Corsair MP400 4TB Review

Conclusion

Storage is one of those things that we can never have enough of. Whether it is just because you have a fancy DSLR that chucks out massive file sizes, or a 4K camera on your phone, or you like recording your gaming exploits to share with the world, or simply have a lot of games, it is almost impossible to have too much capacity. With the newest Call of Duty pushing over 200GB and the next generation of titles that will be designed for the Xbox Series X or Playstation 5 promising to be just as enormous then suddenly the 4TB capacity of the Corsair MP400 doesn’t seem as extravagant as it might have a couple of years ago.

Storage drives are largely judged on two key elements. Price and speed. That’s true of much of our hardware, but with drives offering little else it’s something that is even more sharply in focus. The move to QLC NAND has enabled manufacturers to produce higher capacity drives that come at a considerably reduced price point when compared to the early SSDs and M.2 drives we saw. Ten years ago a 120GB drive would cost you £400. Now you can have, in the form of the Corsair MP400 we’re reviewing today, 4000GB for £635. 40 times the capacity for twice the price. A twenty fold reduction in £/GB.

This transition to QLC NAND hasn’t come at the cost of speed though. The Phison PS5012-E12S is a seriously capable controller, with support for all the technologies that let us sleep at night. SmartRefresh to monitor the ECC and move data around to ensure that longevity isn’t compromised by only writing small data to the same part of the NAND. SmartECC to repair those pages if SmartRefresh detects an issue, and SmartFlush to move data to the longer term storage in a speedy manner to maintain your data integrity should you suffer a power failure. It might seem a small thing but for those of us who live out in the sticks the power goes off at a slight breeze. Integrity is one thing but the consistent speed is thanks to the combination of that E12S controller and modern QLC NAND. The Corsair MP400 is just as quick in nearly every test as the TLC equipped Corsair MP510 was, and a match for any of the best of the PCI Express 3.0 drives in our graphs. Sure the Samsung 980 Pro takes the crown but then that is PCI Express 4.0.

For Intel or AM3 users the Corsair MP400 is all the blazing speed you need at a capacity that enables you to stop uninstalling games every time a new one gets released, and all at a price that makes you appreciate how far Solid State Drives have come in the last few years. It’s the perfect drive for the dedicated gamer.

Reviewed 4TB model with MSRP of £634.99

  

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