Corsair Force Series MP510 M.2 SSD Review - Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

The competition in the M2 NVMe enthusiast calls storage range is cutthroat and pretty much dominated by Samsung. Hey, credit where credit is due, they've been going strong with their design. However, products like Samsung offers need competition as that is healthy for the market, innovations and price levels. It is with that reason in mind that I have been looking very much forward to what Phison would bring to the table with their PS5012-E12 controller, and I am not disappointed Sir, not at all. The performance that Corsair offers with the MP510 is really really good. Now I know we can all discuss whether you'd ever notice 2 GB/s reads over 3 GB/s reads, but if we all stick to that concept, we'd all still be using a hybrid HDD. So yes, the combination of the PS5012-E12 from Phison with Toshiba NAND offers really good performance. It is also good to note that performance wise the MP510 offers what is advertised and can compete with Samsungs 970 series. Remember, to fully utilize the performance that is offered for this NVMe SSD you need a supporting infrastructure and this a motherboard with PCI Express Gen3 (x4) interface and NVMe ready BIOS. NVMe based storage is one the most exciting technologies that we have been following developments closely over the past few years was obviously the development curve of NAND flash-based storage technology. We moved from a "blisteringly fast" 100 MB/sec towards numbers that are 20 to 30 fold of that in the 3.500 MB/sec ranges which I like to call eye-soaring.

Performance

There's little to say other than FAST! Overall this x4 lane configured running NVMe 1.3 is fast, really fast even coming from an HDD and lower end SATA3 SSD. The sustained and linear performance is good. For writes, we did not notice a TLC write hole.  IOPS performance is stupendously good on this unit, not that you'd even need values in the 300K range but it does manage that. This SSD writes and reads serious amounts of tiny files in a very fast fashion. We stated it before though, IOPS is not something you as a consumer should worry about too much unless you are doing a lot of database related work or create similar workloads on your PC, but this SSD certainly ranks high within this aspect. The trace tests also show exceptional performance levels, enthusiast class NVMe. Overall the series is impressive. Zoom in at both IOPS and trace performance and you'll notice that the SSD can manage serious workloads without breaking so much as a drop of sweat. So whether you write lots of small files simultaneously, copy big MKV movies or do it all together. 

We do need to make a remark on measured controller temperature, it runs hot under load and that can cause throttling. So please do cool down the product with a proper M2 heatsink, most motherboards supply one default these days. This is the nature of enthusiast-class M2 SSDs these days.

Concluding

The MP510 SSD is a storage solution that will rip open a new level of performance on that 3000 MB/sec range for reads. The storage volume size is a little more tricky to describe as it varies per size, the 240GB model does 1,050 MB/sec writes, the 480GB sits at 2,000 MB/sec whereas the 960GB model can deal with 3,000 MB/sec. It comes with the nature of a number of NAND channels and chips used as well as TLC.  he read metrics all are above 3 GB/sec with some unit reaching 3.5 GB/sec sequential writes. And that does make your eyebrows move eh? So one thing we still need to talk about, the TBW values. And they look good. A 480GB unit is rated at 800 TBW, the 960 model at 1,700 TBW. Now I can present all kinds of metrics and math here, but basically, this SSD can outlive you when it comes to NAND writes. And if you are still not comfortable with that, Corsair will top the unit off with that industry warm shower that is the 5-years warranty. We all know that Samsungs and Microns dominate the NVMe space, so perhaps give some others a chance as well to battle the big guns. Pricing also is really good, 480GB for 139 EUR and 960 GB for 259 EUR, that's just really good huh?

In closing, if you want a seriously fast Enthusiast class M.2. SSD, hey this one ends up easily in my personal top 3. if you are building that Corsair infrastructure (chassis/cooling/keyboard/mouse/headset), hey why not match it up. This is properly good hardware, well done Corsair!

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