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Launched at the same time as the MP700 Micro, Corsair's M.2 2280 MP700 Pro XT is the company's latest Gen 5 flagship. Utilising Phison's latest flagship Gen 5 controller, the PS5028-E28, the 2TB MP700 Pro XT hits the market at £260 here in the UK.
At launch, the MP700 Pro XT line-up consists of three models: 1TB, 2TB (the model we are reviewing) and a flagship 4TB model. The new drive is built around Phison's latest Gen5 8-channel controller, the PS5028-E28. Designed to replace the Phison PS5026-E26 (which powers previous MP700 models), the new controller delivers improved performance but, perhaps more importantly, better thermals and lower power consumption. For the MP700 Pro XT, Corsair has matched the memory with BiCS8 218-layer 3D TLC NAND, along with a 2GB SK hynix DRAM cache IC.
Corsair quotes sequential read performance figures of 14,900MB/s across the range. Sequential writes are up to 14,200MB/s for the 1TB drive, 14,500MB/s for the 2TB drive and up to 14,400MB/s for the 4TB drive.
Random read performance is listed as up to 1,500,000 IOPS for the 1TB model, while the 2TB and 4TB drives get up to 2,700,000 IOPS. Random writes are quoted as up to 3,300,000 IOPS across the range.
Corsair gives power consumption figures for the 2TB MP700 Pro XT as up to 6.5W average for both active reads and writes, with Dev Spl power less than 5mW.
Endurance for the 2TB drive is quoted as 1,400TBW. The 1TB drive gets 700TBW, and the 4TB drive, 2,800TBW. Corsair backs the drive with a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 2TB.
- NAND Components: BiCS8 218-layer 3D TLC NAND.
- NAND Controller: Phison PS5028-E28.
- Cache: 2GB LPDDR4.
- Interface: PCIe Gen 5 x4, NVMe 2.0.
- Form Factor: M.2 2280.
- Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 2.4mm.
- Drive Weight: 7g.
Firmware Version: ESFM10.1
The drive comes in a compact box with a clear image of the drive on the front. Under the image is a strip label with performance figures for sequential and random reads/writes. The label wraps around one side of the box, and the drive's capacity is printed on the wrap-around section. The rear of the box has multilingual information about the drive's performance, and there is a logo signifying the 5-year warranty Corsair backs the drive with.
The 2TB MP700 Pro XT is built on a single-sided format. The drive doesn't have a heatsink, but the product label does have a copper layer built into it. Under the product label sits a Phison PS5028-E28 8-channel controller, two 1TB packages of BiCS8 218-layer 3D TLC NAND and a 2GB LPDDR4 cache IC.
Phison's PS5028-E28 is the next-generation 8-channel controller that has been designed to replace the PS5026-E26 (the first consumer Gen5 controller). Built on a 6nm process (the E-26 uses a 12nm process), the PS5026-E28 supports up to 32TB of TLC or QLC NAND flash memory with data transfer speeds of up to 3200 MT/s. The controller supports Phison's 8th Generation LDPC ECC engine. The controller supports AES 256, Pyrite, SHA 512, RSA 4096 and TCG Opal security protocols. Performance-wise the controller supports Sequential read / write speeds of up to 14,900MB/s and 14,500MB/s, respectively. Random 4K performance is quoted as up to 3,000K IOPS for read and writes.
Corsair’s SSD management utility is called SSD Toolbox. It's not the funkiest-looking GUI we've ever seen, but having said that, it does give you all you really need to keep an eye on the drive. It provides drive information and S.M.A.R.T details and also supports firmware updates, secure wiping of the drive, drive optimisation and usefully incorporates a disk cloning utility.
For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real-world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.
This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.
Main system:
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, 32GB DDR5-6000, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 and a Gigabyte AORUS X670E Xtreme motherboard.
