Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD Review

 

	Review: Corsair Force MP510 Reviewed by: Antonis Sapanidis Provided by: Corsair Model: Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD

September 27, 2010, and I am about to purchase the Corsair Nova 64GB SSD for only 120.11 € which back then was a great deal, and more importantly it was a life changing decision. But we are not in
2010. Thankfully 32GB and 64GB SSD drives are no longer available (as far as I know). What is available however, is the Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD, which replaces the Force MP500 and promises speeds that were unheard back in 2010. For 106€ you can get the 240GB drive with speeds that you could not reach even if you had a few of them in a RAID configuration back in 2010. The Corsair Force MP510 is an m.2 drive and its available in capacities from 240GB up to 2TB. For more information about the drive and pricing you can click here.

Time for me to stop all this nonsense about the past and focus on today, and today I will be taking a look at the Force MP510 NVMe SSD.

Thanks to Corsair for providing the 960GB Force MP510 for this review. For more information about Corsair you can visit their website by clicking here. Let's start this review by taking a look at the packaging and its contents, before moving on to some testing.

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD

As always I will start by taking a look at the package and the contents that are included with the Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD. We'll start with the package.

The front of the box.

Here is the back of the box.

Here is the front of the drive.

Here is the back of the Corsair Force MP510.

 

Specifications of the Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD

Here are the specifications of the Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD, and on paper everything looks very impressive. Let’s start testing this NVMe SSD and see what it has to offer.

CrystalDiskInfo

In the above screenshot we can see all the available info for the Corsair Force MP510 960GB SSD.

 

Let’s head to the next page where we take a look at our testing methods and the review PC.

Test machine

For this review I will be using a computer with the following configuration:

Hardware:

• Motherboard: ASUS X99-A (Intel X99 chipset)
• Processor: Intel Core i7 5280K @ 4GHz
• RAM: Ballistix Sport 4x4GB 2400
• GFX: MSI GTX 960 2GB
• Sound: Onboard Realtek HD audio controller
• OS SSD: HyperX Fury 240GB
• PSU: Seasonic 750W
• Display: Fujitsu Siemens 22”
• Operating System: Windows 10

 

The Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD was connected to the second PCIe slot of the ASUS X99-A motherboard, and it wasn’t seen by the Intel Rapid Storage Technology.

The SATA 6Gbps drivers used on our review PC were Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) Version 14.5.0.1081.

Test applications

To test the performance of the Corsair Force MP510 NVMe 960GB SSD, I will be using the following test applications in this review.

• HD Tune Pro
• ATTO
• Iometer
• AS SSD Benchmark
• CrystalDiskMark
• Anvil’s Storage Utilities
• PCMark

Test procedures

I will start off our testing procedures explanation by stating that I did not run many synthetic benchmarks on the Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD. You may ask why I have run so few synthetic benchmarks.

SSD technology has moved so fast in the last couple of years, that basic synthetic benchmarks alone are now of very limited use, as they don't really tell us much about performance and how the
drive will behave in the real world. I have therefore decided to show some basic benchmarks for the Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD, and will complement this with advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show how the Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD performs in the real world.

The reality of SSD performance

While I can easily show you which SSD is technically the faster, when you use one of these modern SSDs as an operating system drive it becomes very difficult to tell them apart as far as performance
is concerned.

A typical use of a small capacity SSD at the moment is to have your operating system and applications installed onto the SSD. The performance difference compared to a traditional HDD is enormous,
however when you start to compare SSD to SSD the difference becomes almost impossible to detect.

Let’s look at why this is the case.

Drive A can boot to the desktop in 8.11 seconds, and drive B can boot to the desktop in 8.12 seconds, the difference in time is milliseconds, and can one really tell the difference?

The fact is, all modern SSDs are only ticking over when they are only running the OS and launching applications, it’s only when you get to some of the larger capacity SSDs, with enough free space
to be able to hold the actual data that you’re going to be working with, be that video, audio or pictures, for example, that you actually get a tangible difference in performance. This is where the SSDs with the better sequential performance start to pull well ahead of the SSDs which have lower sequential read/write performance.

Small file random IOPS vs sequential performance

IOPS

This is a fairly complex subject, but I will do my best to explain things in a manner that is easy to understand.

The term IOPS is the amount of input or output transactions that can take place in a one second interval, so for example, if an SSD is quoted as being able to cope with 20,000 4K random write IOPS,
then the SSD should be able to cope with 20,000 input transactions in a period of one second. If the same SSD is said to be able to produce 20,000 4K random read IOPS, then the same SSD should be able to produce 20,000 4K random read output transactions in a one second interval.

