Corsair MP700 Pro 2TB review: Fast and pricey

The field of second-generation PCIe 5.0 SSDs is gradually becoming more crowded, bringing more options for users who want drives capable of 12,000MB/s reads and writes. Corsair's MP700 Pro 2TB, the successor to the MP700 that launched earlier this year, is the latest contender to vie for the title of best PCIe 5.0 SSD, and offers three models: one with no heatsink, one with an air-cooled heatsink, and one with a liquid-cooled heatsink. On paper, it's the most versatile and perhaps most performant PCIe 5.0 SSD thus far.

The MP700 Pro 2TB is the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSD I've ever tested, instantly making it a must-have for performance chasers. However, its relatively high price prevents it from being very competitive with other second-generation PCIe 5.0 drives. Additionally, its two optional heatsinks aren't big selling points, as the air-cooled model suffers from a very poor design choice while liquid cooling for SSDs is hard to recommend since it's so niche. While an obvious choice for the high rolling enthusiast, the MP700 Pro 2TB's premium price is hard to justify when cheaper SSDs with similar performance exist.

About this review: Corsair sent me the MP700 Pro 2TB for the purposes of this review. Corsair did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

Corsair MP700 Pro: Pricing and availability

The MP700 Pro launched on Nov. 14, and it comes in 1TB and 2TB sizes. Both the 1TB and 2TB models of the MP700 Pro can be bought with a preinstalled air cooler, and there's also a variant of the 2TB drive with a waterblock installed for custom liquid cooling loops. Without coolers, the MP700 Pro 1TB costs $180, while the 2TB costs $300. The cooled models (both air and liquid) bump the price up to $190 for the 1TB and $325 for the 2TB.

For enthusiasts with high-end PCs, the MP700 Pro 2TB is especially appealing as it's the only PCIe 5.0 SSD that can optionally come with a preinstalled waterblock.

While PCIe 5.0 SSDs are expected to be pretty expensive, the MP700 Pro is especially expensive among its peers. Crucial's T700 retails at $290 and $160 for the 2TB and 1TB variants respectively, while Teamgroup's T-Force Cardea Z540 is even cheaper at $260 for 2TB and $150 for 1TB. Granted, the T700 only offers a passive heatsink while the Z540 comes with none at all, but separately sold coolers are available at Amazon for $10 to $20, which diminishes the advantage Corsair has with its cooler options.

Performance

How the Corsair MP700 Pro 2TB was tested

Corsair sent me the MP700 Pro 2TB with the air cooler preinstalled, and for this review I tested it as-is. I also have performance figures for the Z540 2TB, Gigabyte's Gen5 12000 1TB, and Seagate's FireCuda 540 2TB, which is a first-generation 10,000MB/s drive. These drives were tested on my Intel test bench, which uses a Core i9-14900K, ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite, and 32GB of DDR5 running at 5,600MHz and CL40 timings. On AMD PCs, PCIe 5.0 SSD performance is usually a little lower than it is on Intel PCs, though not by a massive margin.

I tested all SSDs in three benchmarks to assess overall performance: CrystalDiskMark, 3DMark's storage test, and IOMeter. These programs test peak performance, gaming performance, and sustained writing performance respectively, and they're probably the three most important things to look for in an SSD beyond price and capacity. To prevent results from being impacted by depleted SSD cache or thermal throttling, all SSDs had a rest period of 10 minutes or more between each test.

The Z540 2TB, Gen5 12000 1TB, and FireCuda 540 2TB were tested under the Z790 Taichi Lite's stock heatsink, as none of them came preinstalled with a heatsink. However, since the Gen5 12000 does come with a heatsink that you can optionally install yourself, I have noted down where it improves performance and by how much, which is just in a single test as it turns out. Otherwise, cooling didn't impact the performance results.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark is a synthetic benchmarking app that tests data transfer rates under a variety of conditions. I've tested the six default tests, which measure performance in sequential and random workloads across different block sizes, queue depths, and thread counts. While this performance isn't exactly real world, it can still tell us the peak capabilities of a drive's performance.

Scores are organized by read/write and are measured in MB/s.

As expected, the MP700 Pro 2TB and Z540 2TB are neck and neck as they use the same NAND chips and controller. Meanwhile, the Gen5 12000 1TB is a fair bit behind in reads and especially writes in three of the workloads, which is typical for the 1TB versions of 12,000MB/s SSDs. All SSDs however are neck and neck in the lower thread count random tests, which don't particularly benefit from higher performance hardware.

Although the Z540 2TB was tested under the Z790 Taichi Lite's stock heatsink, it performed the same as the actively cooled MP700 Pro 2TB. This is because CrystalDiskMark just doesn't run long enough to saturate the heatsink with heat, so the Z540 2TB can maintain peak speed right alongside the MP700 Pro. For longer benchmarks, you'll see that this isn't the case.

3DMark

3DMark's storage benchmark runs real world workloads from popular (albeit aging) games like Overwatch, and assigns a score based on overall performance in data transfer and latency.

The MP700 Pro 2TB is in 4th place, but it's by such a small margin that all SSDs here are effectively tied. Additionally, 3DMark's current storage benchmark is likely not suitable for testing PCIe 5.0 SSDs, as it predates DirectStorage and primarily tests loading times. I suspect 14,000MB/s SSDs won't do much better than 12,000MB/s drives like the MP700 Pro, as the MP700 Pro doesn't do much better than the FireCuda 540 2TB and other 10,000MB/s drives.

