Corsair MP600 CORE 1TB NVMe SSD Review

SSD Temperature & Conclusion

When it comes to SSD temperature testing we figured out that this is a really tricky thing to measure and that is why most review sites don’t show temperature results. At first we were going to use the minimum and maximum temperatures reported by S.M.A.R.T. and call it a day. That looked good, but while looking closer at the data we noticed that some of the drives with the highest peak value actually averaged out to be much cooler over our entire test suite that takes over three hours per pass to complete. For example, the Intel Optane 905P 960GB drive has the second lowest maximum temperature of all the drives that we have tested, but it also happens to be tied as having the highest average temperature. Seeing high temperatures on a drive might persuade someone not to buy that particular model, so the average temperature result seems to be very important result to include.

All temperature testing was done in a Corsair iCUE 465X RGB case ($129.99 shipped) with an extra Corsair LL Series LL120 RGB fan added to the back of the case to help as an exhaust fan. We then set the fan speed in the UEFI of the ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi) to run at 50% fan speed.

The drive being tested was then screwed down in the primary M.2 slot that is located between the CPU socket and the primary PCIe 4.0 x16 slot that holds the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT 6GB graphics card. The tempered glass side panel was then placed back on the case before our test suite was run. Ambient room temperature at the time of testing was 21C or right around 70F.

Using the S.M.A.R.T. temperature sensor we found the MP600 1TB drive had a minimum temperature 0f 40C, a maximum temperature of 56C and an average of 44C inside our test system with the tempered glass panel on during our period of testing. These are great temperatures! The warning temperature threshold on this drive is 75C and the critical temperature threshold is 80C. We are far from triggering thermal throttling in our case!

Corsair MP600 CORE Conclusions

The MP600 CORE is the entry level PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD from Corsair. This means it will cost the least amount of money and deliver the lowest level of performance of the MP600 series drives.

• Enthusiasts – Corsair MP600 Pro Hydro X Ed. (Phison E18 w/ TLC & Liquid Cooling Ready)
• Best – Corsair MP600 PRO (Phison E18 w/ TLC)
• Better – Corsair MP600 (Phison E16 w/ TLC)
• Good – Corsair MP600 CORE (Phison E16 w/ QLC)

That said, the Corsair MP600 CORE came close to reaching the drives top rated read speed of 4,700 MB/s and write speed of 1,950 MB/s write speed in CrystalDiskMark. It performed father down the charts than many drives, but there really aren’t too many PCIe Gen4 drives on the market just yet that use QLC NAND Flash.

When it comes to pricing the Corsair MP600 CORE 1TB model that we reviewed here today can be picked up for $154.99 shipped over at Amazon. It comes backed by a 5-year warranty with a 225 TBW endurance rating. It is also priced comparable to competing drives. The closest competition to this drive would be the Sabrent Rocket Q4 1TB and is $149.99 shipped on Amazon. The Corsair MP600 CORE comes with a heatsink, so being $5 more seems more than reasonable.

If 1TB is too small for your storage needs, Corsair also makes 2TB and 4TB versions of this drive! We expect the price on QLC based drives to continue to decrease over time and this drive will appeal to those wanting PCIe Gen4 performance for light workloads at an excellent price.

Legit Bottom Line: The MP600 CORE is the new entry level PCIe Gen4 drive series from Corsair and the performance is respectable.