Corsair is the first PCIe 5.0 SSD Corsair MP700 (opens in new tab)The Corsair MP700 Gen 5 PCIe x4 NVMe 2.0 M.2 SSD features an incredible 10,000 MB/s sequential read speed and 9,500 MB/s sequential write speed. The company advertises the drive as AM5 ready, but that doesn’t stop Intel Alder Lake (and upcoming Raptor Lake) users from benefiting as well.
The MP700 is 40% faster in both sequential read and write speeds than Corsair’s fastest PCIe Gen 4 drive, the MP600 Pro XT. This may be due to the higher bandwidth of PCIe 5.0. PCIe 5.0 enables up to 15.8 GB/s in the M.2 form factor.
The MP700 basically signals that PCIe 5.0 drives are likely to reach consumers this year, not just from Corsair, but from other drive makers as well. Intel had his PCIe 5.0 ready for Alder Lake last year, but the manufacturer wasn’t ready to launch PCIe 5.0 drives when Alder Lake was released.
PCIe 5.0 SSDs were originally expected to only hit the enterprise market in 2022, but thanks to Silicon Motion’s new enthusiast-grade SM2508 controller, PCIe 5.0 SSDs are “limited” in the consumer enthusiast space. Looked ready to make an appearance. (And Corsair’s teaser confirms this: The MP700 is likely to be his SSD in the high-end ‘Enthusiast’ grade.)
With the AM5 launch just around the corner and the technology going mainstream with Intel’s new Raptor Lake CPUs and 700-series chipset motherboards, it’s exciting to see PCIe 5.0 drives in action. That’s what it is.
For now, this is just a teaser for Corsair. There is no release date or full specs shared on the site. However, due to AMD’s upcoming Drive’s touted association with his AM5 platform, we can expect it to launch around the same time as the AM5, either in September or by the end of the year.