IOMeter

IOMeter is the final benchmark I have to show, and I use it to test how well an SSD can write over 15 minutes. When an SSD spends a long time writing data, two things happen. Firstly, its high-performance cache is eventually depleted, which can happen in less than a minute of writing. Secondly, the more an SSD is filled up, the weaker writing performance becomes, as there are fewer empty blocks to dump data into, forcing the SSD to spend resources reorganizing data. I've set up IOMeter to show the performance impact of these two important factors.

First, here's the long-term writing performance of the four SSDs when they're filled up 50%.

Scores are measured in MB/s.

The MP700 Pro 2TB is neck-and-neck with the FireCuda 540 2TB on average, while the Z540 2TB follows closely behind. The performance benefits of newer PCIe 5.0 NAND and controllers is diminished over the course of a 15-minute test and with the drives filled halfway, which is how the FireCuda 540 2TB can keep up so well. Meanwhile, the Gen5 12000 1TB is in dead last as it has fewer chips and consequently worse bandwidth.

This next graph shows how the performance of the MP700 Pro 2TB changes depending on how full it is. I tested it at 10% full, 50% full (the same data from the last test), and 90% full, and I also included the average speeds for the MP700 Pro 2TB alongside the other SSDs.

Scores are measured in MB/s.

At 10% full, the MP700 Pro 2TB is able to sustain a consistent write speed of nearly 12,000MB/s, well ahead of the other SSDs. However, that's down to cooling, which is a big factor in long, sustained writing workloads. If you use a cooler with the Z540 2TB, you can expect it to be just about as fast as the MP700 Pro 2TB, while the Gen5 12000 1TB gets a boost to roughly 9,400MB/s.

At the much higher fill rate of 90%, the Z540 2TB loses a significant amount of ground that puts the MP700 Pro 2TB firmly in first place, ahead of the FireCuda 540 2TB too. Although the Z540 2TB uses very similar hardware, it loses a significant amount of ground from the 50% full test to the 90% full test. It seems that the MP700 Pro 2TB has much better cache replenishment, as thermal throttling didn't seem to be a factor with the Z540 2TB.

This drive has great sustained writing performance and the typical 700TBW per terabyte endurance, so it's a great choice for anyone who finds themselves doing tons of writing operations.

Cooler performance and thermals

Lastly, I want to discuss thermals, which are becoming increasingly important as PCIe 5.0 SSDs continue to run at high temperatures at peak performance. Without good cooling, an SSD has to thermal throttle, which means reduced reads and writes. The MP700 Pro's optional air cooler is interesting, as it doesn't use heatpipes or metal fins like the Gen5 12000's passive heatsink or Teamgroup's T-Force Dark Airflow I air-cooled heatsink. Instead, the MP700 Pro combines a more typical SSD heatsink with a fan that channels air along its length.

I ran IOMeter with the drive filled up 10% to make the MP700 Pro 2TB heat up as much as possible, and its temperature leveled out at a cool 64 C. This allowed it to never thermal throttle and maintain peak writing performance of 11,500MB/s during the entire 15-minute-long test. The Z540 2TB on the other hand did thermal throttle under the Z790 Taichi Lite's stock heatsink. Under the T-Force Dark Airflow I however, the Z540 2TB was able to maintain over 11,000MB/s just like the MP700 Pro 2TB.

There was just one problem with the MP700 Pro's cooler: the cable. For some reason, Corsair decided to hook this fan up to a SATA power connector, which is a design choice I don't understand. SATA-powered fans always run at 100% and can't be controlled by software or firmware, and although the MP700 Pro's fan isn't very loud, it is high-pitched. Even a 3-pin fan plug would have been better since at least with those, you can attach a resistor cable to reduce the fan speed. If the fan just used a normal 4-pin plug, I would have called it the best PCIe 5.0 SSD cooler so far.

Should you buy the Corsair MP700 Pro 2TB?

You should buy the Corsair MP700 Pro 2TB if:

• You want the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSD right now
• You like the idea of liquid cooling an SSD
• You have a large budget

You shouldn't buy the Corsair MP700 Pro 2TB if:

• You want a PCIe 5.0 SSD with good bang for buck
• You want a PCIe 5.0 SSD with a good overall cooling solution
• You don't want to wait for next-generation PCIe 5.0 SSDs

Overall, the MP700 Pro 2TB is a great SSD. When adequately cooled, it has the best performance you can get out of a PCIe 5.0 SSD, and it offers three models that should cover the needs and wants of any user. For enthusiasts with high-end PCs, the MP700 Pro 2TB is especially appealing as it's the only PCIe 5.0 SSD that can optionally come with a preinstalled waterblock.

Unfortunately, the MP700 Pro just doesn't do enough to really stand out and justify its price tag for the average PCIe 5.0 drive buyer. It performs pretty much the same as the Z540 while costing significantly more, and although an extra $40 isn't going to break the bank for someone in the market for a PCIe 5.0 SSD, it's still $40 that could be used for something else. If you're buying multiple PCIe 5.0 drives, $40 for each one will add up quickly.

The MP700 Pro 2TB is the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSD I've ever tested.

The cooler options also aren't as killer in practice as they are on paper, since the air-cooled heatsink uses a disappointing fan powered by SATA, and liquid cooling an SSD is both overkill and applicable to only a very small slice of the PC community, even among high-end users. If Corsair is going to charge a $65 premium for the air cooler, it can at least use a fan with a standard 4-pin connector. Nobody building a PC that costs over $1,000 wants to listen to a whiny fan, and for me it ruins what would have been a nearly perfect SSD cooler.

Still, I think the MP700 Pro is worth getting if you want the best performance, you just need to get a third-party cooler for it or use the liquid cooled model. You'll still be paying significantly more for the MP700 Pro than other SSDs, but you can at least enjoy the best sustained writing performance today, and if you find yourself doing lots of writing workloads, then a premium might be worth it.