The Corsair Force MP510 SSD (960GB) Review: A High-End Contender
by Billy Tallis on October 18, 2018 10:00 AM EST
The Corsair Force Series MP510 may appear at first glance to be an incremental update to the earlier MP500, but under the sticker it's an entirely new and far better drive. The MP500 was Corsair's take on the Phison E7 first-generation NVMe SSD controller paired with planar MLC NAND. The MP510 adopts the new Phison E12 controller and Toshiba's 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. The result is a drive that aims for the high end and actually makes it this time.
Earlier this year, we previewed the Phison E12 controller and its M.2 SSD reference design. The Corsair Force MP510 is based on that same hardware platform and features the same firmware version number, so not much should have changed except for the application of a Corsair logo and price tag. The Phison E12 is the high-end controller from their second generation of NVMe controllers, with the E8 as the entry-level NVMe controller with fewer PCIe lanes and NAND channels. Phison has close ties to Toshiba, and most Phison drives use Toshiba's NAND flash. Toshiba's transition to 3D NAND was relatively late and that stuck many Phison SSD vendors with uncompetitive SSDs last year, including most drives with the E7 controller. Toshiba's 64-layer 3D TLC has reversed that situation and is giving Phison SSD vendors access to cutting-edge flash that is fast, cheap, and power efficient. Phison's E12 controller allows drives to make the most of that flash.
| Corsair Force Series MP510 Specifications | ||||||
| Capacity | 240 GB | 480 GB | 960 GB | 1920 GB | ||
| Form Factor | double-sided M.2 2280, PCIe 3 x4 | |||||
| Controller | Phison PS5012-E12 | |||||
| NAND Flash | Toshiba BiCS3 256Gb 64-layer 3D TLC | |||||
| Sequential Read | 3100 MB/s | 3480 MB/s | 3480 MB/s | 3480 MB/s | ||
| Sequential Write | 1050 MB/s | 2000 MB/s | 3000 MB/s | 2700 MB/s | ||
| Random Read | 180k IOPS | 360k IOPS | 610k IOPS | 485k IOPS | ||
| Random Write | 240k IOPS | 440k IOPS | 570k IOPS | 530k IOPS | ||
| Rated Power |
Read | 6.1 W | 6.7 W | 6.9 W | 7.1 W | |
| Write | 3.5 W | 4.8 W | 5.6 W | 6.2 W | ||
| Idle | 30 mW | |||||
| Warranty | 5 years | |||||
| Write Endurance | 400 TB 0.9 DWPD |
800 TB 0.9 DWPD |
1700 TB 1.0 DWPD |
3120 TB 0.9 DWPD |
||
| MSRP | $65.99 (27¢/GB) |
$124.99 (26¢/GB) |
$235.99 (25¢/GB) |
|||
The Corsair Force MP510 is available in capacities from 240GB to 960GB, with a 1920GB model on the way. That largest model has slightly reduced performance specifications from the 960GB that we have tested, and the smallest 240GB model has significantly constrained performance, with only the sequential read speeds still in high-end NVMe territory.
All capacities have a rated write endurance of around 0.9-1.0 drive writes per day and a five year warranty period, which are standard for high-end consumer SSDs. Maximum power draw ranges from 6.1-7.1W depending on capacity, so the drive will get warm but thermal throttling shouldn't be a problem outside of synthetic benchmarks.
The Corsair Force MP510 faces very direct competition from other Phison E12 SSDs such as the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro, which the MP510 is surprisingly undercutting on price at the moment. Other competitors include:
- the Samsung 970 EVO and Western Digital WD Black, flagship TLC SSDs from major brands that are only a little bit more expensive than the MP510
- The HP EX920, ADATA SX8200 and other similar drives based on the Silicon Motion SM2262 controller, some of which are currently cheaper than the MP510
Also included in this review are several entry-level NVMe drives, our results from testing an engineering sample of the upcoming Silicon Motion SM2262EN controller, and the Toshiba XG6 OEM SSD that will hopefully get a retail version soon.
| AnandTech 2018 Consumer SSD Testbed | |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E3 1240 v5 |
| Motherboard | ASRock Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC |
| Chipset | Intel C232 |
| Memory | 4x 8GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR4-2400 CL15 |
| Graphics | AMD Radeon HD 5450, 1920x1200@60Hz |
| Software | Windows 10 x64, version 1709 |
| Linux kernel version 4.14, fio version 3.6 | |
| Spectre/Meltdown microcode and OS patches current as of May 2018 | |
- Thanks to Intel for the Xeon E3 1240 v5 CPU
- Thanks to ASRock for the E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC
- Thanks to G.SKILL for the Ripjaws DDR4-2400 RAM
- Thanks to Corsair for the RM750 power supply, Carbide 200R case, and Hydro H60 CPU cooler
- Thanks to Quarch for the XLC Programmable Power Module and accessories
- Thanks to StarTech for providing a RK2236BKF 22U rack cabinet.
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hugo.sousa - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
Hi Bill,Where did you bought those refurbished drives?
goatfajitas - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
Yup, its easy enough to do it now on the cheap. A 1tb PCIe SSD for $235 (and a great performing one at that) for your data you access often and larger slower HDD's for less used data/backups etc.wumpus - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
HDDs are running $20/TB (Hitachi 3TB comes up cheapest on pcpartpicker), and even larger drives can be had cheap if you are willing to buy external drives on sale and "shuck" them.The real catch is that 90% of the people use about 100GB or so data, so sales of HDDs are pretty flat. So they stopped getting cheaper around 2011 and pretty much sat around waiting to be replaced by SDDs.
Prices are finally lower than 2011, but I really have to wonder if Moore's law has enough juice to get SDDs down to the level they need to kill off HDDs (in case you are wondering, tape is still alive and kicking. And makes all sorts of sense for storing data >100TB. I wonder if HDDs will go the same way "just for datahoarders".)
stargazera5 - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
@wumpus: "(in case you are wondering, tape is still alive and kicking. And makes all sorts of sense for storing data >100TB"Maybe tape looks good for >100TB, but there are a lot of us home power users who have 10-100 TB that could use a good WORM solution for backup. The cost of tape drives are quite high and drove TCO far too high to make good sense compared to buying additional HDDs a couple times a year, which isn't that cheap either and has far too low a frequency.
I also looked into online backup (e.g. Blackblaze, Carbonite, etc.) until I realized it would take 6 months to send them my base-line backup via my internet pipe (10 Mbps up)
No real good solutions here, but probably a pretty good market.
vanilla_gorilla - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
Some of those services offer disk based import/export options: https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/disk/details/Lolimaster - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
Crucial MX500 go to as low as 0.165 per GB.leexgx - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
""All capacities have a rated write endurance of around 0.9-1.0 drive writes per day and a five year warranty period, which are standard for high-end consumer SSDs""i thought 1.0 DWP was only for enterprise levels (most ssds have DWP of around 0.3)
Diji1 - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
>You know, its getting to price points soon that home servers would easily use SSD drives vs mechanical.Er ... is it?
Diji1 - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Although there is no excuse for using spinning disks for the OS disk IMO.PaoDeTech - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
Please review Crucial P1 1TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD. I'm willing to pay $20 premium over SATA but not more. If the P1 1TB goes on black Friday sale for $179.99 I'll pull the trigger (MX500 1TB SATA is currently $159.99).Does anybody know what's the BOM cost difference between SATA and PCIe?