Corsair has quite a few drives in its popular MP600 range, and now another one has joined the clan – the MP600 GS. Designed to balance performance and endurance at a competitive price point, the MP600 GS uses 176-layer NAND and a 4-channel controller.
At the time of writing the MP600 GS product line consists of three drives; a 500GB entry model, 1TB and the flagship 2TB, the drive we are reviewing here. At the heart of the MP600 GS is a Phison PS5021-E21T controller. A DRAM-less design, the PS5021-E21T uses four channels to support the 176-layer 3D TLC NAND that the drive uses.
Performance wise Corsair rate the Sequential read performance for the MP600 GS as up to 4,800MB/s (tested with CrystalDiskMark) for all three drives. The 2TB drive has the fastest Sequential write speed at up to 4,500MB/s while the 500GB and 1TB models are rated up to 3,500MB/s and 3,900MB/s respectively.
When it comes to random 4K performance, the 2TB drive is rated at up to 530K IOPS for reads and up to 1000K IOPS for writes (both at QD32). The 500GB drive has official read/write figures of up to 450K IOPS and 700K IOPS respectively. The 1TB drive has the fastest random read speed of the family at up to 580K IOPS with writes rated at up to 800K IOPS.
Power consumption for the 2TB drive is listed as 5.3W Average (the 500GB drive is 4.1W average and the 1TB version, is 4.3W average).
Corsair gives an endurance rating for the 2TB drive of 1200TBW and backs the drive with a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 2TB.
- NAND Components: Micron B47R 176-layer 3D TLC NAND.
- NAND Controller: Phison PS5021-E21.
- Cache: none.
- Interface: PCIe Gen4 x4, NVMe 1.4.
- Form Factor: M.2 2280.
- Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 3mm.
- Drive Weight: 34g.
Firmware Version: ELFMB0.6
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 4K performance as well as the drive’s capacity. The rear of the box has multilingual information about the drive's performance. There is also a small window that allows you to see part of the drive.
The 2TB MP600 GS is built on a single-sided M.2 2280 format.
Under the product label on the front of the drive sits the Phison PS5021-E21T controller along with four 512GB packages of Micron 176-layer 3D TLC NAND. Designed for DRAM-less operation, Phison's PS5021-E21T is a 4-channel controller built on a 12nm process using single-CPU architecture (built-in ARM Cortex-R5). It supports both TLC and QLC NAND with a transfer rate of up to 1600MT/s and has a capacity limit of 4TB. Data reliability is provided by Phison's 4th generation LDPC ECC along with End-To-End Data Path Protection and ‧Smart ECC 2.0. It also supports AES 256-bit Encryption.
Corsair’s SSD management utility is called SSD Toolbox. It's not the funkiest-looking GUI we've ever seen and could do with a bit of a refresh, but having said that, it does provide 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 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 5 3600X, 16GB DDR4-2400, Sapphire R9 390 Nitro and an MSI MPG X570 Gaming Edge Wifi motherboard
Other drives
Corsair MP600 PRO 2TB
Corsair Force MP600 1TB
Corsair MP600 PRO XT 2TB
Crucial P5 Plus 1TB
Gigabyte AORUS 7000e 2TB
HP FX900 Pro 2TB
Kingston KC3000 2TB
Kioxia BG5 1TB
Kioxia Exceria Pro 2TB
MSI Spatium M480 2TB
Patriot Viper VP4300 2TB
Patriot Viper VPN4100 1TB
PNY XLR8 CS3040 1TB
PNY XLR8 CS3140 1TB
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 4TB
Samsung SSD990 PRO 2TB
Samsung SSD980 PRO 1TB
Samsung SSD980 PRO Heatsink 1TB
Seagate FireCuda 520 1TB
Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB
Solidigm P41 Plus 1TB
Teamgroup T-Force Cardea Zero Z440 1TB
Teamgroup T-Force Cardea A440 Pro Special Series 1TB
WD Black SN770 1TB
WD Black SN850 1TB
WD Black SN850X Heatsink 2TB
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark 4.
CrystalMark 8.0.0.
AS SSD 2.0.
IOMeter.
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 this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure the theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSDs. We are using v8.0.
Corsair rate the Sequential performance of the 2TB MP600 GS as up to 4,800MB/s for reads and up to 4,500MB/s for writes. Using the default CrystalDiskMark 8 test we could not only confirm those figures but we coaxed a bit more out of the drive with test results of 4,981MB/s for reads and 4,794MB/s for writes.
Swapping over to using highly compressible data (0 fill) showed much better performance gains for reads than writes.
In the 4K QD1 1 thread default test, the drive produced a read figure of 78.34MB/s, which put it just outside the top 10 consumer drives we've tested to date. The write score of 225.21MB/s wasn't quite as impressive.