Okay, now we have some figures to work with, the next question is how many IOPS are actually required?

This will depend on your usage pattern. If you are a typical desktop user who browses the internet, does some word processing or perhaps some audio or video editing, and perhaps plays a few
games, then in actual fact, you don’t need to have massive 4K random read/write performance. The actual amount of 4K random performance that is required for a fast and smooth running system for a desktop user with a usage pattern similar to the above will be well under 1,000 4K IOPS.

On the other hand, if the SSD is being used for running a large and complex database server, then 4K random performance is the absolute measurement of how fast that server will run, as this type of
application does most of its input and output transactions in the 4K domain. So why would I need an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS for a desktop?

In fact you don’t need this type of performance for a desktop, but an SSD which is capable of coping with 80,000 4K IOPS will be faster than an SSD which can only cope with 20,000 4K IOPS.

Okay, I just said if under 1,000 4K IOPS are actually required for typical desktop usage, why is an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS faster than an SSD with only 20,000 4K IOPS, confused?

You may ask, if I only require 1,000 4K IOPS surely the rest is wasted?

While you may never need 80,000 4K IOPS, IOPS is all about latency. The reason that an SSD can cope with as much as 80,000 4K IOPS is because latency in this domain is very low. With 4K files, even if you require to process 500 of them at the same time, you are not talking about a huge amount of data, it has far more to do with how long it takes the SSD to process a single file, and the amount of time required to process a single 4K is all about how long it takes for the SSD to access or store that data before it can move on to the next transaction.

In other words an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS performance will handle those 500 files faster than the SSD with 20,000 IOPS.

So how will a desktop user even notice this faster speed if so little 4K random IOPS and data are actually used?

Multitasking is a good example. The more tasks you run at the same time, you more you will notice the speed difference.

Sequential performance

I have always maintained that sequential performance was every bit as important as small random file performance for a desktop SSD. Some highly regarded people on other sites found this statement
quite funny a couple of years ago when I made it, but my, how times have changed in the world of SSD reviewing.

To me this was always so obvious for a desktop user. For example, let’s say you want to launch an application or game.

Both have some fairly large files to load, and also a great many small files, but the point is, even the smaller files are sequential in nature. Now let’s say you’re into audio or video editing. Video files tend to be huge, and the files are written or read sequentially. Isn’t this how many users are using their PCs these days?

Summary

So how does this shape up in the real world? Which is better, massive 4K IOPS or massive sequential performance?

In an ideal world you want both, as an SSD with massive random 4K IOPS and sequential performance will always be faster than an SSD that has high sequential performance and moderate 4K random IOPS performance, and the same applies to an SSD that has massive 4K random performance and moderate sequential performance. The SSD which has high performance in both patterns will always be the faster SSD.

However, you can still have an SSD that is very fast for desktop use that has moderate random 4K performance and massive sequential performance, the same can be said about a drive having massive
random 4K performance and moderate sequential performance, as it is about getting the balance right if you have to compromise on one or the other.

Drive preparation for running the tests

All the SSDs used in this article were in a clean and fresh state when the testing period started. From then on, each drive had to rely on its own NAND cleaning effectiveness for the remainder of the
tests.

• All SSD used in this article had their partitions aligned to the Windows 10 x64 defaults.

Where I use graphs in this article to display results, I will use the following colours to make it easier, for our readers to see which drive we are reviewing.

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD

Comparison SSD

 

Now let's head to the next page, where I look at some basic benchmarks...

Reading Benchmarks

HD Tune

HD Tune Test – Sequential reading test

2946.1 MB/Sec that’s insane.

ATTO disk benchmark

ATTO has become a standard tool for measuring the data throughput of HDDs and SSDs. It measures the reading and writing performance, using different file sizes and block sizes.

The Corsair Force MP510 SSD achieved its maximum speed on this test.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0

CrystalDiskMark is quite a handy benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause problems for a system drive.

In this test the Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD gives an excellent result.

AS SSD Benchmark

AS SSD benchmark is a benchmarking tool specifically designed to test SSDs. The application tests sequential reading and writing performance, 4K random reading and writing performance.

AS SSD benchmark also tests 4K threaded performance. This is very exciting, as this test is the first available test that I am aware of, that simulates how a PC operating system actually works. A
modern PC and OS, such as Windows Vista/7 does not just run a single thread at a time, it runs many threads. The AS SSD benchmark "4K 64Thrd" tests run 64 threads simultaneously throughout the test. If this result is good, then you can be pretty sure the drive will perform extremely well as a system drive.

