Corsair Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD review

 

	Review: Corsair Neutron NX500 Reviewed by: Antonis Sapanidis Provided by: Corsair Model: Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD Firmware version: E7FM04.5

Corsair is a name that to most of our
readers is synonymous with high performance storage devices, and when it comes
to storage their line-up has almost everything that you will need, but that
does not end on storage. There is something very impressive with Corsair, and
that is their ability to have products that are the best in their class, in
this case we are focused on storage. Corsair over the years has released some
very impressive SSD’s, and some more recent examples are, the Neutron
XTi, and after that they released the Force
MP500 an outstanding NVMe SSD. By know its crystal clear that when it comes
to storage Corsair has gone the extra step and also pushed their drives to the
maximum, now they have a brand new drive, the Neutron NX500 that on spec
appears to be faster than the Force MP500. So let’s find out what the drive can
do.

A thanks to Corsair for Providing the
Neutron NX500 for this review. For more information about Corsair you can visit
their website, just click here. Let's
start this review by taking a look at the packaging and its contents, before
moving on to some testing.

Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD

As always I will start by taking a look at
the package and the contents that are included with the Corsair Neutron NX500
NVMe SSD. We'll start with the package.

The front of the box.

Here is the back of the box.

Inside the box you will find a quick
installation guide, the Neutron NX500 and a low profile bracket.

Here is the front of the drive.

Here is the back of the Corsair Neutron
NX500.

A look at what’s inside the drive, when the
heatsink is removed.

Also the back side of the PCB.

The PHISON E7 controller.

The Toshiba NAND on the Corsair Neutron
NX500.

Specifications of the Corsair Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD

Here are the specifications of the Corsair
Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD, and from what we can see they look impressive,
300K IOPS on random read, and 270K IOPS on random write, plus a five year
warranty, and we are off to a great start, so let’s start testing this SSD and
see what it has to offer.

CrystalDiskInfo

In
the above screenshot we can see all the available info for the Corsair Neutron
NX500 400GB 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 @ 4.4GHz
• 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 Neutron NX500 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
Neutron NX500 NVMe 400GB 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
Neutron NX500 400GB 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 Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD, and will complement
this with advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show
how the Corsair Neutron NX500 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.

Ok, 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.

OK, 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
Neutron NX500 400GB 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

As it was expected the newer Corsair NVMe
SSD topped the chart.

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 Neutron NX500 SSD had no
problems reaching its maximum rated speed. So far everything is looking good.

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 Neutron NX500 NVMe
SSD gives an excellent result.

Here is another look at the Crystal Disk
Mark, this time on the 4K Q32 test I select four threads, and as we can see
there is a big imprudent.

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
Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison
drives’ results are presented in the form of a graph.

On this test the Corsair Neutron NX500
falls a little back from its brother the Force MP500, but overall the result is
excellent.

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 Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD.

The Corsair Neutron NX500 takes the second
place on the chart, 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 results for the Corsair Neutron NX500
NVMe SSD are simply excellent.

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 Neutron NX500 400GB 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 Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 1)

The result is excellent.

Queue depth 4

Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 4)

This time the result is good, but I was
expecting a better result.

Queue depth 32

Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 32)

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

 

Queue depth 32 (Four workers)

Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 32 with four workers)

Here the result is excellent, the drive was
able to reach 225533 IOPS, an impressive number and close the 270K IOPS that
Corsair says that the drive can do..

 

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 Neutron
NX500 is very consistent but it fall 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 Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 1)

An excellent result to begin with.

Queue depth 4

Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 4)

Once again the result is excellent.

Queue depth 32

Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 32)

The final result is also excellent, but I
would have liked to see a higher number.

Queue depth 32 (four workers)

Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD (Queue depth 32 with four workers)

This is an impressive result, 305K IOPS, is
outstanding.

4K random read queue depth profile.     

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

The performance of the Corsair Neutron
NX500 NVMe SSD show an 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 Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD - 512K Sequential write with repeating data

The Corsair Neutorn NX500 NVMe SSD showed
the best result on this test that I have seen so far.