Other drives
Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro 4TB
Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro 2TB
ADATA Legend 970 2TB
Corsair MP700 Pro SE 4TB
Corsair MP700 Pro 2TB
Corsair MP700 Elite 2TB
Corsair MP700 Micro 4TB
Crucial T705 2TB
Crucial T700 2TB
Crucial T700 with Heatsink 2TB
Gigabyte AORUS 10000 2TB
Kingston Fury Renegade G5 2TB
Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 2TB
Klevv Genuine G360 2TB
Samsung SSD 9100 Pro 2TB
Seagate FireCuda 520 2TB
Sandisk WD Black SN8100 2TB
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark 4 & 5.
CrystalMark 8.0.0.
AS SSD 2.0.
UL Solutions PC Mark 10.
UL Solutions 3DMark Storage Benchmark.
Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark.
All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration, which ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behaviour query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSDs. We are using v8.0.5.
The Corsair MP700 Pro XT's score of 103.53MB/s in the CrystalDiskMark 8 default test places it in second place on the results chart, behind WD's Black SN8100. However, its write score of 264.64MB/s isn't as strong.
As you can see from the benchmarking screens, we can confirm the official read sequential rating of 14,900MB/s with a test result of 14,860.87MB/s. Writes, on the other hand, were, at 14,077MB/s, a little shy of the official maximum.
That 14,860.7MB/s read result sees the MP700 Pro XT place into second place on the results chart. It's the fastest Corsair drive we've seen to date.
Peak Performance profile.
We couldn't confirm Corsair's maximum 4K performance for the MP700 Pro XT of 2,700,000 IOPS (Reads) and 3,300,000 IOPS (Writes), but using CrystalDiskMark 8 Peak Performance profile got close with the read result at 2,112,498 IOPS. Writes, on the other hand, at 1,859,904 IOPS were miles away from the official figure.
Once again, we could confirm the official sequential figures with test results of 14,859MB/s for reads and 14,052MB/s for writes.
Real World profile
In the CrystalDiskMark 8 Real World test, the drive's result score of 10,552MB/s sees the drive sitting on top of the results table. The MP700 Pro XT is the fastest consumer drive we've seen to date when it comes to read performance, but the write performance isn't as strong.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage system's performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customise your performance measurement, including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturer's RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data.
We are using version 4.1 for our NVMe disk tests with a set length of 256mb and testing both the read and write performance.
ATTO 4
Using the ATTO 4 benchmark we couldn't hit the official read and write sequential figures of 14,900MB/s and 14,500MB/s, respectively. The best figures we saw were 13,060MB/s for reads and 13,810MB/s for writes.
ATTO 5
We are also beginning to use ATTO5. ATTO 5 has new features, enhancements and changes which allow it to benchmark modern SSDs more thoroughly than previous versions.
Using ATTO 5, we could confirm the official read figure with a test result that matched it at 14,900MB/s. At 14,090MB/s, the write score was shy of the official maximum by 410MB/s.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benchmarking Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. It uses incompressible data samples, which many drives struggle with, so results can be viewed as the worst-case scenarios.
AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms, but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
The Corsair MP700 Pro XT's read score of 5596 makes it the fastest version of the MP700 we've seen to date by quite some distance. On the other hand, the write result of 6457 isn't as good as the original MP700.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the Sequential read and write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
128KB Sequential Read / Write.
Transfer Request Size: 128KB, Thread(s): 1, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
Using these tests, the reads and writes came in a little shy of the official maximums of 14,900MB/s and 14,500MB/s, respectively, with results of 14,749MB/s for reads and 14,053MB/s for writes.
128KB Sequential Read v QD performance.
At QD1, the Corsair MP700 Pro XT sits in second place behind the Samsung SSD9100 Pro by a very tiny margin. At QDs 2 and 4, the drive sits on top of both results tables by quite a margin. At QD32, the drive drops into second place.
128KB Sequential Write v QD performance.
At QD1, the drive sits in the bottom half of the results table; however, at QD2, the drive has moved up into third place, a position it holds at the remaining tested queue depths.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random read performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
Using our four-threaded 4K random read tests, we couldn't get close to the official maximum of 2,700K IOPS. The best figure we saw was 586,722 IOPS (2,403MB/s), coming at the end of the test run at QD32.
