Corsair's latest flagship PCIe Gen 4 SDD is the MP600 Pro XT. Offered in two varieties, one with a traditional SSD heatsink, while the other – the MP600 Pro XT Hydro X Edition – comes with a copper interior water block. The drives use a Phison PS5018-E18 controller together with Micron's 176-Layer 3D TLC NAND, Micron’s fastest 3D TLC flash to date.
At launch the MP600 Pro XT is available in three capacities; 1TB, 2TB (the drive we are looking at) and the flagship 4TB. The Hydro X Edition range does without the 1TB model.
The MP600 Pro XT uses a PS5018-E18 8-channel controller teamed with Micron B47R, 176-layer 3D TLC NAND. The previous MP600 Pro drive also used the E18 controller but with 96-layer Micron NAND. Sequential performance figures for the MP600 Pro XT are quoted at up to 7,100MB/s for reads across the range while Sequential writes are rated at up to 5,800MB/s for the 1TB drive and up to 6,800MB/s for the 1TB and 2TB models.
As for random 4K performance, the 1TB drive is rated at up to 900,000 IOPS for reads with the 1 and 2TB drives rated at up to 1m IOPS. Random writes are up to 1.2M IOPS across the three drives. Endurance figures for the range are quoted are; 700TB for the 1TB drive, 1,400TB for the 2TB drive and 3,000TB for the 4TB drive. Corsair back the MP600 Pro XT and Hydro X with a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 2TB.
- NAND Components: Micron B47R 176-layer 3D TLC NAND.
- NAND Controller: Phison PS5018-E18 (8-channel).
- Cache: 2GB DDR4.
- Interface: PCIe Gen4 x4, NVMe 1.4.
- Form Factor: M.2 2280.
- Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 19mm.
- Drive Weight: 68g.
Firmware Version: EIFM31.2
The drive comes in a fairly 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 and a very short list of some of its features.
The MP600 Pro XT uses a hefty looking aluminium heatsink to help keep the drive cool, with two thermal pads that sandwich the drive in the heatsink cradle. The heatsinks design means it’s easily detachable should you want to make use of a motherboard’s integrated M.2 cooling system if it has one fitted. To remove the heatsink is just a matter of releasing the four clips that hold the heatsink to the backing cradle.
The drive is built on an M.2 2280 dual-sided format. One side of the PCB holds the Phison PS5018-E18 8-channel controller along with four 256GB Micron B47R 176-layer 3D TLC NAND packages and a SK hynix DDR4 DRAM cache IC. The other side of the board holds another DRAM chip and four more NAND packages.
Corsair’s SSD management utility is called SSD Toolbox and although it might not have all the bells and whistles and funky GUIs that some of its competitors have, it has all the tools you will most likely ever need. 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
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 SSD980 Pro 1TB
Seagate FireCuda 520 1TB
Teamgroup T-Force Cardea Zero Z440 1TB
WD Black SN850 1TB
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark 4.
CrystalMark 7.0.0.
AS SSD 2.0.
IOMeter.
Futuremark PC Mark 10.
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 theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s.
The Corsair MP600 Pro XT didn't seem to handle the QD32 T1 CrystalDiskMark test that well, the tested figures being slightly lower than the previous Corsair MP600 Pro. However, we could confirm the official Sequential performance figures of up to 7,100MB/s and 6,800MB/s for reads and writes respectively with best test result figures of 7.324.6MB/s for reads and 6,861.1MB/s for writes, using the benchmark at default settings.
Using CrystalDiskMark 8 we again confirm the official Sequential figures with the best test results of 7,396.19MB/s for reads and 6,879.57MB/s for writes.
The best tested random 4K figures in CDM8 for the drive were 663,971.68 IOPS for reads and 597,184.33 IOPs for writes, both figures nowhere near the official maximums of 1m IOPS for reads and 1.2M IOPS for writes.
Looking at all the CrystalDiskMark results screens we can see that the Phison E18 controller that the MP600 Pro XT uses is much more efficient when reading compressible sequential and 4K data at certain queue depths.
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 manufacturers 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 4.0 for our NVMe disk tests.
The official maximum Sequential read/write performance figures for the 2TB MP600 Pro XT are up to 7,100MB/s and 6,800MB/s respectively. Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn't quite hit either of these figures but the 6,820MB/s for reads and 6,550MB/s for writes are strong enough to place the drive in the top 5 of Gen 4 drive's we've tested to date.
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. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
In the AS-SSD benchmark, the 2TB MP600 Pro XT produced the fastest read score, 2965, for a consumer Gen 4 drive we've seen to date. The 3058 write score of the drive is the third-fastest we've seen.
128KB Sequential Read/Write.
