Corsair MP700 Elite 2 TB NVMe SSD review
Categorically, what is the biggest problem with PCIe 5.0 drives? It's the heat. At launch, and even now, those early 5.0 units complete with the Phison E26 controller and Micron 232-layer TLC run seriously hot. To the point it was almost impossible to run one without some form of active cooling baked into it. Corsair wasn't immune to this either, despite its street cred as a storage manufacturer first and foremost, and its MP700 line initially featured the reference Phison cooler, complete with in-built fan, and a touch of yellow branding to try and separate it from the crowd.
A lot's changed since then, and we've seen a whole host of non-fan-cooled PCIe 5.0 solutions arrive with us. However, heat has still always been a major concern.
That is what the MP700 Elite looks to rectify in its bold and brave quest to become one of the best SSDs out there today. In short, this is an exceptionally cool PCIe 5.0 drive that not only delivers relatively comfortable performance on the sequential front but does so with both a low power draw and radically lower temperatures as a result. I'm not saying you can run this without a dedicated heatsink just yet, but we're getting close. That does however come with some drawbacks.
As for the hardware, Corsair's built the MP700 Elite around Kioxia's latest 218-layer BiCS8 TLC NAND, combined with Phison's E321T controller. That does mean it comes without any DRAM cache or buffers, but honestly, that's not a huge concern given the raw throughput that Kioxia's NAND can deliver.
Capacity: 2 TB
Interface: PCIe 5.0 x4
Memory controller: Phison E321T
Flash memory: Kioxia 218-Layer BiCS8 TLC NAND
Rated performance: 10,000 MB/s sustained read, 8,500 MB/s sustained write
Endurance: 1,200 TBW
Warranty: Five years
Price: $260 | £235
It's also worth mentioning that this is a single-sided M.2-2280 design, making it pretty ideal for laptops and other consoles, although if you do get the heatsink variant, please do note that it's too large to fit into
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