EXTRAS
your first PCIe 5.0 SSD is not fast enough
PCIe 5.0 SSDs are currently “unicorn blood”. Some interesting data has been seen, especially from Phison, but it seems that, as usual in this sector, they will be more fantasy than reality, at least for now. A higher temperature, a greater degradation and some controllers pushed to the limit did not predict anything good, and CORSAIR seems to be confirming it, since it has a new SSD and… It is not what was expected. The new CORSAIR MP700 PCIe 5.0 has revealed that the game will not be as simple as we might think at first.
Delays and more delays, Esports Extrasntic heatsinks, return to active ventilation, high consumption and now… It seems that accelerated degradation. That is what it seems that we will find in the new SSDs, something that will get more complicated as speed increases, and that is that we are still far from reaching the ceiling.
CORSAIR MP700: the brand’s new flagship
It goes without saying that the samples that we have been seeing and the announcements of various manufacturers seem more for the gallery than for anything else. The first attempts were intended to get closer to 16 GB/s, with promising data, but it seems that CORSAIR is not so clear, and that already attracts enough attention. The new CORSAIR MP700 is the first PCIe 5.0 SSD from the company in M.2 format with NVMe 2.0 under its belt and promises much less spectacular speeds than you might expect:
Experience the performance of PCIe Gen5 storage in your system, with sequential read speeds of up to 10,000MB/sec and sequential writing of 9,500MB/sec for blazing fast save, boot and load times into your games.
High-bandwidth NVMe 2.0 interface and high-density 3D TLC NAND FLASH memory deliver a performance and longevity outstanding. Insert the MP700 directly into your motherboard thanks to its M.2 2280 form factor, while a sleek aluminum heatsink helps control temperatures and reduce throttling. Plus, with Microsoft DirectStorage you’ll have unprecedented load times when playing compatible games.
As we can see, this CORSAIR MP700 is very far from the maximum bandwidth that the bus allows, the question is why is it launched with these speeds?
Reliability at the cost of performance?
In the details is the key. The brand statement speaks of performance and longevity as such, not maximum performance or the best performance, nor extreme durability. It seems that the new controllers and the absence of QLC in these new models as a symbiosis that was to be expected in this new generation shows that not all that glitters is gold.
First of all, the heatsink integrates a small fan that already shows that passively it will be impossible to cool this solid state unit without going into throttling. High temperatures degrade the useful life of the cells, we understand that this CORSAIR MP700 will be around 60 ºC or 65 ºC average under load and only at specific moments could it exceed that temperature, at least according to what the brand would indicate and knowing the safe values of the TLC 3D NAND Flash.
So it seems that CORSAIR and its parent (unknown at the moment, Silicon Motion? Phison?) have preferred to opt for lower performance than the competition, but higher reliability. In fact, we’re talking about just 3,500MB/s more than in the MP600 PRO XT, when the available bandwidth is doubled. In general, one speaks of a 40% more performance for this CORSAIR MP700 overall, that’s quite a lot, but it falls short of the competition.
Has the American brand seen something that the rest of the manufacturers that have already shown their benefits have not? We will see if these new PCIe 5.0 SSDs finally make the difference in durability and reliability compared to the rest, or simply that CORSAIR has preferred to segment its range starting at the bottom…