After the tests complete, AS SSD benchmark derives a total score for the drive being tested. This is based on all aspects of the test results, and gives an indication of how the drive is performing
overall.

Now let’s look at the results for the Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison drives’ results are presented in the form of a graph.

So far I like what I see. The Corsair Force MP510 SSD gave a score of 5775 and is simply the best that I have seen so far.

Anvil’s Storage Utilities

As well as performing SSD endurance tests. Anvil’s Storage Utilities has a very nice SSD benchmarking application. The SSD benchmark tests many different aspects of SSD performance, including 4K random at different queue depths, and also sequential performance, but more importantly than this, all using real test data.

Another very nice feature of Anvil’s SSD benchmark is the fact that you can change the compression levels of the test data. The compression levels of the data sets used for the tests can be varied
from 0% compression right up to 100% compressed data, and there are even a few data profiles already included, such as database (8%) compression, and also an application profile (46%) compression, which is designed to simulate real application data being read and written to the SSD.

I will include a screenshot of the review drive, and all comparison results will be presented in the form of graphs. If you would like to see screenshots of the test results obtained on the other
SSDs in this article, you can do so by following the link here.

So, let’s begin the tests.

100% incompressible

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD (100% incompressible)

Results are based on the highest total score.

Once again the Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD gave an outstanding performance.

 

Let's head to the next page and run some tests using PCMark 8....

 

PC Mark 8 - HDD Suite

We have built quite a close relationship with FutureMark software, the authors of the PCMark PC benchmarking software that we use in our tests. I decided I would use PCMark Vantage as stopgap
measure until the more up-to-date PCMark 8 benchmarking suite became available.
I'm pleased to say that PCMark 8 is now available, and it gives me great pleasure to introduce you all to the results obtained by this new 'real world' benchmarking suite.

I will describe the basic way that each test is carried out, above the graph for each test.

PC Mark 8 HDD suite results

Here is a screenshot displaying the results for the Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD.

The Corsair Force MP510 takes the first place on the chart with 546.82 MB/S, but still the result is excellent.

The result for the After Effects test.

The result for the InDesign test.

The result for Photoshop heavy test.

The result for the Illustrator test.

The result for the Photoshop light test.

The result for Battlefield 3.

The result for World of Warcraft.

The result for the Word test.

The result for the Excel test.

The result for the PowerPoint test.

Summary:

The Corsair Force MP510 gave some excellent results, as it was expected.

Let's head to the next page for our IOMeter test results....

 

I/O Performance

There is little point of having an SSD drive that has blazing sustained reading and writing speeds, if the drive can't handle reading and writing of small random files. If you intend to use your new
SSD drive to store and run your operating system, then the drive must be able to cope with the many small random files that Windows will write to the drive continually. So I feel it is very important to test how many of these random files that a drive can handle in one second. I believe that anything over 1,000 I/O’s per second would be enough for most users running a consumer grade mainstream PC, and should provide a smooth running system. But obviously, the more I/O's that a drive can handle, the faster the drive will feel and leave more headroom for those huge multitasking sessions that users sometimes engage in.

The things that I will look at are the total I/O per second and total MB/s.

Partition alignment and sector boundaries

Windows 10, Windows 7 and Vista will automatically align a partition to 4k boundaries during partition creation, Windows XP won’t. It is imperative that an SSDs partition is aligned. Windows
XP is also restricted to sector boundaries, while Windows 7 will use 4k boundaries if it can. The Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD is 4k boundary aware, and will use these boundaries if possible. Of course it will also remap LBAs for compatibility with the sector boundaries so that the drive can be used with Windows XP.

IOMeter allows us to set the sector boundaries for conducting the tests, and I have therefore set the sector boundaries at 4K, which means the IOMeter tests are valid for Windows 7 and Windows Vista users. XP users will not be able to obtain such results.

I will provide a screenshot of the tests on the review drive for those of you who like to see the actual test result. All the comparison drive results are represented in the form of graphs.

If any of you would like to see a screenshot from any IOMeter test on a particular drive, please feel free to request one, and I’ll post the screenshot in the forum thread.

All the IOMeter tests create a 10GB data set on the target drive, and each test is run for a duration of 3 minutes.

IOMeter 4K random write test with repeating data.

The first test involves creating continual 4KB random files on the target drive with IOMeter. I use a 4KB file size, as it is believed that Windows will create and modify many of this size of file
constantly in the background during a typical Windows session. It is said that most 4K random writes take place at a queue depth of only one.