4K Random Read v QD Performance
At QD1, the drive sits in third place behind WD's Black SN8100 and Kingston's Fury Renegade G5. At QD2, it moves up a place, and QD4 drops down to fourth. At QD32, the drive has moved back up into the second spot.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
As with the random read results with our four threaded random write tests, we couldn't get close to the official maximum of 3,300,000 IOPS. The best we saw from testing was 536,597 IOPS (2,197MB/s) at QD32.
4K Random Write v QD Performance
At QDs 1, 2 and 4, the drive sits in penultimate place in the results chart. At QD32, the drive sits on top of the table by quite a distance.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8’s custom settings to test the 4K 70/30 mixed read/write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths using a single thread and four threads.
Using the four threaded 4K 70/30 read/write tests, the performance of the 2TB Corsair MP700 Pro XT ranges from 127,318 IOPS (521MB/s) at QD1 to 560,863 IOPS (2,297MB/s) at QD32. With a single thread, the test results range from 30,338 IOPS (124.26MB/s) at QD1 up to 183,691 IOPS (752.39MB/s) at QD32.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8 to test the random performance of the drive at lower queue depths (QD1 – QD8, where most of the everyday workloads occur) using 1 to 4 threads.
Random Read
Using the four threaded 4K 70/30 read/write tests, the performance of the 2TB Corsair MP700 Pro XT ranges from 127,318 IOPS (521MB/s) at QD1 to 560,863 IOPS (2,297MB/s) at QD32. With a single thread, the test results range from 30,338 IOPS (124.26MB/s) at QD1 up to 183,691 IOPS (752.39MB/s) at QD32.
Random Write
In the 4K write tests, the performance rose sharply from QD1 to QD2 for all four tested threads with the fastest rises seen in the three and four-threaded tests. Using a single thread, the performance rises slowly from QD2 to QD4 before levelling off. With two threads the performance plateaued off after QD2.
In our read-throughput test, the 2TB MP700 Pro XT peaked at 10,438.78MB/s at the 4MB block mark, some way off the official maximum of 14,900MB/s.
Although the test result of 10,438MB/s is some way off the official maximum, it is still good enough to put the drive in the top spot of the results chart.
In the write throughput test, the drive produced a peak test result of 11,561.90MB/s (16MB block), some way off the official maximum of 14,500MB/s.
Its test result of 11,561MB/s may be a distance from the official maximum, but the 2TB Corsair MP700 Pro XT is the fastest member of the MP700 family we've seen, and sits just within the top ten drives on this list.
The PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. The benchmark is designed to measure the performance of fast system drives using the SATA bus at the low end and devices connected via PCI Express at the high end.
The goal of the benchmark is to show meaningful real-world performance differences between fast storage technologies such as SATA, NVMe, and Intel’s Optane. The Full System Drive Benchmark uses 23 traces, running 3 passes with each trace. It typically takes an hour to run.
Traces used:
Booting Windows 10.
Adobe Acrobat – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Illustrator – starting the application until usable Adobe Premiere Pro – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Photoshop – starting the application until usable.
Battlefield V – starting the game until the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 – starting the game until the main menu.
Overwatch – starting the game until main menu.
Using Adobe After Effects.
Using Microsoft Excel.
Using Adobe Illustrator.
Using Adobe InDesign.
Using Microsoft PowerPoint.
Using Adobe Photoshop (heavy use).
Using Adobe Photoshop (light use).
cp1 Copying 4 ISO image files, 20 GB in total, from a secondary drive to the target drive (write test).
cp2 Making a copy of the ISO files (read-write test).
cp3 Copying the ISO to a secondary drive (read test).
cps1Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, to the target drive (write test).
cps2 Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
cps3 Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test).