IOMeter 512KB read test.

This test measures 512k sequential reading
performance.

Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD – 512K sequential reading test

Again the best result on the read test for
the Corsair Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD.

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 Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD – Workstation simulation

On the last test the Corsair Neutron NX500 NVMe
SSD showed an outstanding result.

Summary

It’s no surprise that the Corsair Neutron
NX500 400GB NVMe SSD is one of the fastest drives that I have tested, I would
have like to see better numbers in the 4K write test but still the result are
excellent.

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

Power requirements and efficiency

Storage device manufacturers by law must
provide power consumption specifications with their storage device products.
Quite often these specifications are quite vague, and rarely, if ever, publish
the power efficiency of their storage devices with regard to how much work a
storage device can do for a given amount of energy consumed. In this article we
will disclose with unprecedented precision, the energy efficiency of some
popular storage devices. 

Myce has now secured a piece of 'state of
the art' test equipment, which takes a sample every four micro-seconds, that I will
be using to measure the power consumption of consumer grade SSDs and HDDs. I'm so
very proud to be able to announce that Myce.wiki, in partnership with Quarch Technology, now aims to bring our
readers the most comprehensive, and accurate, power consumption tests ever
carried out on consumer grade storage devices, to be found anywhere on the
Internet.

Myce’s Power Testing will be carried out using
Quarch Technology products. More specifically we are privileged that Quarch has
allowed us to use their latest Programmable Power Module (‘PPM’) and we would
also like to take this opportunity to give a huge 'thank you' to Quarch for
providing this equipment. The PPM is specifically designed for testing low
power sleep states on modern SSDs and as such has a remarkably accurate low
level current measurement, down to 100μA (micro amps, or
millionths of an amp). Please click here
for details.

Quarch Technology is a world leader in the
supply of testing solutions for the data storage industry and if you would like
any further information please visit their website by clicking here. 

Let's take a closer look at the Quarch PPM
box in a bit more detail.

Quarch
Technology PPM

The Quarch Technology PPM is able to provide
two power supply rails to the target SSD. A 12V (volt) rail is required for
PCIe based SSDs, and also for SATA HDDs, SATA HDDs also require the 5V rail to
function. All the power requirements of a SATA SSD are handled by the 5V rail.

The Quarch Technology PPM can switch
between 5V and 3.3V on the secondary power output channel as required. So for
SATA based SSDs it is set to 5V, and for PCIe based SSDs, it is set to 3.3V.  

On the right of the Quarch PPM, you can see
the socket where the main power injection lead connects.

On the rear of the box (not shown) you will
find a USB 2 socket, a power socket (to supply power to the unit) and a
Torridon connection interface, for connecting to external equipment.

My setup.

Although the Quarch Technology PPM can be
used on a single PC, which can act both as host and measurement system, I will
be using two PCs to run the tests. One PC will handle the measurements, and the
second PC will act both as a host for the target SSD, and will also be used to
load the target SSD with data. This will allow me to do some pretty fancy power
consumption tests.

 

I will first show the type of workload
being used to load the SSD during the power consumption test. I will then
present the power consumption graph, and power consumption statistics of the
SSD.

I will display the results in the form of
bar graphs, at the end of each test carried out in this article, so one can
compare the results obtained on all the SSDs featured in this article.

I will use the following IOMeter test
patterns to load the SSD or HDD.

• 4K random read and write at a queue depth
  of 1 (to emulate a lightweight consumer workload).
• 4K random read and write at a queue depth
  of 4 (to emulate a medium workload).
• 4K random read and write at a queue depth
  of 32 (to emulate a heavy workload).
• 512K sequential read (to emulate reading
  a sequential file from the storage device).
• 512K sequential write (to emulate writing
  a sequential file to the storage device).

Power requirements for a lightweight consumer workload. -
4K random read and write QD1

A typical lightweight consumer workload
will generally be at very low queue depths. Typically at a queue depth of one
or less. I'm testing random data at a block size of 4 Kilobytes, as this block
size of small random files is generally accepted as the most frequently
occurring in the consumer environment.