Test Setup – Transfer Request Size: 128KB, Thread(s): 1, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
We could confirm the official Sequential read & write performance figures for the 2TB MP600 Pro XT of up to 7,100MB/s and 6,800MB/s respectively with our Sequential tests. The reviewed drive producing a read figure of 7,313MB/s (QD32) with writes at 6,863MB/s (QD16).
128KB Sequential Read v QD compared.
Although the drive's performance at QD 1 isn't going to ruffle any feathers, it is still 133MB/s faster than the previous Corsair MP600 Pro drive. However at deeper queue depths, the drive's performance improves dramatically so by QD32, only Patriot's Viper VP4300 drive is faster.
128KB Sequential Write v QD compared.
In contrast to the Sequential read performance, the Sequential write performance of the drive is impressive from the start. At the tested queue depths of 4 & 32, the Corsair MP600 Pro XT is the fastest consumer Gen 4 drive we've tested to date.
4K Random Read v QD Performance
Test Setup – Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32, Threads: 4.
Using our four-threaded random 4K read test the drive peaked at 408,597 IOPS at a QD16 before dropping back to finish the test run at 407,809 IOPS. Both figures being nowhere near the official maximum of 1m IOPS.
4K Random Read v QD Performance Compared.
While our tested 4K read results are nowhere near the official maximum, at QD1. the drive is the second-fastest drive we've seen to date and at QD's 2 & 4, the drive has the fastest random read performance we've seen so far for a consumer drive. However, by the time the drive reaches QD32, it has started to drop down the results chart.
4K Random Write v QD Performance
Test Setup – Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32, Threads: 4.
As with the random read tests, the random write results in our four-threaded tests are nowhere near the official write maximum figure of 1.2M IOPS. The drive peaked at 363,864 IOPS (QD8) before falling back to finish the test run (QD32) at 362, 458 IOPS.
4K Random Write v QD Performance Compared.
In relation to the drives around it, the MP600 Pro XT's best performance comes at QD1 where its test result of 198,474 IOPS sees it sitting in fourth place in the results chart. Its performance drops back a little at QD2 before recovering at QD4.
The drive performs well in our mixed 70/30 read-write test climbing steadily as the queue depth deepens, finishing the test run at 389,937 IOPS (1,597.18MB/s).
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.
4K Random Read Performance QD1-QD8
The 2TB Corsair MP600 Pro XT’s read performance climbs smoothly throughout the tested queue depths and threads with a peak performance figure of 361,516 IOPS (1,480MB/s) at QD8 using 4 threads. This figure is 27,649 IOPS faster than the previous MP600 Pro drive managed for the same test.
4K Random Write Performance QD1-QD8
In the write tests, the best performance figure we saw was the 363,864 IOPS (1,490MB/s) using 4 threads at a QD of 8.
In the read throughput test, the Corsair MP600 Pro XT peaks at the 16MB block mark at 5,608.46MB/s.
With a peak read throughput figure of 5,608.46MB/s, the Corsair MP600 Pro XT goes straight to the top of our results chart, topping WD's Black SN850 drive.
In our write throughput test, the drive peaked at the 16MB block mark (the end of the test run) at 6,106.92MB/s.
Unlike the read throughput result, the drives write score of 6,106.92MB/s sees it slip into the fourth spot on the results chart, above the previous MP600 Pro drive.
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).
The Corsair MP600 Pro XT had no problem dealing with PCMark10’s Full System Drive benchmark and produced good performance figures for all the test traces. The 1004MB/s for the Heavy Use Adobe Photoshop trace is an excellent result while the 443MB/s for the Adobe After Effects trace is also very good. Also impressive was the 3,852MB/s for the cp1 write test, 3,723MB/s (cp3 read test) and 3,699MB/s for the cp2 read/write test.
The overall bandwidth figure of 481.62MB/s that the MP600 Pro XT produced is 66MB/s faster than the previous generation MP600 Pro drive. The MP600 Pro XT also has a reduced access time for the total benchmark run, 57μs (0.057ms) compared to 67μs (0.067ms) of the MP600 Pro.
For the long term performance stability test, we set the drive up to run a 20-minute 4K random test with a 30% write, 70% read split, at a Queue Depth of 256 over the entire disk. The 2TB Corsair MP600 Pro XT averaged 140,008 IOPS for the test with an excellent performance stability of 97%, which is enterprise-grade stability.
We took note of the drive’s temperature during some of our benchmarking runs. The well-designed heatsink on the MP600 Pro XT performs well as even when the drive was being pushed very hard during the Performance Stability test run, the drive never passed 50° C (with a 24° C ambient temperature).
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 drive reading from & writing to a 256GB Samsung SSD850 Pro.
We use the following folder/file types:
- 100GB data file.
