Custom PC – October 2019

W

hen M.2 hit the scene a few years ago, we were

thankful for this brilliant interface that cuts cable

clutter, and it’s made storage one of the focal

points of cutting-edge hardware. Nowhere more so, in fact,

than with AMD’s new X570 motherboards, which support

PCI-E 4. What’s more, the storage industry has managed

to galvanise the production of PCI-E 4 NVMe SSDs to

launch at the same time, partly thanks to a $15 million US

investment from AMD. That’s just as well, because there are

precious few other reasons to opt for an X570 motherboard,

apart from some admittedly very fancy board designs.

This month we’re looking at one of a handful of

PCI-E 4 SSDs to already hit the market, and Corsair was

one of several companies to hit the ground running,

with its MP600 added to AMD’s 3rd-gen Ryzen press

packs. It looks minimally attractive too, with its big

black heatsinks being more likely to complement a

motherboard than the stark bare copper on the similar

Aorus product we saw last month (see Issue 192, p20).

It’s available in 1TB and 2TB capacities – sadly, no

capacities south of 1TB seem to be on offer yet. Like most

of the other PCI-E 4 SSDs on sale, it uses the Phison

PS5016-E16 controller, combined with a DRAM cache and

3D TLC NAND. With four PCI-E lanes available, PCI-E 3 has

a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 4GB/sec (32Gb/sec),

but PCI-E 4 boosts this figure to 8GB/sec (64Gb/sec).

In terms of claimed speeds, Corsair states up to 4,950MB/

secforreadsand4,250MB/sec for writes, with respective

IOPSfiguresof 680000 and600,000.Theformermight

d

these new SSDs, but in fact, power consumption has been

shown to be roughly in line with PCI-E 3 models, and it’s the

X570 chipset that’s the cause of the higher power

consumption figures people have reported. Our model stayed

between 50-60°C under load using the included heatsink.

Corsair also states an endurance figure of 1,800TBW, which

is three times that of Samsung’s 1TB 970 Evo Plus.

Using CrystalDiskMark, our 1TB version of the Corsair

MP600 dished out a peak read and write speed of

5,008MB/sec and 4,268MB/sec respectively – clearly

blisteringly quick performance for those big file transfers,

and numbers that stand around 40 per cent higher than your

typical PCI-E 3 NVMe M.2 SSD. The 4K random QD32 test

was significantly faster too, with read and write figures of

1,666MB/sec (406K IOPS) and 1,489MB/sec (364K IOPS).

That compares to 1,281MB/sec and 1,238MB/sec for

Samsung’s 970 Pro 512GB.

Conclusion

We’re clearly dealing with a step change in performance

with PCI-E 4 SSDs and, to AMD’s credit, drives such

as the Corsair MP600 help to offer that extra level of

excitement that will no doubt tempt affluent enthusiasts

overtoitsX570platform.If you’re

notintendingonoptingforanX570

motherboard,though,thelikesof

Samsung’s 970 EvoPluscostsaround

£40lessforthesamecapacity

Also,bearinmindthattheextra

rmanceonofferfromthe

00 isunlikelytobenoticeable

al-worlduseoutsideoflargefile

sfers.However,seeingasyouget

40 percentextraperformance

inthesescenariosfornot

muchmoremoney,we’d

paytheextracashif we

werebuildinganX570rig.

ANTONYLEATHER

REVIEWS / SOLID STATE DRIVE

IOPS

• 
  

  Supremely fast

  
  


• 
  

  Heatsink keeps
  temperatures
  in check

  
  


• 
  

  Not much more
  expensive than
  PCI-E 3 SSDs

  
  

EYE OPS

• Unlikely to see
  many real-world
  benefits


• PCI-E 4 speed
  requires X570
  motherboard

OVERALLSCORE

89

PERFORMANCE

48 / 50

FEATURES

18 / 20

VALUE

23 / 30

RDICT

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IOPSfiguresof 68 0,

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