Corsair Force MP500 m.2 PCIe SSD Review

Storage Test System

• Intel Core i7-6700K
• Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7
• 32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4 2666
• 512GB Samsung 950 Pro
• SanDisk Extreme Pro 960GB
• Enermax Platimax 1350
• Windows 10 64-bit
• NVIDIA Drivers: 368.39
• AMD Drivers 16.6.1

Performance Tests

We have a bevy of tests to take a look at the performance characteristics in both synthetic environments and a realistic one at the end. In real terms it feels fast when in use. It makes for a great caching drive for media that, once properly set up, is something I’d miss if it were ever gone. It gives a tremendous advantage and does speed up the workflow quite a bit. Loading games is in a snap and only limited now by your network connection when that’s a factor, which seems to be most of the time now. Let’s delve into how it does.

CrystalDiskMark

Though we don’t quite hit the actual theoretical limit described in the specifications, though we do see a very strong showing. This is uncompressed data, which had no issues even though there have been reports of the Phison E7 controller seeming to prefer compressed datasets. I’d chock that down to a firmware issue specifically with specific drives. Ours doesn’t seem to have those same issues, and this shows throughout our tests. It’s fast, that’s for certain.

IOMeter

Taking a look at the drive through the lens of IOMeter we again see a drive that’s very capable. Though we don’t have any other M.2 drives to compare against at the moment, we can see the potential for this to be a powerhouse of a drive.

IOPS

Response Time

Response time is what is most associated with responsiveness of a system. The faster that the RAM, CPU and the OS drive can respond to your input, the better it feels. 0.024 seconds ensures that the MP500 isn’t the bottleneck in your system. That’s average, which means the minimum is even less. Though we did encounter a maximum of 12.5 seconds, though it was fleeting and in the real-world it does feel as responsive as the average number implies.

Real World Massive Transfer Test

In the real world, far away from the restrictions inherent in canned tests, results can sometimes vary greatly. In what may have been blazing fast under the best conditions, may fall apart when using it for the things you do in the everyday. When transferring a large group of mixed files, the MP500 still does very well. It took a mere 49 minutes to transfer the test directory with 33.8GB worth of games, with a very good average speed. Speed here is never near the theoretical maximum, so this is expected. IOPS in a real scenario are still quite high, too.

Conclusion

Corsair waiting until they could have the perfect package may have been a good idea. It’s not the ultimate speed demon, though it’s still one of the fastest M.2 drives out there (despite us not having much to compare against at the moment). It’s also priced very well and can be had for less than the MSRP on most sites. Also, Corsair is very good about ensuring that their products have very high-quality NAND and that it’s reliable. They have a tight partnership with Toshiba that nets them some of the better chips off the line, and Phison seems to have been a really good choice. In fact, it’s so good that we’re awarding it our Editor’s Choice award for the combination of features that help it be an excellent choice. We just wish it were available in higher capacities.