Corsair MP700 PCIe 5.0 2TB NVMe SSD Review – Gen 5 Makes its Storage Claim to Fame

It seems like so long since we posted our review of the Phison PS5026 – E26 PCIe 5.0 reference design where the world got its first look at the incredible performance of a Gen 5 SSD.  Hot off the press on the Test Bench today is Corsairs newest MP700 PCIe 5.0 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD and, if you would believe it, the physical configuration of this SSD is identical, but for branding.  In fact, you would find exactly the same in the Inland TD510 and Gigabyte Aorus, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that this means that they are the same as custom firmware can make a world of difference.

The Corsair MP700 is a PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSD of the 2280 (22mm wide x 80mm long) form factor and uses the latest NVMe 2.0 protocol.  Corsairs specifications list performance as being 10GB/s read and 9.5GB/s write with up to 1.5 million read and 1.7 million write IOPS. We have tested the MP700 without a heatsink, with passive heatsinks of the ASRock Z790 Taichi and of the ASUS Maximus Hero AIC card.

This SSD must have a heatsink or temps jump to above 80°C and the card may throttle.  This card can be used with a passive heatsink (no fan) for moderate every day use but for performance and media manipulation, we recommend using an active heatsink with fan.

The Corsair MP700 consists of a black two sided PCB with the Phison PS5026-E26 PCIe 5.0 8-channel NVMe controller on the left, followed by a 4GB LPDDR4 DRAM cache chip and two pieces of Micron’s newest and best 3D TLC 232-layer NAND flash memory on each side of the PCB.This is a 2TB sample and each NAND piece has a 512GB RAW storage value.  Once formatted, this SSD provides 1863GB of usable storage to the user.

Of particular interest is that the Corsair MP700 has been optimized for use with Microsofts DirectStorage where direct communication is made with the graphics card providing for much faster game load times.  Forspoken is a new release that uses DirectStorage on PC.  We haven’t confirmation on a release date as of yet.  The MSRP for the Corsair MP700 is expected to be $289.99 which includes a 5-year limited warranty.  Check Amazon for MP700 availability.

Now let’s get to some metrics!