Using PCMark10's Full System Drive Benchmark, the six Adobe startup traces produced an average of 322MB/s, with the fastest being the Adobe Premiere Pro startup trace at 411MB/s, with the Lightroom trace the slowest at 245MB/s. For the five usage traces, the drive averaged 622.8MB/s. The fastest test was, as usual, the Photoshop heavy usage trace at 1,311MB/s, the slowest, the InDesign test at 285MB/s.
The three gaming traces produced an average result of 1,110.6MB/s, the fastest being Battlefield V at 1,468MB/s, the slowest being Overwatch at 611MB/s. When it came to the six file transfers, the drive averaged 3,887.5MB/s with the fastest being the cp2 Read / Write test at 7,198MB/s.
With an overall bandwidth figure of 713.29MB/s, the 2TB MP700 Pro XT sits in the lower half of the results chart.
The 3DMark Storage Benchmark uses traces recorded from popular games and gaming-related activities to measure real-world gaming performance.
Traces used:
Battlefield V
Loading Battlefield™ V from launch to the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4
Loading Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 from launch to the main menu.
Overwatch
Loading Overwatch® from launch to the main menu.
Game Move
Copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike®: Global Offensive from an external SSD to the system drive.
Game Recording
Recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) while playing Overwatch®.
Installing Game
Installing The Outer Worlds® from the Epic Games Launcher.
Game Saving
Saving progress in The Outer Worlds game.
In 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark game loading tests, the MP700 Pro XT produced an average game loading bandwidth figure for the three games of 1,184.55MB/s with an average access time of 43µs, just behind the 4TB version of the MP700 Pro SE.
In the game, moving, recording, installing and saving test traces, the drive averaged 1,421.21MB/s, which puts the drive in the lower half of the results table. The average access time for the four test was 31µs.
The overall average bandwidth figure for the 2TB Corsair MP700 Pro XT is 752.74MB/s, which is a little disappointing as it's only good enough to see the drive in the lower half of the results table, behind the older, original 2TB MP700 Pro and the 4TB Pro SE.
The Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark uses actual maps and playable characters to assign a score to your PC and rate its performance, including scene loading times.
The benchmark gives an overall load time as well as loading times by scene.
The Corsair MP700 Pro XT doesn't seem to handle the Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark very well. It sits third from the bottom of the total load time result table because it didn't make it out of the bottom half of any of the individual load scenes. Its best performance comes in the Scene 1 load test, where it sits fifth from the bottom of the table.
We took note of the drive’s temperature during some of our benchmarking runs. Corsair's 2TB MP700 Pro XT doesn't come with a heatsink per se, but it does have a layer of copper built into the product label. The reason Corsair doesn't need to use a large cooler with the drive is thanks to the choice of controller. Thanks to its 6nm build process, the Phison PS5028-E28 runs a lot cooler than the PS5026-E26 that previous MP700 drives used. The hottest the MP700 Pro XT got during the benchmark runs was 47°C during a CrystalDiskMark 8 default Write test. It averaged 37°C for the bulk of our testing and 31°C for the 4K-based tests.
To test real-life performance of a drive, we use a mix of folder/file types, and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result), we record the performance of the drive reading from & writing to a 2TB Kingston KC3000.
Transfer Details
Data file – 100GB.
BluRay Movie – 42GB.
Windows 11 iso – 5.4GB.
File folder – 50GB – 28,523 files.
Movie demos 8K – 21GB – (11 demos).
Raw Movie Clips 4K – 16GB – (9 MP4V files).
Movie folder – 12GB – 15 files – (8 @ .MKV, 4 @ .MOV, 3 @ MP4).
Photo Folder – 10GB – 304 files – (171 @ .RAW, 105 @ JPG, 21 @ .CR2, 5 @ .DNG).
Audio Folder – 10GB – 1,483 files – (1479 @ MP3, 4 @ .FLAC files).
Single large image – 5GB – 1.5bn pixel photo.
