Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe M.2 SSD Review

Introduction Corsair Force MP510 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD Review The CORSAIR Force MP510 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD promises extreme storage performance with blazing fast speeds. Today I'm taking the 960GB model for a spin on my test bench. Corsair Force MP510 Corsair really takes on the market with the MP510. Not only does the drive promise blasting fast speeds of over 3GB/s, it also does so at a low price. The drive utilises the new Phison E12 controller which is a second generation high-end NVMe controller. Corsair paired the E12 with Toshiba's 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. A great combination and the reason why the drive delivers as well as it does for such a low price. The drive series is a PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 NVMe based in a 2280 M.2 form factor. The MP510 also supports AES 256-bit encryption for those who need more protection for their data. Drive Performance The performance is one of the reasons that people will go for this drive. The Corsair Force MP510 delivers up to 3480MB/s when reading and 3000MB/s when writing sequential data. The random performance is at least as impressive with 470K IOPS when writing and 610K IOPS when reading with a queue depth of 32. Endurance and Warranty Endurance is at least as important as performance, and Corsair's MP510 has you covered on this side too. The drive features a TBW rating of 1700 and a mean time before failure rating or 1.8 million hours. Corsair also backs the drive with a great 5-year warranty. What Does Corsair Have to Say About the Drive? "CORSAIR Force Series MP510 M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD is the latest and fastest in its range of M.2 solid state drives. The MP510 delivers blazing fast sequential read speeds up to 3,480MB/sec, and sequential write speeds up to 3,000MB/s, making it CORSAIR’s highest performing SSD yet." Feature Highlights Phison E12 controller and Toshiba 3D TLC NAND PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 (2280) 5-Year Warranty AES 256-bit Encryption Up to 3480MB/s sequential and 610K IOPS random performance Package and Accessories Corsair packed the MP510 in a nice box with all the important details right on the front. You can spot the specs from afar, luring you in for the purchase. The rear side doesn't offer a lot more information, but there is a bit. Inside is the drive itself along with a warranty notice. Testing & Methodology In a bid to make our testing as thorough and as accurate as possible, we have devised a testing methodology that will give us the maximum amount of data. While this means that testing each drive will take considerably longer – easily up 36 hours – the overall picture that we can gather is bigger too. It helps both you as the reader and us as the reviewer’s to gain a clearer view of the drive’s overall performance, strengths, and weaknesses. It also provides a more accurate analysis of how each drive performs under different conditions. Data Fillage There are many ways to test a storage drive, and we have chosen to include close to every test possible. We will start with a typical benchmark analysis of the formatted drive with various village scenarios. However, depending on how a drive is built, the performance may differ depending on how much data it is already storing. Testing this, the drive will be tested empty as well as with 25%, 50%, and 75% space usage. For these tests, we will be using Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AS SSD Benchmark, ATTO Benchmark, and CrystalDiskMark. Application and Gaming Besides these synthetic fill tests, the drive is tested with PCMark 8’s storage benchmark to get real-world performance results. Plain Drive Performance Following the fillage tests, the partition gets removed, and we check the drive’s raw performance. These tests will determine the hardware’s capabilities while eliminating any interference from the set file system. AIDA64’s storage benchmark and IOmeter are both great tools for this, and they help us paint an even clearer picture of the drive. The IOmeter tests I run are quite different from the rest as they will give a final result after a longer performance test rather than a maximum or average score; this gives us yet another view of the tested drive over the regular tests. Drive Conditioning Durability is a vital factor when it comes to NAND-based drives as the chips only can be rewritten so many times before they’ll stop working properly. Modern SSDs come with wear-level algorithms to increase the lifetime and reduce this factor as much as possible. We also take this into consideration in our reviews even tho it would take years to simulate this under real-world conditions. Luckily, Anvil’s Storage Utilities comes with an endurance test that can perform this action much faster, but it is still a time-consuming process. Depending on the hardware, this can easily take several days, and we write thousands and thousands of small files in various sizes and compressibility to drive over and over. Following this conditioning process, all of the previous benchmarks will be run again in the same scenarios and the same order. This will give us a great view of how a drive will perform after prolonged usage, and that is a very vital factor when you pick out your storage drive. The Preparation and In Between The drive will be formatted as NTFS with default settings, as most users will do. The quick format option isn't used as that might affect the performance the first time data is written. Modern operating systems all take care of the TRIM command in the background and it isn’t something to worry about for regular users. However, for these reviews, I will add a waiting period between each benchmark to make sure that the TRIM command