The drive has native support for encryption 256-bit AES, a useful life of 1,400 TBW and MTBF of 1,600,000 hours. Its average consumption, in activity, is about 11W. And the maximum temperature at which it can work is 76 degrees (70 degrees recommended) and, from this temperature, Thermal Throttling would come into play, with a scale of progressive performance reduction.
As for the size, we are dealing with a unit that measures, only in its SSD part, 22 mm x 80 mm x 3 mm. This SSD is only manufactured in a 2 TB model and its official sale price is €319.99.
Unboxing and external analysis
The Corsair MP700 comes in a cardboard box in the typical manufacturer’s design. On the front of it we can find a photo of the SSD in question, as well as the heatsink that is included to keep the unit at acceptable temperatures. We will also see the main characteristics of the SSD, such as read and write speeds, IOPs, and capacity (2 TB).
We open the box, and inside we will find a foam structure, which will be in charge of protecting the SSD. This comes in an antistatic plastic, very important so that it can travel safely and the unit does not arrive damaged.
The SSD has a standard M.2 2280 design.
It has an aluminum sticker on top, under which are two memory chips and the controller. At the bottom we will find two other memory chips.
It is important to note that the Corsair MP700 It does not come with a heatsink as standard.. Although it could work without it, it is not something we particularly recommend, since it is easy to reach the limit temperatures and lose performance. Corsair recommends that, if our board has a serial heatsink for the M.2 PCIe Gen5 socket (something that most of them usually have, especially in the high-end range), we use it and, with that, it should be enough. Otherwise, we can buy an M.2 SSD heatsink in a store, such as Amazon, to be able to maintain the temperatures at appropriate values.
Commissioning and performance tests
The equipment that we have used to analyze this NVMe SSD is made up of the following hardware:
- AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Processor
- 32 GB (2 × 16 GB) 6000 MHz DDR5 CORSAIR Vengeance RGB RAM (AMD EXPO profile).
- AORUS X670 ELITE AX Motherboard
- AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics card
- Windows 11 22H2
To start this SSD we do not have to do anything in particular, although we do have to pay attention to some specific configurations to be able to ensure that we always have maximum performance. The first thing we will do is make sure we connect it to the M.2 PCIe Gen5 connector of the motherboard, since otherwise we will not be able to achieve this extra speed. We must also make sure that Windows recognizes it without problems and that the write cache is enabled, which is necessary to achieve maximum reading speed and, above all, writing.
We also recommend installing the Corsair SSD Toolbox, the configuration and management tool for SSD drives from this manufacturer. Thanks to it we will be able to update the firmware of the unit (very important), activate the over provisioning to improve the useful life and performance of the unit (although it has not allowed us), see the health status (SMART ) from the drive, clone from one drive to another, perform a secure erase, optimize the drive, and more.
At this point, we feel obliged to comment that we do not understand how in the middle of 2023 and with how well the manufacturer’s unified software, Corsair iCUE, is working, such archaic software is still being used to manage SSDs. We believe that Corsair should work to integrate everything that the SSD Toolbox offers into iCUE for user convenience, and again we stress that we don’t understand why they haven’t done so by taking advantage of this new generation of SSDs.
Once we have everything in order, we can start analyzing the speeds of the SSD. To do this, the first program we are going to use is CrystalDiskInfo, thanks to which we will be able to know all the details about the unit. And, with it, we will also control the temperature while we carry out the tests.
The second of the programs that we are going to use is going to be CrystalDiskMark, the quintessential SSD benchmark program. Thanks to him we are going to see how, indeed, we achieve the speeds that Corsair promises us in its specifications, which makes it the fastest SSD on the market today.
The values obtained are more than excellent, with the promised reading speed and the writing speed above the 9,500 MB/s that Corsair said we could achieve.
Next we are going to use AS SSD Benchmarkanother program with which we will be able to measure the performance of the unit, and thanks to which we will be able to obtain a score, perfect for comparing units.
Here the speeds obtained have been lower, but don’t worry, it’s normal because it uses other methods for testing. This program will also allow us to see the speed to be achieved when copying certain types of files, such as an ISO, a program or a game.
And also a graph that allows us to see how it works with non-compressible files, one of the weakest points of all SSD drives. As we can see, this SSD maintains speeds much better than other similar drives, which is excellent news.
Then we run the program ATTO Disk Benchmarka most interesting tool since it will allow us to measure how this Corsair MP700 when working with different sizes of files, from the smallest (and the ones that dream of giving the most performance problems) to larger files.
Again, we can see that the Corsair MP700 Gen5 performs outstandingly when working with all kinds of files, both the smallest files and the largest ones. And it is that, from 128 KB, we already have almost the maximum speed.
And finally, we have also used the program Anvil Benchmark for yet another opinion on the performance of the SSD. This tool, in addition to write and read data, also allows us to see the random performance, in IOPS, and generate an overall score, perfect for comparison.
As we mentioned a while ago, during all the tests we have been monitoring the temperature with CrystalDisk Info, and below you can see the maximum temperature that has been recorded: 65ºC.
This temperature is well below the dangerous levels at which Thermal Throttling would kick in, so nothing to complain about: the Corsair MP700 Gen5 always runs at a good temperature.
Conclusion: Is this Corsair MP700 worth it?
As expected, the results we have obtained with this unit are outstanding. However, we can’t help but think, are they really going to be noticed? Most users use the computer for regular domestic use. And the difference between a PCIe 4.0 (top of the range, of course) and this PCIe 5.0 in terms of boot time, and general system operation, is negligible. And with games (almost) the same thing happens, since we can reduce the loading and boot times of the games, but compared to a unit that gives us 7000 MB/s of reading and writing, the improvement will be very little. Where we will be able to notice it will be, for example, in video rendering, in 3D modeling, in CAD or in other tasks that depend a lot on the speed of writing and reading the disk.
Achieving 10,000 MB/s of reading and writing (approximately) is a milestone, and a very important step in the evolution of storage systems. Of course, Corsair’s first PCIe Gen5 drive is outstanding, and it will take time for other manufacturers to match, let alone surpass, these results. Of course, just as it happened with PCIe 4.0, in a few years we will be able to see other higher models even faster, since the read and write speeds that are expected for Gen5 are around 14,000 MB/s, and even more.
If you want one of the best NVMe SSDs on the market, the Corsair MP700 is one of them. It has the latest technology, the highest speed to date, and the guarantee and reliability of a manufacturer like Corsair. Of course, we must prepare the portfolio, since having twice the speed also translates into twice the price. And since it’s only available in 2TB, we won’t be able to sacrifice space for a lower price.
For all these reasons, we have decided to give the NVMe M.2 Gen5 SSD Corsair MP700 our platinum award, highlighting, above all, its spectacular performance.