3D Printer File Folder – 4.25GB – (166 files – 105 @ .STL, 38 @ .FBX, 11 @ .blend, 5 @ .lwo, 4 @ .OBJ, 3@ .3ds).
AutoCAD File Folder – 1.5GB (80 files – 60 @ .DWG and 20 @.DXF).
In our real-life file transfer tests, the 2TB Corsair MP700 Pro XT averaged 4,491MB/s for the ten tests when writing data. The fastest performance came from the 100GB data file transfer at 7,128MB/s, while the slowest (as usual) was the 50GB file folder transfer at 450MB/s. When it came to reading the data, the fastest transfer once again was the 100GB data file at 6,124MB/s.
Corsair continues to expand its Gen 5 MP700 series with the introduction of the MP700 Pro XT, a new flagship model and the fastest MP700 to date. At launch, the MP700 Pro XT line-up consists of three models: 1TB, 2TB (the model we are reviewing) and a flagship 4TB model. Built around Phison's latest Gen 5 8-channel controller, the PS5028-E28, the MP700 Pro XT is rated at up to 14,900MB/s for Sequential reads and up to 14,500MB/s for writes.
Phison's PS5028-E28 has been designed to replace the venerable PS5026-E26, the first consumer Gen 5 controller. The E28 is built on a 6nm process (the E26 was 12nm), which allows it to perform the neat tricks of not only being faster than the previous controller but also delivering better thermal performance and lower power consumption. In the MP700 Pro XT, it is looking after BiCS8 218-layer 3D TLC NAND. There is also a DRAM cache, sized at 1GB per 1TB, so the 2TB drive has a 2GB Sk Hynix DRAM chip.
As previously mentioned, the MP700 Pro XT is rated as up to 14,900MB/s for sequential reads. This figure is for all three drives in the range. The 2TB drive is rated as up to 14,500MB/s for sequential writes (the 1TB drive gets up to 14,200MB/s, and the 4TB 14,400MB/s). 4K random read performance is quoted as up to 1.5M IOPS for the 1TB drive, while the 2TB and 4TB are up to 2.7M IOPS. Random writes are quoted as a staggering up to 3.3M IOPS across the range.
Using the ATTO 4 benchmark, we couldn't get to the official maximum sequential figures with test results of 13,060MB/s for reads and 13,810MB/s for writes. However, switching over to the latest ATTO V5, we could confirm the official figure with an identical test result of 14,900MB/s. Writes at 14,090MB/s are still shy of the official maximum. Using the default CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark, the best figures we saw were 14,860MB/s for reads and 14,077MB/s for writes.
As for random performance, using our four threaded tests, we could get nowhere near the official maximums of 2,700,000 IOPS for reads and 3,300,000 IOPS for writes, with test results of 586,722 IOPS for reads with writes at 536,597 IOPS. However, switching over to the Peak Performance profile settings in CrystalDiskMark 8, we could get a bit closer with reads of 2,112,498 IOPS, but writes were still miles away at 1,859,904 IOPS.
The standard MP700 Pro XT doesn't have a heatsink on it (it does have a copper layer in the label, but don't just rely on that), so you will need to use some form of motherboard cooling. However, thanks to the architecture of the PS5028-E28 controller, there's no real need for the huge coolers of previous generations of Gen 5 drives. Sitting under the heatsink of our Gigabyte AORUS X670E Xtreme motherboard the hottest the drive got was 47° C when being pushed hard under the default CrystalDiskMark 8 write tests.
We found the 2TB version of the MP700 Pro XT on Corsair's website for £259.99 HERE
Pros
- Sequential performance.
- Thermal performance.
- Endurance.
Cons
- We couldn’t match the official maximum 4K random figures in all our testing.
KitGuru says: Corsair have regularly been updating the MP700 Gen 5 product line ever since the original MP700 launched. The latest MP700 model, the MP700 Pro XT, is the fastest one yet, making good use of Phison's PS5028-E28 controller. It's not only the fastest MP700 to date – in some of our tests, it's the fastest drive we've seen, full stop.