has been fully executed and finished. After all, we want a clear picture of the drive’s performance with minimal interference from the operating system. On each page that follows with the benchmark results, I have inserted result screenshots from the benchmarks, created drive analysis chart for the fill-level performance, and added drive comparison charts where possible. Hardware Supermicro C7Z270-PG Intel Core i7-7700K Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz (4x8GB) Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSD be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 (1200W) Noctua NH-D15S Cooler Master HAF XB EVO with Noctua NF-A14 FLX fans Software AIDA64 Storage Benchmark Anvil's Storage Utilities AS SSD Benchmark ATTO Benchmark CrystalDiskMark IOMeter PCMark 8 Storage Benchmark Windows 10 AIDA64 AIDA64 is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users with a broad range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. The app has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives and is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also has a disk benchmark tool, and that is the one I'll be using. Fresh Drive The Linear Read and Write tests measure the sequential performance by reading or writing all sectors without skipping any. It gives us a view of the drives overall performance from start to end. The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Conditioned Drive The Linear Read and Write tests measure the sequential performance by reading or writing all sectors without skipping any. It gives us a view of the drives overall performance from start to end. The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Drive Performance Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive's consistency. The straight line and a higher average performance are the things to look for here. Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil’s Storage Utilities is a complete benchmark solution used to test any writeable storage drive. It also has a drive endurance test that consistently reads and writes data to the selected medium to deliver days, months, and potentially even years of use in a shorter period. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Performance Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive's consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. AS SSD Benchmark The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD, and they aren't using the operating system cache. The copy tests are cached and as such not viable results at this time. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Performance Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive's consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. ATTO 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 customise your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Performance Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive's consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD and SSD benchmark utility that allows you to measure a drive's sequential and random performance. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Performance Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive's consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. IOMeter IOMeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterisation tool for single and clustered systems. As a benchmark and troubleshooting tool, it is configurable to replicate the behaviour of many popular applications. One commonly quoted measurement provided by the tool is IOPS. Sequential Performance Random 4K Performance Drive Comparison IOmeter is run on an unpartitioned drive. PCMark 8 Storage Benchmark PCMark 8 Storage benchmark tests the performance of SSDs, HDDs, and SSHD hybrid drives with traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office and a selection of games. You can test any recognised storage device, including local external drives. Unlike synthetic storage tests, the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark highlights real-world performance differences between storage devices. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, PCMark runs with an empty drive. Final Thoughts Pricing and Availability At the time of this review, the availability is a bit spotty. Some retailers have some capacity models, other have other ones. So while it can be a bit tricky to get just the right model right now, the Corsair Force MP510 is available. US readers can get the 2TB drive for $537 or the 240GB from $109.90. UK readers can get the 480GB for £119.99 or the 240GB model for £64.99. Final Thoughts This is always the most difficult part of an SSD review, the last page. There isn't a whole lot to say as it is what it is. In this case, we have a beautiful M.2 2280 module which plugs directly into your motherboard. The black PCB and sticker will match most setups well and make it look awesome when built-in. But optics aren't what really matters, performance is. Corsair's Force MP510 has plenty of performance available, ranking in the top-end in most of our charts. At the same time, it has a high-rated endurance and a 5-year warranty. What's even better, it does all that for a low price. All in all, it's an amazing drive which comes in a standard form factor with powerful components. It is aimed at budget-oriented users with a need for impressive performance figures. As a bonus, the drive also supports 256-bit encryption for whom might need it. Pros High performance Good endurance 5-year warranty Black PCB and sticker for beautiful optics AES 256-bit encryption support Low price for a drive in this class Cons Availability is a bit spotty at the time of the review "The Force MP510 is without a doubt the most impressive drive we've seen from Corsair. It delivers an impressive performance without breaking the bank." We would like to thank Corsair for this sample.