Corsair Force MP500 480GB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Corsair Force MP5003. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMETER8. PCMark8 - Storage Consistency9. PCMark8 - Individual Test Suites 10. Performance Stability11. Real Life File Testing12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

While Corsair has been busy producing some outstanding cases, PSU and other peripherals of late, things in the storage division of the company have seemed very quiet in comparison, well at least it would seem so from the outside.

Now that's all changed with the launch of the Corsair Force MP500, their first M.2 SSD and the company's fastest drive to date. The MP500 actually marks a hat-trick of firsts for Corsair, not only the first M.2 2280 form factor but also their first NVMe supporting drive as well as the first with a PCIe interface.

The official Sequential read/write figures for the 480GB MP500 are up to 3,000MB/s and s2,400MB/s respectively which were pretty much confirmed under testing with the ATTO benchmark as we got 2,975MB/s for reads and 2,391MB/s for writes. It was a different story when it came to the 4K random read/writes results from IOMeter.

Using our test configuration the drive produced figures of 209,961 IOPS and 159,366 IOPS for reads and writes respectively, pretty impressive but way short of the official up to 250,000 IOPS read and up to 210,000 IOPS write figures.

The drive survived the rigors of PCMark8's Consistency test without any problems, recovering fully from the stresses of both the Degradation and Steady State series of tests.

At the time of writing this review, the Toolbox management software needs some tinkering with because as it stands if offers little to no support for the drive. The 480GB drive comes with an impressive TBW endurance figure of 698TB and Corsair back the drive with a 3-year warranty – it would be nice to see the drive backed by a 5-year one like some of its competitors offer.

The MP500 is a fast drive and indeed is the fastest Corsair drive we have seen to date but it still lags behind both versions; the PRO and EVO of Samsung's SSD960. But the fly in the ointment as far as performance v price is concerned is Corsair's pricing of the drive. The 480GB version of the drive costs around £305 which doesn't look so inviting when you consider the 500GB EVO version of the SSD960 is cheaper at around £278 while if the budget can stretch a bit higher than the MP500, the 512GB SSD960 PRO is around £60 more expensive.

We found the 480GB version of the MP500 available to pre-order at Overclockers for £304.99 (inc VAT) HERE

Pros

• Performance.

Cons

• Management software urgently needs updating.
• Pricing needs a tweak.
• 3-year warranty seems a bit mean.

Kitguru says: It's good to see Corsair back at the sharp end of things in the SSD market but the pricing of the MP500 needs a little tinkering with to make it truly competitive.

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