- 60GB iso image.
- 60GB Steam folder – 29,521 files.
- 50GB File folder – 28,523 files.
- 12GB Movie folder – (15 files – 8 @ .MKV, 4 @ .MOV, 3 @ MP4).
- 10GB Photo folder – (304 files – 171 @ .RAW, 105 @ JPG, 21 @ .CR2, 5 @ .DNG).
- 10GB Audio folder – (1,483 files – 1479 @ MP3, 4 @ .FLAC files).
- 5GB (1.5bn pixel) photo.
- BluRay Movie – 42GB.
- 21GB 8K Movie demos – (11 demos)
- 16GB 4K Raw Movie Clips – (9 MP4V files).
- 4.25GB 3D Printer File Folder – (166 files – 105 @ .STL, 38 @ .FBX, 11 @ .blend, 5 @ .lwo, 4 @ .OBJ, 3@ .3ds).
- 1.5GB AutoCAD File Folder (80 files – 60 @ .DWG and 20 @.DXF).
The Corsair MP600 Pro XT handled our real-life file testing without displaying any real problems. It averaged 514.42MB/s when writing the larger test files to the drive and 444.85MB/s when reading the data back again. It’s not as efficient when handling the folders that contain lots of small files averaging 322.5MB/s for writes and 376.83MB/s for reads.
To get a measure of how much faster PCIe NVMe drives are than standard SATA SSD's we use the same files but transfer to and from a 2TB Kioxia Exceria Plus drive:
Switching over to an all NVMe storage environment saw, as you would imagine, huge rises in transfer rates particularly when the drive was dealing with the larger file size transfers. Ten of the transfers topped well over 2.5GB/s when writing to the drive, the best being the 2,953MB/s when writing the 12GB Movie Folder to the drive. Reads, although much improved, didn’t quite hit the heights of the write performance, the best being the 2,590MB/s when reading the contents of the 8K movie scene folder.
It doesn't seem that long ago that we were looking at the original Corsair MP600 Pro, Corsair's second-generation PCIe Gen 4 drive. But Corsair has just launched the next generation of the Pro, the Pro XT. Like the MP600 Pro, the Pro XT comes in a standard version using a well-designed heatsink, and a version that uses a copper interior water block, dubbed the Pro XT Hydro X edition. The MP600 Pro XT comes in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities at launch while the Pro XT Hydro X comes in only the larger two capacities.
Although the MP600 Pro XT uses the same Phison PS5018-E18 controller as the previous MP600 Pro, the NAND it employs is the latest and fastest (at the time of writing) Micron 3D TLC NAND, the 176-layer B47R compared to the 96-layer of the previous drive. Micron's B47R is the world's first 176-layer 3D TLC NAND using Microns 2nd generation Floating Gate technology. Micron has stated that the new NAND offers 35% faster read and write times over 96-layer NAND and a 25% improvement over 128-layer.
The official maximum Sequential read/write performance figures for the 2TB MP600 Pro XT are up to 7,100MB/s and 6,800MB/s respectively. Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn't quite hit either of these figures, but the 6,820MB/s read and 6,550MB/s write speeds we did see, confirms the drive's strong performance. The tested read figure of 6,820MB/s is the same as we saw for the previous MP600 Pro but the change in NAND has seen a 217MB/s increase in write performance for the Pro XT. However, switching over to the CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark saw test results that confirmed the official maximums with reads of 7,396MB/s and writes of 6,879MB/s.
Officially the MP600 Pro XT is rated at up to 1M IOPS for 4K random reads and up to 1.2M IOPS for writes. Using our 4-threaded 4K tests we couldn't get close to these official maximums. The best random read figure we saw was 671,105.71 IOPS and the best write result came in at 587,184.33 IOPS, both of which came through testing with the CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark.
Just like the MP600 Pro, Corsair has fitted the MP600 Pro XT with a well-designed aluminium heatsink to help alleviate any overheating issues when the drive is working with heavy workloads. The heatsink uses the same four clip release system so the drive can be easily removed if you want to use it in a motherboard that has its own cooling system for M.2 drives.
Corsair has priced the 2TB MP600 Pro XT at £414.99 (inc VAT). The Pro XT Hydro X costs a tenner more.
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Pros
- 176-layer NAND technology.
- Sequential performance.
- Ease of removal of the heatsink.
Cons
- Couldn’t match the official random write figures under testing.
- Needs a PCIe 4.0 supporting motherboard for best performance.
KitGuru says: For their latest flagship drive, Corsair has teamed up the controller of choice for the current batch of Gen 4 drives, Phison's PS5018-E18, with Micron's latest and fastest 3D TLC NAND to date, the 176-layer B47R. That pairing results in a very quick drive.
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