Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe Review
Category : Storage
Published by Luca Rocchi on 07.05.18
With the Neutron NX500, Corsair unveils the second NVMe PCIe solid state drive. The SSD comes with HHHL (half-height half-length) form factor and sports a black heat sink with carbon-look accents. We have received the model with 400GB capacity, however Corsair makes other two models with 800GB and 1.6TB capacities. On the following pages we will check in details the performance of this drive.
Specifications / Delivery
| Model | NX500 NVMe PCIe AIC 400GB | NX500 NVMe PCIe AIC 800GB | NX500 NVMe PCIe AIC 1600GB |
| Capacity | 400 GB | 800 GB | 1600 GB |
| Form Factor | PCIe AIC | PCIe AIC | PCIe AIC |
| Memory |
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| Endurance | 5 years | 5 years | 5 years |
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| Cache | 1024 MB DDR3 | 2048 MB DDR3 | 2048 DDR3 |
| Throughput |
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| Accesstime (read) | < 0.1 ms | < 0.1 ms | < 0.1 ms |
| Acoustics | no noise | no noise | no noise |
| Warranty | 5 Years | 5 Years | 5 Years |
With the Neutron NX500, Corsair shows their second PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD. The predecessor, the MP500, was based as well on the same interface however it has less DRAM cache and capacity. Let's talk about specifications, the Corsair MP500 series offers 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities using the M.2-2280 form factor, while the Neutron NX500 comes with 400GB, 800GB and 1600GB capacities.
As mentioned above, both SSDs use the same PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, Phison PS5007-E7 controller and 15nm MLC NAND flash memory. The DRAM cache capacity has been upgraded, for example in the NX500 400GB there is 1GB cache available while the 800GB model gets a 2GB cache. The Neutron NX500 isn't the MP500 mounted on a PCIe adapter card, since the components are installed directly on the PCB. This SSD comes with HHHL (half-height half-length) form factor and sports a black heat sink with carbon-look accents. The heat sink is made out solid aluminum and it keeps the drive rather fresh even after some stress test. The back of the drive is covered by a sturdy metal black plate that attaches to the heat sink on the opposite side with screws.
Furthermore Corsair offers a 5-year warranty plan.
Impressions
Test Setup
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| Benchmarks | Benchmarks
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Iometer QD1 MB/s QD4 MB/s
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Iometer QD8 MB/s QD16 MB/s
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Iometer QD32 MB/s QD64 MB/s
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Queue Depth 64
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Price
| ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 PCIe add-in-card | |
| Corsair Neutron NX500 - 400GB | |
| Intel SSD 600p M2 NVMe - 256GB | |
| Intel SSD 750 - 1.2TB | |
| Kingston HyperX Predator - 480GB | |
| Patriot Hellfire M2 - 480GB | |
| Plextor M6e - 256GB | |
| Samsung 950PRO - 512GB | |
| Samsung 960EVO - 500GB | |
| Samsung 960PRO - 1TB | |
| Toshiba OCZ RD400 - 512GB | |
| Western Digital WD Blue - 250GB |
Conclusion
Announcement: Despite the circumstance that the rating of a product is based on as many objective facts as possible there are factors which can have an influence on a rating after publication. Every autor may perceive data differently over time with one possible reason being a deeper background knowledge or understanding of certain processes. Certain unforeseen market conditions as well as changes have the potential to render a decision made at a certain point in time obsolete.
With the Neutron NX500, Corsair launched the second NVMe SSD based on PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 interface which address enthusiasts and professionals. All new NVMe drives these days simply raise the bar in terms of performance to another level and bring the entire consumer market big step forward. Throughput rates in the region of 2'800 MB/s are about five times as much as what’s achievable with SATA-III, which puts these NVMe drives in a completely different league.
Having a look at the performance number shows that in sequential write and read the Corsair Neutron NX500 is capable of pushing 1'500 MB/s over the bus while sequentially writing and 2'400 MB/s sequentially reading. In terms of random 4k performance this is also not slow drive, performing at 144'000 IOPS for 4k random write and 167'000 IOPS in random read. Overall performance is on a competitive level.
Last but not least this leaves us talking about the price. The 400 Gigabyte version we've tested here costs 269 Euro on Geizhals, which translates into €0.67 per Gigabyte. The NX500 is priced considerably higher than many other SSDs of the same capacity. Although 400GB might be enough for any kind of application, we would like to see more capacity since the 512GB-class is higly contested and here the NX500 lacks of some space. On the other hand, we are well aware that the solid enclosure and the fancy design keep the price rather high.
If 400GB of capacity are enough for you and you are looking for a fast drive that never gets hot, then Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB might be the right choice for your system. We award it with 4 stars out of 5.