Write tests

Queue depth 1

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 1)

The result is outstanding.

Queue depth 4

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 4)

This time the result is very good.

Queue depth 32

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 32)

Again the result is very good, but I still would have liked to have seen a higher number.

 

4K random write queue depth profile

For this test I used various queue depths from 1 – 32 to give you an idea how this SSD performs at different queue depths. For a normal desktop user, with lightweight multitasking, the queue depth will rarely rise above 2. For heavy multitasking, the queue depth is unlikely to rise above a value of 8.

The write performance of the Corsair Force MP510 is very good but it falls behind when compared to the Corsair Force MP500 m.2 drive.

IOMeter 4K random read test.

If there are many 4k files created, then that must also mean that many 4k files need to be read. This test measures 4k reading performance.

Queue depth 1

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 1)

An outstanding result to begin with.

Queue depth 4

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 4)

Once again the result is outstanding.

Queue depth 32

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 32)

The final result is very good.

4K random read queue depth profile.

This test shows how the review drive scales with increasing queue depths.

The Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD shows impressive read performance.

IOMeter 512KB write test with repeating data.

Sequential writing performance is also very important, and in this test I will be measuring the sequential writing performance of the drive.

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD - 512K Sequential write with repeating data

The Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD gave an outstanding result.

IOMeter 512KB read test.

This test measures 512k sequential reading performance.

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD – 512K sequential reading test

The read result, on the other hand, was not that impressive. Still very good but not what I was hoping to see from the
MP510.

IOMeter Workstation simulation (outstanding I/Os = 64).

When running applications you will find that there is a mixture of small random files and larger sequential files, being created, and read. Not only that, it isn’t just one file at a time. In
this test I measure a simulated workstation pattern, with a queue depth of 64 (threaded).

Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD – Workstation simulation

In the last test the Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD delivers an outstanding result achieving 1060MB/Sec.

Summary

The overall performance of the Corsair Force MP510 SSD is excellent. In some tests I did not get the result that I wanted, but overall this is an excellent drive.

Now let's head to the next page for some real world tests....

It has become clear that simply conducting endless benchmarks on SSD drives is pointless. Real users may run a few benchmarks when they first fit their SSD drive, but most users just want a
drive that performs well in the real world. They want their drive to work "out of the box" and work fast and smoothly.

Most of the latest SSD drives can deliver very fast sustained reading and writing speeds, but these alone tell you very little about how the drive will perform in the real world.

If you intend to use your SSD as your primary system drive, with an operating system and applications installed and running from the drive, real world performance becomes much more important than just fast sequential read and write speeds, in this case I felt that it was time to move into a different method of testing.

From now on I will only use the log files from the Event Viewer to measure the start-up and shutdown of the system, and also use filecopy to measure all my copy tests from a RAM disk to the selected
storage drive that I will be testing. For these tests I will also enable all power savings features that are available, since I believe that this is the way that the majority of the users will have them set on  their PC.

Real world copy tests

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I will now conduct some real world copy tests so that you can have a much better view of how the drive will perform. In these simple tests I try to simulate what a real user does with their drives. I
will be copying some mp3 files, various picture and MKV files, and finishing by installing MS Office 2007.

As I said earlier from now on all my test files will be stored in a RAM disk and copied/pasted to the destination drive using filecopy. The filecopy utility will be used from now on for all my tests,
and I’ll be using it this way to measure the time that it takes to copy the files.

Before I move on to the test, I want to give you an idea on how fast your RAM is. Below you can find the results.

As we can clearly see speed isn’t going to be an issue in these tests.

Read write tests – 259 MP3 song files (1.36GB total)

I will start this set of tests by copying 259 MP3 files from the RAM disk to the destination SSD and also from the SSD to the RAM disk.

An outstanding result.

Read write tests – 3,377 JPEG picture files (2.56GB total)

Continuing my set of tests, and this time I will be copying 2.54GB of pictures that are stored in the RAM disk to the currently testing SSD and vice versa.

Both results are outstanding.

Read write tests – 1 MKV and 1 SRT file (3.46GB)

Copying a movie is very common task for all of us, and in this test there are two files that will be copied from the RAM disk to the SSD and again from the SSD to the RAM disk.

We have a repeat, again the Corsair Force MP510 gives outstanding results for both read and write.

Read write tests – ISO (7927MB)

For this test, I copied ISO of the 'Iron Man' movie from the RAMDisk to the SSD and vice versa.

Do you notice a trend here? Yet another outstanding result.

