Strap in, you speedy storage demon, for the Corsair MP700 Pro SE. Now is the time of the PCIe 5.0 SSD. This latest offering from Corsair: Want to get down to the nitty-gritty? Strap on in, and let’s get a closer look.

Remember when processor speeds kept skyrocketing up in the early 2000s, often at the expense of power efficiency? Remember that guy from high school who had the 700 HP big block in his Camaro? Well, the Corsair MP700 Pro SE is kind of like the spiritual successor of that era. It’s at times like these that you realize just how far down the rabbit hole storage has been going lately. This M.2 NVMe drive has crazy speeds of up to 14,000 MB/s. That’s passed fast; that’s warp speed in the SSD world.

Why All the Fuss About PCIe 5.0 Anyway?

These SSDs almost double the bandwidth on the fastest PCIe 4.0 drives. More speed means more heat from the controller and from the NAND packages, more power draw. That’s why companies are throwing heat sinks on these drives by the bucketful, and it’s why motherboard makers started integrating NVMe cooling into the motherboard heatsinks. That the MP700 Pro SE is so fast means it benefits big-time from those big cooling solutions already.

Keeping Your Cool

Corsair knows the heat is real, and they’ve got you covered with this MP700 Pro SE—three versions: a basic standalone SSD, one with a heatsink, and one with a gargantuan water-cooling block. Thanks to Phison’s latest firmware and thermal throttling algorithm, you can squeeze every bit of performance out of this drive without necessarily dunking it in your water-cooling loop. But trust me, a good heatsink or motherboard with integrated cooling will be your best friend here.

Pricing and Specs: Worth Every Penny?

The Corsair MP700 Pro SE is not cheap at all. The device comes in two models, with the 2 TB fetching $355, while the larger 4 TB variant goes for $655. The heatsink and water block editions add $20 to the price.

What’s inside? Driving this beast storage drive are Micron TLC NAND and the Phison E26 controller. The Corsair MP700 Pro SE is paired with either 4GB or 8GB of LPDDR4 DRAM, depending on the capacity, allowing impressive sequential read and write speeds of 14,000 MB/s, and up to 12,000 MB/s, with a guaranteed endurance rating of up to 3,000 TBW.

Key Specs:

Form factor: M.2 2280
Storage capacity: 2 TB, 4 TB
Sequential write: 12,000 MB/s
Sequential read: 14,000 MB/s
Random write: 1,600K IOPS
Random read: 1,700K IOPS
Interface: PCIe 5.0, NVMe 2.0
TBW: 1,400 – 3,000 TB
DRAM: 4 GB (2 TB), 8 GB (4 TB)
Controller: Phison E26
Warranty: 5 years

Performance

To see what the MP700 Pro SE can do, we set it up on our test bench with an Intel Core i9-14900K CPU and an Asus Z690 ROG Maximus motherboard. Using an expansion card with a hefty metal heatsink, we were fully prepared to push this SSD to the extreme.

Performance Showdown:

Drive	SEQ1M Q8T1 Read	SEQ1M Q8T1 Write	SEQ1M Q1T1 Read	SEQ1M Q1T1 Write	RND4K Q32T1 Read	RND4K Q32T1 Write	RND4K Q1T1 Read	RND4K Q1T1 Write
Corsair MP700 Pro SE	14,011 MB/s	11,970 MB/s	8,847 MB/s	9,355 MB/s	1,014 MB/s	718 MB/s	94 MB/s	366 MB/s
Crucial T700	12,398 MB/s	11,814 MB/s	9,460 MB/s	5,839 MB/s	774 MB/s	600 MB/s	82 MB/s	308 MB/s
Samsung 990 Pro	7,465 MB/s	6,897 MB/s	3,878 MB/s	6,046 MB/s	785 MB/s	533 MB/s	72 MB/s	248 MB/s

The MP700 PRO SE took everything we threw at it without sweating. It did pull over 10W of power from the motherboard, which is a lot for a SATA drive. Thanks to the massive heatsink, temperatures were kept under control, never exceeding 70°C.

Is the Corsair MP700 Pro SE Worth It?

So is this the SSD for you? Let’s summarize:

You absolutely have to if:

You are on the hunt for one of the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs.
You are looking to be one of the few who has integrated it into a liquid-cooling loop or has a heatsink handy.
You don’t mind spending a little extra for high performance.

You probably shouldn’t if:

You don’t have much to spend and need more value for your money.
You won’t fully use those blazing transfer speeds.
Your motherboard doesn’t have a spare PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot.

Verdict

The Corsair MP700 Pro SE is quite a serious setup to demonstrate what PCIe 5.0 is capable of. It’s certainly very fast, but on the other hand, also needs quite a bit of cooling and comes with a steep price tag. A no-brainer add-on for the enthusiast who wants the highest performance from their storage device. For your average Joe or if you are on a shoestring budget, it might be overkill.

For now, the MP700 Pro SE is just about as good as it gets for PCIe 5.0 SSDs. Corsair pushed the envelope here and not only delivered a product that meets but exceeds one’s expectations. If you’re pumped to level up your storage game, the Corsair MP700 Pro SE is ready to lead the way.

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