Peak Performance Profile
Switching over to the CrystalDiskMark 8's Peak Performance testing profile we could once again confirm the official Sequential read/write speeds with test results of 4,980MB/s and 4,779MB/s respectively. Corsair rate the 2TB MP600 GS as up to 530K IOPS and 1000K IOPS for reads and writes respectively. The Peak Performance testing profile displays 4K random performance in IOPS. At 615,646.97 IOPS we actually bettered the official read maximum by quite a margin but on the other hand, at 506,057 IOPS we were nowhere close to the official write maximum of 1,000K IOPS.
The Corsair MP600 GS random read figure sees the drive in the bottom half of the table.
Real World Profile
Using the default Real World profile, the drive produced a 2,962MB/s read figure with a much better write performance score of 4,767MB/s but it's the slowest Gen 4 drive we've seen to date in this test. Switching over to highly compressible saw the read performance of the drive vastly improve in the test.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize 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.
We are using version 4.1 for our NVMe disk tests.
Corsair rates the Sequential performance of the 2TB version of the MP600 GS as up to 4800MB/s and 4500MB/s for reads and writes respectively. Testing with the ATTO drive saw the read figure sail past that official figure to hit 6,860MB/s while the tested write result was just under the official rating at 4,470MB/s.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching 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.
Using the more stringent AS-SSD benchmark the read and write scores of 2607 and 2630 respectively saw the drive in the lower middle part of our results table. The read result is faster than Corsair's Force MP600 but lower than it when it comes to the write performance score.
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.
In this Sequential test, we could confirm the official read rating of up to 4,800MB/s with a test result of 4,878.95MB/s. When it came to Sequential writes we were able to pull a bit more performance out of the drive with a test result of 4,782.92MB/s, some 282MB/s faster than the official rating.
128KB Sequential Read Performance v QD compared.
The MP600 GS performs best (at the tested queue depths) in relation to drives around it, at QD4 (3,327MB/s). At QDs 1, 2 and 32, it languishes near the bottom of our results chart.
128KB Sequential Write Performance v QD compared.
The MP600 GS is more consistent in its Sequential write performance than its read. It's also faster at every tested queue depth than the original Corsair Force MP600 by quite some margin.
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.
Corsair rate the 4K random read performance of the 2TB MP600 GS as up to 530K IOPS. With our 4-threaded testing, we couldn't get close to that figure, the best we saw was 360,398 IOPS (QD32). We ran a quick test of the drive using eight threads and got a result of 573,107 IOPS, confirming the official figure.
4K Random Read performance v QD compared.
At QDs 1 and 2, the performance of the drive is good enough to see it in the top ten fastest consumer drives we've tested to date. However, as the queue depth deepens the performance begins to trail off.
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.
When it comes to random writes, once the drive hits QD2 the performance stays very consistent for the following test runs from 253,155 IOPS at QD2 to 255,006 IOPS at QD32. As with the random read results, that peak figure of 255,006 IOPS is way short of the official 1000K IOPS. Again we tested with eight threads and got a figure of 410,809 IOPS, much improved but still a mile away from the official maximum
4K Random Write performance v QD compared.
Just as with the random read performance, the MP600 GS performs the best at QDs 1 & 2 in our random write test before dropping away as the queue depth deepens.
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.
In the 4K 70/30 read/write test run, there is a distinct upturn in performance at QD8 using both single and four threads.
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 a single thread the 4K random read performance of the 2TB version of the MP600 GS ranges from a low point of 19,105 IOPS (78MB/s) at QD1 up to 120,814 IOPS (494MB/s) at QD8. With four threads the performance of the drive climbs from 74,910IOPS (306MB/s) at QD1 to 312,006 IOPS (1,278MB/s) at QD8.
Random Write
After the initial rise in performance between QDs 1 and 2, the write performance of the 2TB MP600 GS seems to plateau out across the remaining tested queue depths, regardless of the number of threads.
The Corsair MP600 GS didn't seem to handle our read throughput test very well, peaking at 3,814,26MB/s (16MB block), a figure well short of the official 4,800MB/s maximum.
That peak read-throughput figure of 3,814MB/s sees the drive in the lower section of the results chart.
When it comes to the write throughput test, the drive performed much better than it did with the read test. It peaked at the 8MB block mark at 4,529MB/s before dropping back to finish the test run with a test result of 4,179MB/s.
The peak write result of 4,529MB/s confirms the official maximum of up to 4,500MB/s for the 2TB version of the MP600 GS.
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).
Corsair's MP600 GS dealt with the rigours of the PCMark10’s Full System Drive pretty well. The best result from the Creative set of test traces was the from the Heavy Use Adobe Photoshop trace at 881MB/s. It also handled the Adobe After Effects use test trace reasonably well with a test result of 390MB/s.
The file transfer tests also produced some good bandwidth figures. The best performance came from the cp1 (write test) at 3,714MB/s backed up results of 2,776MB/s for the cp2 read/write test and 2,742MB/s for the cp3 (read test).
The overall bandwidth figure of 390.14MB/s sees the Corsair MP600 GS in the bottom half of the results chart. It betters the original Corsair Force MP600 by 66MB/s.