I will show the chart generated by the
Quarch PPM for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in
the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested
SSDs.

There will actually be two bar graphs for
each test. The first graph will show the average power consumption during the
test run. The second graph, which is much more important, will indicate the
power efficiency of the storage device, showing how much work the storage
device can do for each Watt of energy it consumes.

4K Random Read - queue depth 1

Corsair
Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD – 4K random read QD1

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD1 random read test.

A very good result.

 

4K Random Write - queue depth 1

Corsair
Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD – 4K random write QD1

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD1 random write test.

The result if excellent.

Power requirements for a medium weight consumer workload.
- 4K random read and write QD4

A typical medium weight consumer workload
will generally be at a queue depth of four or lower. This workload would
typically involve some multitasking, with perhaps two or three applications
running, and processing data simultaneously.  I'm testing random data at a
block size of 4 Kilobytes, as this block size of small random files is
generally accepted as the most frequently occurring in the consumer
environment.

I will show the charts generated by the
Quarch PPM, for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in
the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested
SSDs.

4K Random Read - queue depth 4

Corsair Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD – 4K random read QD4

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD4 random read test.

Yet another excellent result.

4K Random Write - queue depth 4

Corsair
Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD – 4K random write QD4

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD4 random write test.

The Corsair Neutron NX500 continues to
impress.

Power requirements for a heavyweight consumer workload. -
4K random read and write QD32

Whilst this workload is unlikely arise for
the casual consumer PC user, it could well appear in a semi-professional
consumer environment, such as in a graphics workstation. This workload would
usually involve heavy multitasking, and having several processes running
concurrently that require constant access to small files located on the storage
device for input or output.

I'm testing random data at a block size of
4 Kilobytes, as this block size of small random files is generally accepted as
the most frequently occurring in the consumer environment.

I will show the chart generated by the
Quarch PPM, for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in
the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested
SSDs.

4K Random Read - queue depth 32

Corsair
Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD – 4K random read QD32

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD32 random read test.

Once again the result is excellent.

4K Random Write - queue depth 32

Corsair
Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD – 4K random write QD32

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD32 random write test.

The Corsair Neutron NX500 again is able to
give an excellent result.

Power requirements of a storage device when reading and
writing sequential data

Not all of a consumer workload is based
around the reading and writing of small random files. Many files are sequential
in nature, and can vary in size from a few Kilobytes to several Gigabytes, so
your storage device will spend a lot of time reading and writing sequential
data.

I'm testing sequential data at a block size
of 512 Kilobytes.

512KB Sequential read

Corsair
Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD – Sequential read

The
average power consumption for the 512K read test.

An outstanding result for the Corsair
Neutron NX500.

512KB Sequential write

Corsair
Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD – Sequential write

The
average power consumption for the 512K write test.

Another excellent result for the Corsair
Neutron NX500.

Power requirements of storage devices when they are idle
and doing no work at all

The practical reality relating to power
consumption is that it can be quite erratic and sometimes unpredictable. Some
of us will invest in the most powerful PC we can afford, only to find that the
PC can spend quite a lot of time running and doing absolutely nothing. Storage
devices are no different.

Often we can be sitting idly pondering what
to do next, or perhaps browsing the Internet. When we arrive at a page that
interests us, we will read it, and that can take a fair amount of time to
complete. During this period the storage device will most likely be idle, but
still consuming energy.

In this test, I'm measuring how much energy
the storage device consumes when doing no work at all and with link power
management disabled.

Corsair
Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD – Drive idle

The Corsair Neutron NX500 continues to show
an impressive result.

I will now show one more test, and this
should be regarded as for information purposes only.

Power requirement trace of an SSD booting Windows 10, in
real time.

This test is for interest only, and shows
the power requirements of the review SSD booting Windows 10 to the desktop.

Corsair
Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD – Real time trace of the drive booting Windows 10 to the
desktop.

 

Summary

The drive consumes a lot of power, but then
again if you look at the IOPS per Watt graphs you can clearly see that it’s
worth it, overall excellent performance for the Corsair Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD.

