The Corsair MP700 Pro SE PCI Express 5.0 internal SSD is a step ahead of the Corsair MP700 Pro, providing faster throughput speeds. Like the MP700 Pro, Corsair offers the MP700 Pro SE ($624.99 as tested for 4TB) with multiple heatsink choices. Its sizzling sequential read and write speeds are second only to the Editors’ Choice-winning Crucial T705 among the SSDs we reviewed, and its benchmark scores are above average for a Gen 5 SSD. The MP700 Pro SE costs a pretty penny though; While its list (and direct) price is competitive, you still don’t get a discount when buying it through an etailer like Amazon, which sells it for considerably more than the T705.
Design: Gen 5 architecture, several cooling options
The MP700 Pro SE is a four-lane solid-state drive running NVMe 2.0 protocol over a PCIe 5.0 bus. This internal SSD comes standard M.2 Type-2280 “Gumstick” format. This double-sided drive uses Micron 232-layer 3D TLC NAND chips and Phison’s Gen 5-optimized PS5026-E26 controller.
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Aside from having the chip on both sides, the MP700 Pro SE looks outstanding for such a powerful M.2 SSD. It’s topped with a graphite heat-spreading label, which by itself isn’t enough to control the extra heat it generates when running at full speed. Corsair offers drives in different variants with different cooling solutions, which we will discuss below.
PCIe 5.0: System Requirements Hurdle
PCIe 5.0 SSDs promise a big speed boost over PCIe 4.0 drives with significantly lower throughput speeds than even the MP700 Pro SE, but you can only take advantage of that if the latest hardware supports the standard. Only the latest boutique desktops are likely PCIe 5.0-ready off the shelf, so you may need to build your own PC from the ground up or update an existing system to gain the necessary connectivity. You’ll need an Intel 12th Gen or later Core CPU with a motherboard based on Intel’s Z690 or Z790 chipset; Or a Ryzen 7000 processor with an AM5 motherboard built around an X670, X670E, or B650E chipset.
Note that just because you have one of those chipsets doesn’t actually guarantee the motherboard manufacturer implemented A PCIe 5.0-capable M.2 SSD slot. Before investing in one of these drives, check your system or motherboard’s specs and documentation to make sure you have such a slot. Some boards have PCIe 5.0 expansion slots for graphics cards and other PCI Express cards, but you need a PCIe 5.0-capable one. M.2 slot.
Cooling and configuration: Three ways to cool
Gen 5 SSDs like the MP700 Pro SE are capable of incredible speeds; This means a lot of extra heat must be dissipated to avoid throttling or long-term degradation. (Throttling is a protection mechanism built into most SSDs that prevents sustained overheating but reduces performance.) The MP700 Pro SE comes in three versions: a barebones model with no heatsink like the one we tested for this review, which is a desktop motherboard. Relies on heatsinks for cooling; a version with a fan-based heatsink, with fans powered by a SATA connection from the motherboard; and a water-cooled version that uses Corsair’s Hydro X water block.
If you choose water cooling, the drive can be integrated into a desktop computer’s custom liquid cooling system, an attractive option for those planning to build a system from scratch or those who already have a liquid-cooled Gen 5-compatible desktop. Most motherboards with a Gen 5 M.2 slot already come with a substantial heatsink, more than capable of cooling a barebones SSD, as in the case of our testbed. drive except The heatsink is only available in 4TB capacity, while the other two come in 2TB and 4TB versions. The list price and other details are given in the table below.
If you go purely by list price, the MP700 Pro SE, at 16 cents per gigabyte for the $624.99 4TB version we tested, seems to have the edge over the Crucial T705, which lists at 17 cents per gig for its 4TB barebones version. However, the MP700 Pro SE costs the same 16 cents per gig on Amazon as of this writing, while the T705 is heavily discounted on that site, selling for just 12 cents per gigabyte.
As for durability, expressed as total terabytes written (TBW) lifetime write capacity, the MP700 Pro SE matches the MP700 Pro for any 4TB stick we’ve reviewed so far. The Crucial T700 (which added a 4TB version since we reviewed it) and the T705 have respectable 2,400TBW ratings for their 4TB models. The Seagate FireCuda 540 is more durable than the MP700 Pro SE at the 2TB level (2,000TBW), but doesn’t come in at 4TB capacity.
