Hot off the presses for Computex 2018 is the new Corsair Force MP300 NVMe 1.3 M.2 SSD. Corsair announced the drive during our flight over, so we learned about it at the company's booth, where the drive was prominently on display. We also spotted the series on Newegg as well with prices ranging from just $57 (120GB) to $362 (960GB).
The drive is up to 3x faster than SATA and was designed to help users transition away from the antiquated serial bus that was built for slower media. Yet Corsair's approach to the entry-level SSD market comes at a bad time, with pricing pressure coming from all directions. High-quality SATA SSDs like the Samsung 860 EVO 1TB just hit $250 (and even $150 for a few hours) and mainstream NVMe drives like the Adata SX8200 960GB sell for just $350.
Corsair will have a difficult time getting this ship off the ground with current pricing for all but the 120GB model, which sells for dinner money at less than $60. At that price it's hard not to consider the MP300 for a secondary drive used to ease the load on your primary storage by keeping cold data like movies, music, and even games on the MP300.
Corsair backs the new MP300 with a 5-year warranty, the same as the mainstream NVMe MP500 we tested here. The new series also comes with support for Corsair's SSD Toolbox software and features a copper sticker that spreads the controller heat to aid in keeping the drive cool under intensive workloads.
Product | MP300 120GB | MP300 240GB | MP300 480GB | MP300 960GB |
---|---|---|---|---|
Pricing | $57 | $93 | $174 | $362 |
Form Factor | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 |
Interface / Protocol | PCIe 3.0 x2 / NVMe 1.3 | PCIe 3.0 x2 / NVMe 1.3 | PCIe 3.0 x2 / NVMe 1.3 | PCIe 3.0 x2 / NVMe 1.3 |
Controller | Phison PS5008-E8 | Phison PS5008-E8 | Phison PS5008-E8 | Phison PS5008-E8 |
Sequential Read | 1,520 MB/s | 1,580 MB/s | 1,600 MB/s | 1,600 MB/s |
Sequential Write | 460 MB/s | 920 MB/s | 1,040 MB/s | 1,080 MB/s |
Random Read | 80,000 IOPS | 110,000 IOPS | 220,000 IOPS | 240,000 IOPS |
Random Write | 110,000 IOPS | 180,000 IOPS | 200,000 IOPS | 210,000 IOPS |
Warranty | 5-Years | 5-Years | 5-Years | 5-Years |