Now that AMD has kicked off the transition to PCI Express 4.0 in the consumer PC market, peripheral vendors are racing to follow suit. Phison is on track to deliver the first PCIe 4.0-capable NVMe controller for consumer SSDs, so many of their customers are announcing products based on the new PS5016-E16 controller. Corsair is one of the first in turn to announce their drive, with the new MP600 M.2 NVMe SSD.

The specifications disclosed so far for the MP600 are still incomplete, but the most important point is that the MP600 will be launching in July alongside AMD's new Ryzen 3000 series processors and their X570 chipset, both providing PCIe 4.0 lanes. Corsair hasn't specifically committed to launching on the same 7/7 date as AMD, but even shipping in the same month is a win for Phison and their partners. No other SSD controller vendor has announced a PCIe 4.0 capable client SSD controller, and even if that changes this week during Computex, Phison will almost certainly be first to market.

Corsair Force Series NVMe SSD Comparison Model MP600 MP510 MP500 Form Factor double-sided

M.2 2280

(with heatsink) double-sided

M.2 2280 double-sided M.2 2280 Interface NVMe, PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe, PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe, PCIe 3.0 x4 Controller Phison PS5016-E16 Phison PS5012-E12 Phison PS5007-E7 NAND Flash undisclosed 3D TLC Toshiba 64-layer 3D TLC Toshiba 15nm MLC Capacities ? 240GB–1920GB 120GB–960GB Sequential Read up to 4950 MB/s up to 3480 MB/s up to 3000 MB/s Sequential Write up to 4250 MB/s up to 3000 MB/s up to 2300 MB/s Random Read ? up to 610k IOPS up to 260k IOPS Random Write ? up to 570k IOPS up to 230k IOPS Warranty 5 years 5 years 3 years Write Endurance ? 1.0 DWPD 0.7 DWPD Release Date July 2019 October 2018 December 2016

The MP600 will be capable of up to 4950MB/s for sequential reads and 4250MB/s for sequential writes, both significant increases over any consumer SSD currently available, such as the MP510 it will be replacing. That performance likely only applies to the largest capacity MP600, but Corsair hasn't announced what specific capacities will be available; our guess is that the product line will go up to the same 1920GB as the MP510. The MP600 includes a simple black heatsink over the M.2 module, which may actually be necessary to hit the new higher speeds.

Pricing for the MP600 has not yet been announced. The warranty will be the usual 5 years, but write endurance has not been announced. And, of course, the drive will be backwards-compatible with existing PCIe 3.0 systems.