Best Corsair MP510 960 GB Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals & Sales 2020:

Corsair launched in 2016 on the NVMe SSD market. The firm was however rather shy on its first generations of products before launching the MP300 , a particularly convincing mid-range model. Corsair is trying to repeat this coup on the high end with the MP510, a variant that will seek to impose itself against the leaders of the sector.

Presentation

With its MP510 series, Corsair is therefore targeting the “performance” market by promising a high-end service that will have nothing to envy of the best models from Samsung and WD, to name a few. Like most of the NVMe SSDs on the market, the M.2 2280 format was chosen, i.e. a 22 mm wide by 80 mm long bar module which operates in PCIe 4x. It is a bit of the classic format that can be inserted on all current desktop motherboards and on more and more laptops.

On this module, once is not custom, there are components placed on either side of the PCB. The 4 memory chips of the 960 GB MP510 are original Toshiba. More precisely, it is 3rd generation NAND BiCS. Like most SSDs today, these are 3D chips – the cells are placed side by side on a grid and then stacked, on 64 layers in this case. It is also TLC type memory, each cell being able to store 3 bits of data. The advantage of TLC 3D memory is that it is inexpensive to produce, even if the recent QLC 3D memory can further reduce costs.

All these pretty people are controlled by a Phison PS5012-E12 controller. This model, released in September 2018, was developed to equip high-end SSDs, with NAND 3D TLC or 3D QLC. Operating in NVMe 1.3, it manages 8 channels and is burned in 28 nm – unlike the PS5008 of the MP300 which is burned in 40 nm. The controller comes with two 512 MB cache chips, for a total of 1 GB of DDR4.

Best Corsair MP510 960 GB Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals & Sales 2020

1. CORSAIR FORCE Series MP510 960GB NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 SSD Solid State Storage, Up to 3,480MB/s

2. CORSAIR FORCE Series MP510 480GB NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 SSD Solid State Storage, Up to 3,480MB/s

3. CORSAIR FORCE Series MP510 240GB NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 SSD Solid State Storage, Up to 3,480MB/s

4. CORSAIR Force Series MP510 1920GB NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 SSD Solid State Storage, Up to 3,480MB/s

An SLC cache of a dozen gigabytes

An SLC cache system is obviously present, a habit now taken by all players in the SSD market. This system allows writing work to be carried out on the first bit of each memory cell, without fully verifying the content of the entire cell. This reduces the access latency and consequently increases the throughput. According to our own observations, this cache is around 12 GB on this version of 960 GB. The write speed is then optimal as long as the file queue does not exceed this value. On a writing session exceeding these 12 GB, the speed will drop after this point.

An SSD guaranteed for 5 years and an extra large endurance

The warranty of the MP510 series is fixed at 5 years, which is in line with the high-end SSD market. On the other hand, endurance in writing is quite simply exceptional, with 1.7 Po guaranteed. This is equivalent to writing 932 GB of data daily over the warranty period. Suffice to say that the wear of the chips should not be felt for much longer.

Performances

By announcing 3.5 GB / s in sequential read and 3 GB / s in write, the 960 GB MP510 attacks the flagships of the genre such as the WD Black PCIe , for example. In practice, we were first surprised to see the low temperature rise of this model. Whether with or without the use of a graphics card, our test model did not exceed 55 ° C, while it cooled in a flash. A very good point, especially since unlike the MP300 series, there is no copper sticker here to help heat dissipation. We must therefore believe that the new controller of Phison has a good energy control.

Under benchmark, we were first disappointed by the write results: only 1 GB / s sequential. Our test under CrystalDiskMark being carried out on a file of 32 GB files, the SLC cache system showed its limits and lowered the average thus obtained. Using a file with a size of 1 GB, we find the 3 GB / s announced by the manufacturer. In reading, we measured an average of 3.4 GB / s. Random access is also quite good, at the WD Black PCIe level when the cache is active.

In manual copying, we understand this SLC cache story better. When active, the MP510 does not write less than 2 GB / s in writing while it drops to 990 MB / s when it is saturated. The average then obtained – we are testing a 27 GB file – then places this SSD under its competitor signed WD. On this competing model, the cache is around 16 GB but it does not tend to saturate under benchmark .

STRONG POINTS

  • High read speeds.
  • High write speeds when the cache is active.
  • Thermal management.
  • 5 year warranty.
  • 1.7 Po write endurance.

WEAK POINTS

  • SLC cache system less efficient than on other SSDs.
  • Random access slightly removed from those of the best SSDs.

CONCLUSION

After testing, the Corsair MP510 leaves a good impression although everything is not perfect. The performance is there and the thermal efficiency is there. We will house this model without any problem in a laptop or even in a confined desktop computer. Very enduring and guaranteed for 5 years, this model only disappoints with its SLC cache system, which is less well optimized than that of its direct competitors, such as the WD Black PCIe .

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