Introduction

Corsair is a US-based peripherals and hardware company founded in 1994. It is now one of the leading manufacturers for gaming gear, with a portfolio spanning nearly every component you need: DRAM memory modules, flash SSDs, keyboards, mice, cases, cooling, and much more.

Today we’re reviewing the Corsair MP700 SSD, which is the first production-grade PCI-Express 5.0 solid-state-drive to hit our labs. While there has been talk about these drives for months, and we have seen them demo’d at various events, they really haven’t made it to the market in significant volume yet. All the “Gen 5” SSDs right now are based on the Phison E26 controller, which is the only controller available at this time with support for the new interface. Other vendors like Samsung, WD, Kioxia, Silicon Motion and Innogrit are working on their own designs, but have nothing to show yet. As NAND flash the Corsair drive is using Micron’s newest B58R 3D TLC NAND with 232-layers. As expected for a high-end drive, a DRAM cache chip is included.

The Corsair MP700 is available in capacities of 1 TB ($160), 2 TB ($290). Endurance for these models is set to 700 TBW and 1400 TBW, respectively. Corsair includes a five-year warranty with the MP700 SSD.