Corsair MP700 Pro SE Review: Exceptionally Fast SSD Speeds Come At A Hefty Price

PCIe 5.0 solid-state drives (SSD) are upon us and the Corsair MP700 aims to be among the best for performance. This M.2 NVMe storage drive is capable of hitting speeds up to 14,000 MB/s, surpassing that of the normal Corsair MP700 and MP700 Pro, reminiscing that of the early 2000s with processors getting faster at the expense of efficiency and power draw. Inside the MP700 Pro SE is essentially an MP700 Pro but with all components pushed harder to achieve better performance.

Corsair is not alone in rolling out a steady stream of PCIe 5.0 SSDs. The newer generation of storage can hit high speeds, almost doubling the bandwidth of the fastest PCIe 4.0 drives. There is a cost to this in the form of excess heat generation and power draw. It’s not uncommon to see PCIe 5.0 drives with heatsinks and if they don’t come with one, integrated motherboard NVMe cooling is finally being put to good use. With the MP700 Pro SE from Corsair boasting even faster speeds than its MP700 Pro sibling, I expected trouble.

Understand the problem with heat, Corsair is selling the MP700 Pro SE in three versions, one a normal standalone SSD, a second with a heatsink, and a third with a giant water-cooling block preinstalled. Running the latest firmware with Phison’s excellent thermal throttling algorithm, you’ll be able to get as much out of the Corsair MP700 Pro SE without adding it to your water-cooling loop, though I would suggest using a motherboard or PCI expansion card with integrated passive M.2 NVMe cooling. This drive is clearly designed (and priced) for enthusiasts.

About this review: Corsair provided XDA with a sample for this review but had no input to its contents.

Corsair MP700 Pro SE

The Corsair MP700 Pro SE is one of the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs available. With transfer speeds of up to 14,000 MB/s you’ll be booting into an OS in no time, loading game scenes in a flash, and enjoying one of the best storage experiences possible … at a cost.

Pros

• Exceptionally fast transfer speeds at 14,000 MB/s
• Incredible sequential performance
• 2 TB and 4 TB capacities with five-year warranty
• Available with an optional water block

Cons

• Requires some form of cooling
• High power consumption
• Expensive

Price, specs, and availability

Expensive super-fast flash storage

Running the latest hardware on the PCIe 5.0 and NVMe 2.0 interface, the Corsair MP700 Pro SE isn’t a cheap SSD. There are only two capacities: 2 TB and 4 TB. The 2 TB version starts from $355 and the 4 TB bumps this up to $655. Two versions of each drive are available, one with a heatsink and another with a water block. This further increases the cost by around $20. Regardless of which capacity or version you purchase, the MP700 Pro SE is a sleek, all-black SSD with impressive specifications.

Powering everything is Micron’s TLC NAND, controlled by the Phison E26. This excellent controller is also found on other premium storage drives, including the Corsair MP700 Pro. The company worked with Phison to get as much performance out of the current hardware. 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM is available for the smaller 2 TB MP700 Pro SE and 8 GB is installed on the 4 TB drive. Sequential read and write speeds clocking in at 14,000 MB/s and 12,000 MB/s, respectively. With an endurance rating of up to 3,000 terabytes written (TBW), these drives are designed for heavy usage.

Storage performance

This is among the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs

To test the Corsair MP700 Pro SE, we used our test bench with an Intel Core i9-14900K CPU atop an Asus Z690 ROG Maximus motherboard. Using an expansion card, the Corsair MP700 Pro SE was encased under a massive metal heatsink. Corsair recommends a heatsink be used with the MP700 Pro SE. PCIe 4.0 drives could get considerably warm under sustained loads and PCIe 5.0 drives take this further with hotter components. The MP700 Pro SE is pushed harder than its MP700 Pro sibling and so increased heat output can be expected.

CrystalDiskMark was our first stop to see how the 4 TB Corsair MP700 Pro SE fared against its stated speed claims and other PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 4.0 drives. For a direct generational comparison, the Crucial T700 was included to see how the MP700 Pro SE ranks among other great PCIe 5.0 SSDs. Finally, I added numbers from our Samsung 990 Pro review, to see how the MP700 Pro SE compares against one of the best last-gen PCIe 4.0 drives. The results speak for themselves. The Corsair MP700 Pro SE is one of the fastest SSDs I’ve tested to date.

The Corsair MP700 Pro SE performed extremely well under these test conditions and like CrystalDiskMark, showed excellent results. To achieve this, Corsair’s SSD will happily pull more than 10W from the motherboard. This doesn’t sound like much but it is for a single small component such as an SSD.

Next up was the ATTO Disk Benchmark. This is a great tool for seeing how fast an SSD can transfer data at various sizes.

Throughout our testing, I didn’t see temperatures rise above 65C, which is good for a PCIe 5.0 SSD. This is largely thanks to the massive heatsink attached to the Asus ROG M.2 expansion card. I strongly recommend using a heatsink of some sort with this SSD. Opting for Corsair’s liquid-cooling block version will further reduce temperatures by hooking the SSD up to a custom open-loop. Regardless of how you end up cooling the MP700 Pro SE, it’ll suck a lot of power and produce considerable levels of heat.

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Should you buy the Corsair MP700 Pro SE?

You should buy the Corsair MP700 Pro SE if:

• You seek one of the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs on the market.
• You plan to add it to a liquid-cooling loop or have a heatsink at hand.
• You don’t mind paying more than $0.17 per GB.

You shouldn’t buy the Corsair MP700 Pro SE if:

• You want a better-value SSD.
• You won’t be fully utilizing the ridiculously fast transfer speeds.
• You don’t have a motherboard with a spare PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot.

Whether you should buy the Corsair MP700 Pro SE comes down to what you need from flash storage. If you’re building a budget-friendly gaming PC and don’t need a drive that can offer up to 14,000 MB/s of performance, the MP700 Pro SE would be overkill. It’s powerful, draws lots of power from the motherboard, and produces more waste heat than other PCIe 5.0 drives. Phison and Corsair have pushed this hardware to its maximum and while the performance is impressive and the numbers certainly don’t lie, it’s a difficult recommendation outside of enthusiasts usage.

PCIe 5.0 is a hard sell, even the most affordable drives. PCIe 4.0 SSDs can be found at a discount, still offer great speeds for loading an OS, software, and games, and your motherboard is more likely to utilize the available speeds. The Corsair MP700 Pro SE is using newer technology and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. It’s super-fast and impressive, and the available variants ensure there’s an MP700 Pro SE for just about everyone. The Hydro X series is a nice touch, offering integration with existing liquid-cooling loops.

This is about as good as we’ll get from PCIe 5.0 drives for a while, at least until we start seeing higher capacity options such as 8 TB SSDs. It’s a good launch for Corsair, fleshing out its MP700 range of PCIe 5.0 drives.

Corsair MP700 Pro SE

The Corsair MP700 Pro SE is one of the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs available. With transfer speeds of up to 14,000 MB/s you’ll be booting into an OS in no time, loading game scenes in a flash, and enjoying one of the best storage experiences possible … at a cost.