Now let’s head to the next page where we
will look at how the Corsair neutron NX500 NVMe SSD performs using Anvil's
Storage utilities....

 

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.

Anvil’s Storage Utilities is still in beta
at the moment, but the application is currently solid enough to use in this
article, and I have already verified the results obtained using an SATA
analyser.

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.

I will also be testing three different
compression profiles, which are as follows.

• 0 fill (100% compressible data)
• Application simulation profile (46%
  compressed)
• 100% (non compressible data)

 So let’s begin the tests.

0 fill

Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD (0 fill)

Results
are ranked by highest total score.

The result is very good, but the Force
MP500 shows slightly better results.

Application profile

Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD (application profile)

Results are ranked by highest total score.

Again the Corsair Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD,
was only able to reach the second place on the chart, but still the result is
very impressive.

100% incompressible

Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD (100% incompressible)

Results are based on the highest total score.

Once again the Corsair Neutron NX500 NVMe
SSD shows very good performance, but it wasn’t able to top the chart.

Summary

Overall the performance is excellent, but
as always with something newer you expect some kind of an improvement, this
time I did not see that, but still the Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD is
an excellent drive for all of us that are looking for an NVMe SSD.

 

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

---

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 outstaing.

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.

Same story again, both result are
outstanding.

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.

Again the result is outstanding for the
Corsair Neutron NX500 NVMe SSD.

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.

Another outstanding result for the Corsair
Neutron NX500.

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 was one of the few real world
test that the Corsair Neutron NX500 did not top the chart, but this test is
here as a reference and the result will vary on your system.

Installing applications

---

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 Neutron NX500 400GB 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.

 

OK, 97 seconds is not the fastest that I
have seen, but its not slow, plus you will only once install office.

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,
and running AS SSD to get an idea of how the Corsair Neutron NX500 performs, we
can see that the score is close to the one that I got when the drive was
connected as a spare. This result is very good especially as I always have all
power saving features enabled for this test and also I am using the default
power plan of windows 10.

As expected there was a drop in performance
when the drive is left with less than 4GB of free space, and this has a bigger
impact on the write speed. Once again I would advise you not to have the drive
working with this little space.

With all the extra files deleted, and
allowing it to run idle for a few minutes, the Corsair Neutron NX500 showed an
excellent result very close the first one.

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

 

The conclusion.

Corsair once again has deliver an excellent
drive, the Neutron NX500 has outstanding read performance, in real world tests
and also on every other test that I run. Not that frequently I have the
pleasure to test drives that can achieve over 300K IOPS with IOMeter on read
tests. Also, and equally important, is the write speed of the Neutron NX500.
It’s very impressive, the Neutron NX500 did not hit the advertised 270K but it
got very close toping at +220K, is something that does not go unnoticed and for
a very long time those numbers were only seen on enterprise drives, so this
level of performance is still excellent for a consumer drive.

Power consumption is another area that the
Neutron NX500 does impress with its performance, I know that by simply looking at
some tests the numbers might not look that impressive, but take one minute to
remember what the Neutron NX500 can achieve and also look at the IOPS per Watt
graphs, then come back and say that this level or performance isn’t impressive.
High performance comes with a high power consumption, but IOPS per Watt rewards
those that want the best without any compromises.

 
The Corsair Neutron NX500 is also one of the best looking SSDs that I have
seen, it will look good in almost any PC build no matter what the colour scheme
that you have. Pricing is high for the Neutron NX500, and this is my only
complait that I have about the drive, it’s currently priced 50€ higher than the
Corsair Force MP500, but with that extra 50€ you get excellent build quality, a
drive that is HHHL and it has excellent cooling, also it comes with a five year
of warranty.

To sum up, this is what I would say:

The Corsair Neutron NX500 is a high
performance drive and it’s aimed to those that only want the best, if you are
one of those users you will find an excellent drive that will stay in your
system for a long time with excellent performance.

Therefore, I give the 'Excellent' award to
the Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe SSD.

 

Thanks to:

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