In recent years, Corsair has continued to release quality NVME M.2 SSD drives for PC enthusiasts. The MP700 Elite SSD is one of the company’s latest PCIe 5.0 drives that utilizes Phison’s new PS5031-E31T controller that aims to improve general performance and cooling.
With so many options on the market, however, is the MP700 Elite worth the price for what you get or should you look elsewhere?
Looking at speeds, we tested the SSD using a few methods. The main way was to see just how quick various games loaded after being installed on the drive.
The other way for testing the drive was via synthetic benchmarks. Using CrystalDiskMark, we got read speeds of 9889.59 MB/s and write speeds of 8449.09 MB/s in the sequential benchmark tests. Moving to the Random 4K test, it had a read speed of 79 and a write speed of 320. For comparison purposes, that comes just ahead of the Samsung 990 Pro which, admittedly, could be had a cheaper price on average but is nearly two years older of a product.
That said, the Random 4K performance is where this drive shines. Let’s go back to the games. The game I like to test every SSD on when it comes to loading is Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA 5). A game notorious for its long load times, GTA 5, on average, booted within two minutes—at most. That’s a far cry from the 5+ minutes some SSDs, even modern day ones, can still struggle with. Other games like NBA 2K25, Civilization 6, and Delta Force all had no problem loading under the MP700. I even tried loading both NBA 2K25 and Delta Force at once and, though slower than if they were booting alone, I couldn’t complain about the time it took to load in this unrealistic scenario.
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The best part about the Corsair MP700 Elite SSD is just how cool it remains under use. The drive sits in a PC with a MSI MPG z890 Carbon WiFi motherboard with no heatsink attached to the drive. Temperatures never surpassed 52°C in my personal use.
The Corsair MP700 Elite regularly costs around $215 for a 2TB drive at this point. However, it’s often on sale for around $180, making it more worth it. If you don’t have an internal cooling option with your motherboard, there is an option to pay a bit more to get an MP700 Elite with an included heatsink.
It’s not the cheapest drive available, and there are other quality options out there at a lower price. However, the Corsair MP700 Elite does what it intends to do. Personally, I try to keep my system running as cool and efficiently as possible, and for a drive to not hit 70°C or even 60°C once, that’s a positive in my book. If you’re looking for better sequential read and write speeds, however, this may not be what you’re looking for. Still, it’s hard not to recommend this SSD if you can get it on sale. It does everything well that you won’t need to think about upgrading anytime soon.
VERDICT: Buy if price is under $200; If over, wait for a sale to get the most value for your dollar.
NOTE: An MP700 Elite was provided to Insider Gaming for the purposes of this review. This review first appeared in the Insider Gaming Newsletter. Want to join the discussion? Sign up for the Insider Gaming forums.
Mike has been covering the gaming industry since 2012, and has reported on some of the largest events in the industry while also working as an investigative reporter. Outside of…
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