The Corsair MP700 Professional SE PCI Categorical 5.0 inner SSD goes a step past the Corsair MP700 Professional, providing even sooner throughput speeds. Just like the MP700 Professional, Corsair presents the MP700 Professional SE ($624.99 for 4TB as examined) with a number of heatsink selections. Its scorching sequential learn and write speeds are second solely to the Editors’ Alternative-winning Essential T705 among the many SSDs we’ve got reviewed, and its benchmark scores are above common for a Gen 5 SSD. The MP700 Professional SE prices a reasonably penny, although; though its listing (and direct) pricing is aggressive, you get no low cost to this point when shopping for it by an etailer corresponding to Amazon, which sells it for significantly greater than the T705.Design: Gen 5 Structure, A number of Cooling OptionsThe MP700 Professional SE is a four-lane solid-state drive operating the NVMe 2.0 protocol over a PCIe 5.0 bus. This inner SSD is available in the usual M.2 Kind-2280 “gumstick” format. This double-sided drive makes use of Micron 232-layer 3D TLC NAND chips and Phison’s Gen 5-optimized PS5026-E26 controller.
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Aside from having chips on each side, the MP700 Professional SE is unassuming in look for such a robust M.2 SSD. It’s topped with a graphite heat-spreading label, which by itself shouldn’t be sufficient to tame the surplus warmth that it generates when it runs at full pace. Corsair presents the drive in a number of variations with completely different cooling options, which we are going to talk about beneath.PCIe 5.0: The System Requirement HurdlePCIe 5.0 SSDs—even ones with significantly decrease throughput speeds than the MP700 Professional SE—promise a significant pace increase over PCIe 4.0 drives, however you’ll be able to make the most of it solely when you have current {hardware} that helps the usual. Solely the most recent boutique desktops are prone to be PCIe 5.0-ready off the shelf, so you will have to construct your personal PC from the bottom up or replace an present system to achieve the required connectivity. You will want an Intel twelfth Gen or later Core CPU with a motherboard primarily based on Intel’s Z690 or Z790 chipset; or a Ryzen 7000 processor with an AM5 motherboard constructed round an X670, X670E, or B650E chipset.
Notice that simply because you may have a type of chipsets does not assure that the motherboard maker truly applied a PCIe 5.0-capable M.2 SSD slot. Verify your system’s or motherboard’s specs and documentation to be sure to even have such a slot earlier than investing in one in all these drives. Some boards have PCIe 5.0 growth slots for graphics playing cards and different PCI Categorical playing cards, however you want a PCIe 5.0-capable M.2 slot.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
Cooling and Configurations: Three Methods to ChillGen 5 SSDs just like the MP700 Professional SE are able to prodigious speeds; meaning a number of extra warmth should be shed to keep away from throttling or long-term degradation. (Throttling is a safety mechanism constructed into most SSDs that forestalls sustained overheating however reduces efficiency.) The MP700 Professional SE is available in three variations: a barebones mannequin with no heatsink just like the one we examined for this assessment, which depends on a desktop’s motherboard’s heatsink for cooling; a model with a fan-based heatsink, with the fan powered by a SATA connection from the motherboard; and a water-cooled model that makes use of Corsair’s Hydro X water block.In the event you select water cooling, the drive could be built-in right into a desktop laptop’s customized liquid cooling system, an intriguing choice for these planning to construct a system from scratch or who have already got a liquid-cooled Gen 5-compatible desktop. Most motherboards with a Gen 5 M.2 slot already include a considerable heatsink, greater than able to cooling down a barebones SSD, as is the case with our testbed. The drive sans heatsink is barely out there within the 4TB capability, whereas the opposite two are available 2TB and 4TB variations. Checklist costs and different particulars are given within the desk beneath.