Read write tests – Small files (533MB)

I have decided to adapt the very small files test that I am using as part of my USB3 flash tests, so this time I will be also copying all the files from the RAM disk to the SSD, and again from the SSD to the RAM disk.

What can I say? Once again the result is outstanding.

A few years back this level of speed would be a dream, now it’s a real thing and I simply can’t believe how fast SSDs have become. Soon I will need more RAM and larger files to test the drives, because
most tasks are finished almost at the same time as my fingers leave Ctrl+V.

Windows start-up based on the Boot Racer 5.00

Start-up time

On the next screen shot you can compare the current tested SSD and compare it to other drives that I have tested. Below I present the results.

The boot time test was one of the few real world tests in which the Corsair Force MP510 was very close to the top performing drive, which it also happens to replace, and gave a result of 23.703 seconds.

Installing applications

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Installing applications is possibly something you don't do that often. But should you replace your system disk, then you will most likely have to re-install your applications. Most of the SSD
drives I have tested up until now are quite slow at installing applications, most likely because their I/O performance was quite limited.

For these tests, we picked some popular applications and copied the entire contents of the CD or DVD media to the RAM disk.
We did this to make sure that the reading speed of our CD/DVD reader would not hamper the performance of the target drive.

We then installed these applications onto our comparison HDD drives, which were all running mirror image installations of our Windows 10 64-bit installation, and timed the amount of time taken to
install the application with a stopwatch on each of the drives.

MS Office 2007 Enterprise (full install)

Now let’s see how the Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD performs with the installation of MS Office 2007 Enterprise Edition.

The procedure followed was very simple. I copied all the files from the CD to the RAM disk and used the virtual drive as a source for the installation files.

 

83 seconds is a great result.

Speed degradation after heavy testing

On this page I will measure how the SSD performs after heavy testing and usage.

I will run an AS SSD benchmark test when the OS is freshly installed so that we can get a good view of how the drive performs with the OS. After that I will fill the drive up to 50% of its capacity, use the drive for a few days, and then re-run the AS SSD benchmark.
The same procedure will be followed once again, but this time the drive will be filled close to 90% or higher of its capacity. To finish this test, I will simply delete all the extra data and leave the PC idle for a few hours so that the controller has the time to perform any necessary cleaning, then see how the drive performs.

In this picture you can see the test files that I will be copying to fill the drive with data, as you can see files vary from 8GB ISOs to very small text files.

In the picture below you will find all the applications that were installed for this test using Ninite, and I have also installed Microsoft Office 2007.

Now let’s start our tests.

 

Starting with the fresh install of Windows 10 (Version 1809), and running AS SSD to get an idea of how the Corsair Force MP510 performs, we can see that the score is very good for a drive that has the OS plus the default Windows power plan.

As expected, there was a drop in performance when the drive is left with less than 7GB of free space.

When the drive is half empty it manages to give a very impressive result.

With all the extra files deleted, and allowing it to run idle for a few minutes, the Corsair Force MP510 gave the best result.

This concludes our review. To read the final thoughts and conclusion, click the link below....

 

The conclusion.

Time to close this review, and I can only say 'Wow, this is an outstanding drive'. It's almost the best drive that you can have if you are an enthusiast, almost since I never got it to reach some of the IOPS that Corsair claims on the box, but if I am honest it did not bother me, as I have been using this drive for almost a month and has always given me the impression that I only had it for one or two days. The Corsair Force MP510 NVMer SSD is a speed demon, not only is it fast, in almost all the tests that I have run but it's also insanely fast in real world use. I have to say that copying and pasting a file from one location to another is almost instantaneous, and boot times were always very consistent.

We always want more, and the five year warranty that Corsair gives to the MP510 shows how much confidence they have, plus you should be able to use this drive more than five years, especially if you go for the 960GB drive. You can also use the SSD tool box that Corsair offers with all of their SSDs, and this software also gives more points to the Force MP510 although a small update to the interface would be nice.

The Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD is not a cheap drive, so you will have to pay a premium for what it offers. I would be more than happy to pay the 260€ for this drive however as its fast, very fast,
and if I am honest even a few years back I could only dream about this level of performance for a consumer level drive.

To sum up, this is what I would say:

The Corsair Force MP510 is the NVMe drive to have. It gave me a huge smile, and the only other time that I got this silly look on my face was back when I first used an SSD, so if you are an enthusiast, and you want the best, then the Force MP510 has you covered.

Therefore, I give the 'Excellent' rating and the "Editor's Choice" award to the Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe SSD.

Thanks to:

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