Introduction

Corsair is a US-based peripherals and hardware company founded in 1994. It is now one of the leading manufacturers for gaming gear, with a portfolio spanning nearly every component you need: DRAM memory modules, flash SSDs, keyboards, mice, cases, cooling, and much more.



The Corsair MP400 SSD is a value-optimized M.2 NVMe SSD based on the combination of a Phison E12 controller paired with QLC flash from Micron. Two Nanya DRAM chips provide a total of 1 GB of storage for the mapping tables of the SSD.

The Corsair MP400 comes in capacities of 1 TB ($110), 2 TB ($230), 4 TB ($600), and 8 TB ($1330). Endurance for these models is set to 200 TBW, 400 TBW, 800 TBW, and 1600 TBW respectively. Corsair includes a five-year warranty with the MP400.

Packaging

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which makes it 22 mm wide and 80 mm long.


Like most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the Corsair MP400 connects to the host system over a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface.


On the PCB, you'll find the controller and four flash chips; two DRAM cache chips are installed, too.

Chip Component Analysis

The flash controller is made by Phison, the PS5012-E12S supports QLC and PCI-Express 3.0 x4. It uses eight flash channels and is produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. The main difference to the E12 without the "S" is that the E12S is physically smaller, works with half the DRAM capacity of the E12, and uses a metal case, which helps with thermals.


The four QLC flash chips are made by Micron, built using 96 layers.


Two Nanya DDR3-1866 chips provide 1 GB of fast DRAM storage for the controller to store the mapping tables in.

Test Setup