

It seems I learnt something.
HMB = seems Host memory buffer = device has no dedicated DRAM. (well keep on hiding the bad stuff behind nice words -> looking at ADATA for example) = software and hardware requirement = issues with certain drives and mainboards

edit: W1zzard is right: It seems only a Western Digital issue.

 

[W1zzard]

You have the prices wrong in the first page.

Fixed, thanks

issues with certain drives and mainboards

Not aware of any, other than what was reported with some specific WD drives and Windows 24H2? do you have a link?

 

[Fluke]

Well yes, but 400 GB is really a large cache, you only hit that when copying large portion of a drive. It used to be a couple of GB, which was hilarious, since those SSDs were only fast with sequential transfers of large files - but not too large! But the explanation in reviews was alway that it isn't a real world scenario, as if people never transfer large folders between drives!

But what if this SSD is 80-90% full?
-> It gets beaten by a previous Gen drive like the Kingston KC3000.

 

[Wirko]

Why these producers are seemingly aiming for a 1GB/s sustained write speed?
The last 9 SSD tests were mostly around 1GB, except the Pro verion of this.
Also when it comes to the top speeds R/W ~6GB/~7GB - nice gen4 speeds for a gen5 SSD
What is the benefit for gen5, other than they selling a more pricy drive.

View attachment 370551

Look closely at the graphs on the same page that compare all tested SSDs. The ones that are among the best in one category (SLC cache size or Sustained writes) are just average in the other. This can be partly explained by the fact that rewriting from SLC to TLC takes time too, and there's more of it if the SLC cache is larger.

Of course the KC3000/E18 spoils the equation. Phison is too good compared to Phison. Also, its 32 NAND dies for 2 TB capacity might be beneficial. Newer designs have half as many.

Besides, don't concentrate on writing only. Read performance seems very good, which is reflected in many of the benchmarks.

As it now appears, Gen 5 drives will be roughly divided in two speed grades, the lower (4 channels) will achieve around 10 GB/s, the higher (8 channels) around 14 GB/s when reading. Gen 4 drives are in a similar situation, at half the speeds I mentioned. This Corsair Lite can be a proud member of the "lower" grade group - but the price better come closer to MP600 Pro (several variants, all of which have the E18 inside).

 

[RootinTootinPootin]

Random Read/Write speeds are still king (as this is what your PC is doing 99% of the time)

 

[csendesmark]

Look closely at the graphs on the same page that compare all tested SSDs. The ones that are among the best in one category (SLC cache size or Sustained writes) are just average in the other. This can be partly explained by the fact that rewriting from SLC to TLC takes time too, and there's more of it if the SLC cache is larger.

Of course the KC3000/E18 spoils the equation. Phison is too good compared to Phison. Also, its 32 NAND dies for 2 TB capacity might be beneficial. Newer designs have half as many.

Besides, don't concentrate on writing only. Read performance seems very good, which is reflected in many of the benchmarks.

As it now appears, Gen 5 drives will be roughly divided in two speed grades, the lower (4 channels) will achieve around 10 GB/s, the higher (8 channels) around 14 GB/s when reading. Gen 4 drives are in a similar situation, at half the speeds I mentioned. This Corsair Lite can be a proud member of the "lower" grade group - but the price better come closer to MP600 Pro (several variants, all of which have the E18 inside).

You are right, this SSD is great,
I only disappointed in the speed drop after exhausting the SLC cache, even if that is not an everyday occurrence.