At a glance

Expert assessment

Pro

• Outstanding Sequential Reference Performance
• Accessible for PCIe 5.0
• Optional radiator

Cons

• Real-world sequential performance in our transfers is the same as PCIe 4.0
• More expensive than PCIe 4.0 HMB SSDs

Our verdict

Our first look at a PCIe 5.0 host memory buffer design, the Corsair MP700 Elite, revealed significantly improved sequential throughput – in benchmarks. It’s a great SSD, but you’re paying a premium for what might be a minimal increase in real-world performance.

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If you have a sense of déjà vu with this article, it’s probably because I’ve already reviewed three Corsair MP700s: the simple MP700, MP700 Proand MP700 Pro SE. Corsair seems to like the name.

The MP700 Elite may sound familiar, but trust us: it’s different. A new PCIe 5.0 controller means a huge boost in sequential performance. At least in benchmarks.

Further reading: See our summary the best SSDs to learn about competing products.

What are the Corsair MP700 Elite features?

Like its bigger siblings, the MP700 Elite is a 2280 form factor (22mm wide, 80mm long), PCIe 5.0, M.2 NVMe SSD. Unlike its siblings, it uses a brand new Phison PS5031-E31T controller to deliver data to and from 218-layer TLC NAND.

There is no DRAM cache, instead the MP700 Elite opts for a host memory buffer (HMB) design – meaning it uses your device’s memory for main caching tasks. At first, HMB meant poor performance. Nowadays, HMB generally matches and sometimes even outperforms DRAM designs in sustained throughput.

Where HMB is still mostly inferior, and the reason DRAM designs continue to exist, is in random operations. HMB, while still lighting fast, generally runs about 50% of DRAM performance in that area.

The MP700 Elite has a five-year warranty and has a capacity of 600TBW per 1TB. Exceeding this amount of writes voids the warranty. Note that we’re talking about data written, not read, and 600TBW is probably more than the average user will write in 10 years, let alone five.

How much does the Corsair MP700 Elite cost?

The MP700 Elite is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, both single and heatsink. The basic models cost $150 and $260, respectively, while the latter are $10 more at $160 and $270. A very fair price for such a robust radiator.

Obviously, a PCIe 5.0 SSD will be slightly more expensive than the PCIe 4.0 models, so those prices weren’t unexpected. However, it’s currently debatable whether the extra performance offered by premium SSDs is actually worth the money – given current hardware and especially software limitations. For DRAM models, you get quite a bit of random performance with PCIe 5.0.

In other words, the PCIe 5.0 models are super fast with the multiple queues that the benchmarks use, but there isn’t much real-world software that uses multiple queues, and the jump in single-queue performance with PCIe 5.0 isn’t it is so impressive. .

How fast is the Corsair MP700 Elite?

In benchmarks, the MP700 Elite outperformed all PCIe 4.0 host memory buffer models we tested by quite a margin. The doubled bandwidth available on PCIe 5.0 really showed in the sequential queuing throughput.

However, random performance is no better than PCIe 4.0 HMB SSDs, and real-world transfer tests were mundane at best. The last result surprised me. In fact, they led the MP700 Elite to ranking only 2nd overall among HMB models, after 8TB SN850X from WD.

ATTO, featured above, loved the MP700 Elite. Probably a little more than it should, but so does CrystalDiskMark 8 in its sequential tests shown below.

When it came to random, 4K performance, the extra bandwidth had no effect. It never does because there is a delay in finding the data or a place for it. Even so, the MP700 Elite was easily beaten by the WD SN850X (8TB with BiCS 6 NAND) in CrystalDiskMark 8 random tests.

While our 48GB transfers have a large margin of error, it’s not large enough to put the MP700 Elite in the same class as freakishly fast (in this test) Lexar NM790.

Jon L. Jacobi

While 2 minutes 28 seconds is a good write time for our single 450GB file, the MP700 Elite was still well above the record set by the 8TB WD SN850X. Note that the other three drives in the diagrams are SSDs with PCIe 4.0 host memory buffer (no DRAM). Including on Kingston NV3.

We were hoping the MP700 Elite’s increased PCIe 5.0 bandwidth would have a bigger effect on our real-world transfers, but it didn’t. The benchmark numbers are impressive, but without Windows using queues (it doesn’t), the performance boost is actually pretty easy. But there is growth, and if your software can take advantage, it will save you time.

Should you buy the Corsair MP700 Elite?

If you have PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots and the relatively rare software that takes full advantage of the MP700 Elite’s increased sequential throughput, then yes. But it’s an easy yes, because most of the performance improvement we saw was in benchmarks.

Users can save quite a bit of coin while still getting the same performance with a PCIe 4.0 HMB design.

How we test

The IDG storage tests currently use Windows 11 (22H2) 64-bit running on an X790 (PCIe 5.0)/i5-12400 CPU combo with two 32GB DDR5 Kingston Fury modules (64GB total memory). Intel integrated graphics is used. The 48 GB transfer tests use an ImDisk RAM disk that occupies 58 GB of the total memory of 64 GB. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, which also contains the OS.

Each test is performed on a freshly formatted and TRIM drive so that the results are optimal. Note that as any drive fills up, performance will decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching and other factors.

The performance numbers shown apply only to the unit we were shipped with and the capacity tested. SSD performance may vary by capacity due to multiple chips to read/write and amount of NAND available for secondary cache (TLC/QLC writing as SLC). Also, suppliers occasionally change components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you’re experiencing and what we’re reporting (systems being roughly equal), by all means let us know.