In the event you go purely by listing value, the MP700 Professional SE, at 16 cents per gigabyte for the $624.99 4TB model we examined, would appear to have the sting over the Essential T705, which lists at 17 cents per gig for its 4TB barebones model. Nevertheless, the MP700 Professional SE’s value on Amazon is similar 16 cents per gig as of this writing, whereas the T705 is steeply discounted on that web site, promoting for simply 12 cents a gigabyte.As for sturdiness, expressed as lifetime write capability in complete terabytes written (TBW), the MP700 Professional SE matches the MP700 Professional with the best score for any 4TB stick we’ve got reviewed to this point. The Essential T700 (which has added a 4TB model since we reviewed it) and T705 have a good 2,400TBW score for his or her 4TB fashions. The Seagate FireCuda 540 is extra sturdy than the MP700 Professional SE on the 2TB stage (2,000TBW), however does not are available a 4TB capability.The TBW spec is a producer’s estimate of how a lot knowledge could be written to a drive earlier than some cells start to fail and get taken out of service. Corsair warranties the MP700 Professional SE for 5 years or till you hit the rated TBW determine in knowledge writes, whichever comes first. However the drive’s sturdiness score is such that until you are writing unusually massive quantities of information to the SSD, it is a secure wager that the MP700 Professional SE will final the complete guarantee interval and nicely past.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
The MP700 Professional SE helps AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption, which is the gold commonplace in knowledge encryption.Testing the Corsair MP700 Professional SE: Close to-the-Prime ThroughoutIn benchmarking the MP700 Professional SE, we used our testbed PC designed particularly for PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs. It consists of an ASRock X670E Taichi motherboard with an AMD X670 chipset, 32GB (two Essential 16GB DIMMs) of DDR5 reminiscence, one PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 slot (with lanes which have direct entry to the CPU), and three PCIe 4.0 slots. It sports activities an AMD Ryzen 9 7900 CPU utilizing an AMD inventory cooler; a GeForce RTX 2070 Tremendous graphics card with 8GB of GDDR6 SDRAM; and a Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 Snow 750-watt energy provide. The boot drive is an ADATA Legend 850 PCIe 4.0 SSD. Because the MP700 Professional SE unit we examined lacks its personal heatsink, we employed the motherboard’s M.2-slot heatsink.We put the MP700 Professional SE by our traditional slate of inner solid-state drive benchmarks, comprising Crystal DiskMark 6.0, UL’s PCMark 10 Storage, and UL’s 3DMark Storage Benchmark, the final of which measures a drive’s efficiency in quite a few gaming-related duties.
Though the MP700 Professional SE confirmed prodigious pace in our Crystal DiskMark sequential learn and write testing, posting the second-fastest speeds in each (after the Essential T705), it fell a bit of in need of its 14,000MBps read-speed score. Its Crystal DiskMark 4K (small-file) learn and write outcomes had been in the midst of a decent vary of scores tallied by the PCIe 5.0 drives we’ve got reviewed, with 4K learn speeds equaling the quickest elite PCIe 4.0 comparability drives and 4K write speeds exceeding them. (We included the Samsung SSD 990 Professional, a quick PCIe 4 SSD, in our desk as some extent of comparability.) Good 4K write efficiency is particularly essential for an SSD used as a boot drive, although we check them as secondary drives.The PCMark 10 General Storage check measures a drive’s pace in performing numerous routine duties corresponding to launching Home windows, loading video games and inventive apps, and copying each small and huge recordsdata. The MP700 Professional SE posted the second-highest rating on that check, ending as soon as once more behind the Essential T705.
Whereas the PCMark 10 General Storage rating aggregates the outcomes of a number of duties, it’s also possible to see the scores for a few of its particular person (trace-based) checks. Normally, the MP700 Professional SE’s scores had been within the prime two or three, constantly lagging the Essential T705, albeit by small margins. The one exception was in our massive and small file-copy checks, the place the MP700 Professional SE’s scores had been middling. Lastly, the 3DMark Storage benchmark checks an SSD’s proficiency in performing numerous gaming-related duties. In it, the MP700 Professional SE posted the third highest within the slim vary of scores that our Gen 5 comparability SSDs achieved.Verdict: A Zippy However Expensive M.2 Speedster The Corsair MP700 Professional SE proves itself to be exceptionally quick, reaching excessive scores in almost all of our benchmark checks. It is available in capacities of as much as 4TB and offers AES 256-bit encryption. Corsair presents three variations of the drive: with an air-cooled or liquid-cooled heatsink, or with out.The water-cooled choice is intriguing when you have a really customized liquid-cooled Gen 5-compatible rig or are contemplating shopping for or constructing one. In any other case, though it is a wonderful, high-performing drive, the MP700 Professional SE shouldn’t be cost-effective. The Editors’ Alternative-winning Essential T705, which performs at the very least barely higher than the Corsair, is available in at a decrease retail value in all of the capability variations that the 2 have in widespread. Maybe, value drops over time will change the calculus. However for now, the T705 stays our prime PCIe 5.0 M.2 choose.
Professionals
Scorching PCIe 5.0 speeds
Alternative of air-cooled or water-cooled heatsink, or none in any respect
Is available in capacities as much as 4TB
256-bit AES hardware-based encryption
Excessive sturdiness score
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Extra
The Backside Line
The Corsair MP700 Professional SE is the second-fastest inner SSD we have ever examined, however it is best to solely contemplate it when you have a PCIe 5.0-capable PC and deep pockets.
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About Tony Hoffman
Senior Analyst, {Hardware}
Since 2004, I’ve labored on PCMag’s {hardware} staff, overlaying at numerous instances printers, scanners, projectors, storage, and screens. I at the moment focus my testing efforts on 3D printers, professional and productiveness shows, and drives and SSDs of all types. Through the years, I’ve reviewed iPad and iPhone science apps, plus the occasional digital camera, laptop computer, keyboard, and mouse. I’ve additionally written a number of articles about astronomy, area science, journey pictures, and astrophotography for PCMag and its previous and current sibling publications (amongst them, Mashable and ExtremeTech), in addition to for the PCMag Digital Version.
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