TOMORROW’S
PERFORMANCEPCIe 4.0 SSDs are the fastest drives you
can buy at ‘reasonable’ prices right now,
offering higher sequential performance and
improved random read and writes over
everything we’ve seen before. While the
performance can be incredible in
benchmarks, when copying files and
loading games it’s fair to say that they aren’t
fully utilised just yet. A shift to make the
most out of these next-gen SSDs that could
potentially banish loading times as we know
it, and make for more seamless transitions
between areas.
What form this will actually take, and
how it’ll fit into a landscape that still has
gamers running hard drives is tricky to
fathom, but we wouldn’t be surprised if
future titles demand a certain level of SSD
performance in their system requirements.4 56HARDWARE
Group Test
MP600 1TB
CORSAIR £173A next-gen drive that offers good value for money
This Corsair SSD was
one of the first PCIe 4.0
drives to appear, with
AMD grabbing a bunch of these
(and the Gigabyte ones) to ship
out with the first review samples
of its Zen 2 processors. That
was a year and a half ago now,
but these drives are still going
strong and offering decent value
for money thanks to some keen
price cuts.
Newer drives have scraped
a bit more out of the Phison
controller and the NAND flash,
which is why this SSD is slightly
lower down the list, but it’s still
a quality offering. The fact that
this ships with a big heatsinkcan work in its favour too,
although make sure there’s
room for it on your motherboard,
as Corsair doesn’t recommend
removing the cooler in order to
slot it under any cooling offered
by your motherboard, as it runs
a bit hot.
It is inexpensive for a 1TB
drive, and is also faster than any
PCIe 3.0 SSD around. There are
more affordable versions on their
way, and potentially faster ones
too, but this one is here today.SPECS CAPACITY: 1TB / CONTROLLER: PHISON PS5016-E16 / MEMORY: TOSHIBA 3D TLC / INTERFACE: M.2 PCIE 4.0 X4
/ SEQ. READ: 4,950MB/S / SEQ. WRITE: 4,250MB/S6
Decent next-gen performance
Great value for money
Integrated heatsinkVERDICTS90 1TB
ADDLINK £187
An affordable up-to-date next-gen SSD
When the Addlink S90
was first released
there was nothing
else really out there that
competed, and thus quickly
became the goto next-gen
drive. Since then other
manufacturers have caught on
to the fact that budget drives
can sell in decent numbers, and
so pricing has tumbled across
the board. This is good for us as
buyers, but it means you’ve got
to keep on your toes. At the time
of writing the Corsair, Gigabyte
and 1TB Sabrent drives are all
cheaper than this, and it does
put the Addlink S90 in a bit of
awkward spot – particularly
as this is a budget drive first
and foremost.
The good news is that it is
a more up-to-date take on the
Phison E16 controller that can
be found elsewhere, meaning
it offers ever so slightly better
performance than the Corsair
and Gigabyte drives. So while
they’re slightly cheaper, this
has a slight edge in terms of
peak throughput, and that’s
a price we think is worth
coughing up for.SPECS CAPACITY: 1TB / CONTROLLER: PHISON PS5016-E16 / MEMORY: TOSHIBA 3D TLC
/ INTERFACE: M.2 PCIE 4.0 X4 / SEQ. READ: 5,000MB/S / SEQ. WRITE: 4,400MB/S
5
Strong overall performance
Good value for money
Excellent enduranceVERDICT