CORSAIR MP700 ELITE: Everything You Need to Know

The MP700 ELITE is the newest SSD from CORSAIR. As you may be able to discern from the name, this is a PCIe 5.0 SSD that supports the latest technologies to offer impressive throughput numbers, just like the MP700 PRO and MP700 PRO SE. Unlike those drives, though, this isn’t aimed at offering the absolute best performance around. Instead, it is more of a mainstream offering that sacrifices some of the top-of-the-range benchmarks for a more affordable price point and easier-to-manage thermals. This means that the MP700 ELITE works in plenty of systems without demanding elaborate cooling, including laptops. You’ll need a laptop that supports PCIe 5.0 SSDs to make the most out of it, but it’s good to have the options as we move forward.

It’s worth noting that while the MP700 ELITE isn’t focused on winning the benchmark races, it’s still a high-performance SSD, particularly when compared to the previous generation. Even the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs pale next to the breakneck performance on offer here. You’re looking at up to 10,000MB/s for sequential reads and up to 8,500MB/s for sequential writes, which is a lot faster than the 7,100MB/s and 6,800MB/s you’ll see for the likes of the MP600 PRO LPX. This is a very fast drive on PCIe 4.0 platforms, but if you’ve got the option to jump up to PCIe 5.0 then it’s clear that the MP700 ELITE has a significant lead. You can use this drive with older platforms, including PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0, though peak throughput can only be achieved on PCIe 5.0.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, though, it’s good to go over the spec sheet and see what’s what with this new family of drives.

As you can see from the table above, there are two versions of the MP700 ELITE available: with and without a heatsink. Other than that, there aren’t many differences between them – they offer the same throughput and capacities regardless of which model you pick. Which one you should get depends on the system you are looking to use it in. For instance, you’ll want the base drive without a heatsink if you’re going to put it into a laptop or a motherboard that comes with a quality heatsink preinstalled. However, if your motherboard doesn’t come with any cooling, then the MP700 ELITE with Heatsink makes sense.

The MP700 ELITE with Heatsink comes with a chunky yet and attractive matte black aluminum cooler measuring 80mm x 23mm x 18mm. This is more than up to the task of keeping your drive chilled under load. You will still need reasonable airflow in your system, of course, as shifting the heat away from the SSD is only part of the solution, but given the controller on the MP700 ELITE only draws 6W on average, this isn’t anywhere near as toasty as most PCIe 5.0 SSDs.

With the likes of the MP700 PRO and MP700 PRO SE, we produced a Hydro X Series version which could be plumbed into your custom cooling loop, but haven’t done this here as the drive shouldn’t need such high levels of cooling. If this is something you still want to do though, there’s nothing stopping you from picking up the Hydro X Series XM2 M.2 SSD Water Block and using it with the MP700 ELITE.

The CORSAIR MP700 ELITE and MP700 ELITE with Heatsink are speedy PCIe 5.0 SSDs that offer strong performance and longevity at a tempting price point. They’re not designed to top the performance charts, but they do offer a substantial performance boost compared to PCIe 4.0 drives. With support for Microsoft DirectStorage and 1TB and 2TB capacities available at launch, they provide new options for anyone looking to build a new system or upgrade their current one. You will need to have a processor and motherboard that support PCIe 5.0 SSDs to get the most out of them, but given that Intel’s and AMD’s last few generations of CPUs do just that, you should have this covered.