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 Test, the MP600 GS had an average bandwidth figure of 591MB/s for the three-game load tests at an average access time of 89.3 μs.
The overall average bandwidth for the complete test run of 514.18MB/s puts the drive in the lower half of the results chart.
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.
In the Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark, the MP600 GS gives a total load time of 9.947 seconds. When it comes to the individual scenes the benchmark uses, the MP600 GS performs the best in the fifth and final scene with a load time of 0.716 seconds.
We took note of the drive’s temperature during some of our benchmarking runs. Corsair's MP600 GS doesn't come with any form of heatsink which is always a bit of a worry because of the heat that Gen 4 drives generally put out. That worry is alleviated in the MP600 GS somewhat by the fact it uses a four-channel controller. The hottest the drive got during benchmarking was when it was running the default Peak Performance profile in CrystalDiskMark 8; 51°C for both reads and writes, which is about as close to the 70°C maximum you would want to get. When running the 4K tests the drive averaged 38°C comfortably inside that official limit.
To test the 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 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO.
We test the following folder/file types:
100GB data file.
60GB iso image.
60GB Steam folder – 29,521 files.
50GB File folder – 28,523 files.
21GB 8K Movie demos.
12GB Movie folder – 24 files (mix of Blu-ray and 4K files).
11GB 4K Raw Movie Clips (8 MP4V files).
10GB Photo folder – 621 files (mix of png, raw and jpeg images).
10GB Audio folder – 1,483 files (mix of mp3 and .flac files).
5GB (1.5bn pixel) photo.
Blu-ray movie.
The MP600 GS handled our real-life file transfers pretty well, particularly when dealing with the larger file size transfers, averaging 544MB/s for writes and 461MB/s for reads when dealing with these file types.
To get a measure of how much faster PCIe NVMe drives are than standard SATA SSD we use the same files but transfer to and from a 2TB Kioxia Exceria Plus drive:
Writing to and reading from an NVMe drive saw transfer speeds rocket and overall transfer times dropped dramatically as you might expect. Six of the transfers topped over 3GB/s when writing to the drive. Of the remaining seven tests, five topped 2GB/s. Fastest write speed came from the 100GB data file at 3,101MB/s while the slowest was, as usual, the 50GB file folder at 602MB/s. While the 100GB data file gave the fastest write speed, the drive did seem to have a bit of a struggle when reading the data back.
The GS is the latest drive to join Corsair's MP600 family of drives. Whereas the other MP600 drives are aimed at the higher end of the market space, the GS has been designed to offer a better balance of performance and endurance at a more competitive price point. To this end, it uses a DRAMless design of four-channel controller whereas all the other MP600 drives use eight-channel controllers. At the time of writing, the MP600 GS comes in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities
The controller in question is Phison's latest entry-level Gen4 controller, the Phison PS5021-E21T. The Phison PS5021-E21T uses single CPU architecture built on a 12nm process, supports the NVMe 1.4 specification and has a transfer rate of 1600MT/s. Corsair has combined the controller with 176-layer B47R 3D TLC NAND in the MP600 GS.
Officially the maximum Sequential read/write performance figures for the 2TB version of the MP600 GS are up to 4,800MB/s for reads and up to 4,500MB/s for writes. Incidentally, that read speed is the same for all three drives. The 500GB drive is rated as up to 3,500MB/s and the 1TB model, 3,900MB/s for Sequential writes. Using the default CrystalDiskMark 8 test we could not only confirm those figures but we coaxed a bit more out of the drive with test results of 4,981MB/s for reads and 4,794MB/s for writes.
As for 4K random performance, the 2TB MP600 is rated up to 530K IOPS for reads and up to 1000K IOPS for writes. Using our four threaded tests we couldn't get close to those figures using our standard four-threaded tests, the best figures we saw were 360,398 IOPS for reads and 255,006 IOPS for writes. However, using the default Peak Performance profile in CrystalDiskMark 8 gave results of 615,646 IOPS for reads, confirming and even bettering the official figure while the 506,057 IOPS figure for writes was nowhere near the official maximum speed.
The Corsair MP600 GS doesn't come with any sort of heatsink preinstalled and to be honest with just a four-channel controller it shouldn't really need one even though it's a Gen 4 drive. Even when pushed hard during testing, the nearest it got to its upper limit of 70°C was just 51°C.
We found the 2TB version of Corsair's MP600 GS for £169.99 (in VAT) direct from Corsair HERE.
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
Pros
- 176-layer NAND technology.
- Sequential performance.
- 5-year warranty.
Cons
- Couldn’t match the official random write figures under testing.
- DRAMless design.
- The price needs to come down a little.
KitGuru says: Corsair's MP600 GS is pitched at a highly competitive market segment and while they have given it every chance with keen pricing, a bit more tweaking of the price tag wouldn't go amiss as there are some faster drives out there that are very close to its price point.
Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here