The TBW spec is a manufacturer’s estimate of how much data can be written to a drive before some cells fail and go out of service. Corsair warrants the MP700 Pro SE for five years or until you reach the TBW figure rated on Data Write, whichever comes first. But the drive’s durability rating is such that unless you write an unusually large amount of data to the SSD, it’s a safe bet that the MP700 Pro SE will last through the full warranty period and beyond.
The MP700 Pro SE supports AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption, the gold standard in data encryption.
Corsair MP700 Pro SE Testing: Near the top everywhere
To benchmark the MP700 Pro SE, we used our testbed PC designed specifically for PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs. It consists of a ASRock X670E Taichi Motherboard with an AMD X670 chipset, 32GB (two critical 16GB DIMMs) of DDR5 memory, one PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 slot (the lanes with direct access to the CPU), and three PCIe 4.0 slots. It is a sport AMD Ryzen 9 7900 CPU using an AMD stock cooler; a GeForce RTX 2070 Super graphics card with 8GB GDDR6 SDRAM; and a Thermaltech ToughPower GF1 Snow 750-watt power supply. A boot drive ADATA Legend 850 PCIe 4.0 SSD. Since we tested the MP700 Pro SE unit does not have its own heatsink, we used the motherboard’s M.2-slot heatsink.
We put the MP700 Pro SE through the usual slate of internal solid-state drive benchmarks, including Crystal DiskMark 6.0, UL’s PCMark 10 Storage, and UL’s 3DMark Storage benchmark, the last of which measures the drive’s performance in several gaming-related tasks. .
While the MP700 Pro SE performed remarkably well in our Crystal DiskMark sequential read and write tests, posting the second-fastest speeds in both (behind the Crucial T705), it fell a bit short of its 14,000MBps read-speed rating. Its Crystal DiskMark 4K (small-file) read and write results were in the middle of a solid range of scores by the PCIe 5.0 drives we reviewed, with 4K read speeds on par with the fastest elite PCIe 4.0 comparison drives and 4K write speeds exceeding them (we tested the Samsung SSD 990 Pro , a fast PCIe 4 SSD, we’ve included in our table as a point of comparison.) Good 4K write performance is especially important for an SSD used as a boot drive, although we test as a secondary drive.
The PCMark 10 overall storage test measures the drive’s speed during various routine tasks such as launching Windows, loading games and creative apps, and copying both small and large files. The MP700 Pro SE posted the second-highest score in that test, again finishing behind the Crucial T705.
Although the PCMark 10 overall storage score combines the results of multiple tasks, you can also look at some of its individual (trace-based) test scores. For the most part, the MP700 Pro SE scored in the top two or three, consistently trailing the Crucial T705, albeit by a small margin. There was one exception in our large- and small-file copy tests, where the MP700 Pro SE’s scores were middling
Finally, the 3DMark storage benchmark tests an SSD’s ability to perform various gaming-related tasks. In this, the MP700 Pro SE posted the third highest in a narrow range of scores that our Gen 5 comparison SSDs achieved.
Verdict: A GP but expensive M.2 Speedster
The Corsair MP700 Pro SE proved itself remarkably fast, earning high scores in almost all of our benchmark tests. It comes in capacities up to 4TB and offers AES 256-bit encryption. Corsair offers three versions of the drive: with an air-cooled or liquid-cooled heatsink or without.
The water-cooled option is attractive if you have one very Considering buying or building a custom liquid-cooled Gen 5-compatible rig. Otherwise, although it’s an excellent, high-performing drive, the MP700 Pro SE isn’t cost-effective. The Editors’ Choice-winner Crucial T705, which performs at least slightly better than the Corsair, comes in at a lower retail price in all power versions that the two have in common. Presumably, the price drop over time will change the calculus. But for now, the T705 remains our top PCIe 5.0 M.2 pick.
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The Corsair MP700 Pro SE is the second-fastest internal SSD we’ve ever tested, but should only be considered if you have a PCIe 5.0-capable PC and deep pockets.
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