The Corsair Force MP510 SSD (960GB) Review: A High-End Contender
by Billy Tallis on October 18, 2018 10:00 AM ESTPower Management Features
Real-world client storage workloads leave SSDs idle most of the time, so the active power measurements presented earlier in this review only account for a small part of what determines a drive's suitability for battery-powered use. Especially under light use, the power efficiency of a SSD is determined mostly be how well it can save power when idle.
For many NVMe SSDs, the closely related matter of thermal management can also be important. M.2 SSDs can concentrate a lot of power in a very small space. They may also be used in locations with high ambient temperatures and poor cooling, such as tucked under a GPU on a desktop motherboard, or in a poorly-ventilated notebook.
Corsair Force MP510 NVMe Power and Thermal Management Features |
|||
Controller | Phison PS5012-E12 | ||
Firmware | ECFM11.0 | ||
NVMe Version |
Feature | Status | |
1.0 | Number of operational (active) power states | 2 | |
1.1 | Number of non-operational (idle) power states | 3 | |
Autonomous Power State Transition (APST) | Supported | ||
1.2 | Warning Temperature | 70 °C | |
Critical Temperature | 90 °C | ||
1.3 | Host Controlled Thermal Management | Supported | |
Non-Operational Power State Permissive Mode | Not Supported |
The Corsair Force MP510 implements all the usual NVMe power management features and has a comfortably high thermal throttling point. The drive's declared maximum power levels for the active power states look alarmingly high, but our testing didn't push the MP510 anywhere near the claimed 10.73W peak. The idle power states advertise low idle power with quick transition latencies, and our testing of power state 3 shows that the drive isn't exaggerating at all.
Corsair Force MP510 NVMe Power States |
|||||
Controller | Phison PS5012-E12 | ||||
Firmware | ECFM11.0 | ||||
Power State |
Maximum Power |
Active/Idle | Entry Latency |
Exit Latency |
|
PS 0 | 10.73 W | Active | - | - | |
PS 1 | 7.69 W | Active | - | - | |
PS 2 | 6.18 W | Active | - | - | |
PS 3 | 49 mW | Idle | 2 ms | 2 ms | |
PS 4 | 1.8 mW | Idle | 25 ms | 25 ms |
Note that the above tables reflect only the information provided by the drive to the OS. The power and latency numbers are often very conservative estimates, but they are what the OS uses to determine which idle states to use and how long to wait before dropping to a deeper idle state.
Idle Power Measurement
SATA SSDs are tested with SATA link power management disabled to measure their active idle power draw, and with it enabled for the deeper idle power consumption score and the idle wake-up latency test. Our testbed, like any ordinary desktop system, cannot trigger the deepest DevSleep idle state.
Idle power management for NVMe SSDs is far more complicated than for SATA SSDs. NVMe SSDs can support several different idle power states, and through the Autonomous Power State Transition (APST) feature the operating system can set a drive's policy for when to drop down to a lower power state. There is typically a tradeoff in that lower-power states take longer to enter and wake up from, so the choice about what power states to use may differ for desktop and notebooks.
We report two idle power measurements. Active idle is representative of a typical desktop, where none of the advanced PCIe link or NVMe power saving features are enabled and the drive is immediately ready to process new commands. The idle power consumption metric is measured with PCIe Active State Power Management L1.2 state enabled and NVMe APST enabled if supported.
The Corsair Force MP510 has the best active idle power consumption we've seen from a high-end NVMe SSD, and with APST enabled it is second only to Silicon Motion's latest generation of NVMe controllers in deep sleep power savings on our desktop testbed.
This is complemented by a nice quick wakeup from sleep, so aggressive power management settings won't hurt system responsiveness.
42 Comments
View All Comments
leexgx - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
be nice if they do a renew on it as from unreliable source that did a review (toms hard) seems to find the P1 is only a little faster then a MX500 (yes the P1 its a NVME ssd but that's only good for sequential test it seems)yoyomah20 - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
I've been waiting for this review to come out. I'm excited about what corsair has put out, seems like its a pretty good competetor to 970 EVO and WD Black at a cheaper price point. I've been waiting for a power efficient nvme drive to replace my laptop's stock 128GB sata m.2 drive and I think that this is the one! Too bad it's not available anywhere yet...G3TG0T - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
Somehow the price SHOT up by double...G3TG0T - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
Who would buy that for double the price when you could get an EVO 970??!lilmoe - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
Damn Amazon and their sketchy crap. Go to newegg, the price is slightly up 10% though.Lolimaster - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
The other thing is using Office 365 Home, 6TB for $99 a year.shabby - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
Would be nice if all sizes were tested and not just the fastest, you guys should tell oems to send your all the sizes to test.leexgx - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
i could imagine that would take some time to test them, as i would guess Billy/reviewer runs the tests at least 2-3 times to make sure the results are consistent (not looked at the article yet but i guess it was the 1TB one they reviewed)WatcherCK - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
Do OSS NAS solutions (OMV/FreeNAS/Ubuntu+ZOL...) support fast/slow storage tiers transparently? I guess this would look like monolithic storage with the OS caching higher use files behind the scenes... hmmm, how hard would it be to have a hybrid drive that makes use of TLC/QLC (not in a fast caching scenario but say 512GB of TLC and 4/6/8TB QLC in one enclosure and a controller that can present both storage arrays transperently to the OS, an SSD only version of a fusion drive for example.)And agree with other posters about capacity, once 96 layer becomes ubiquitous then SSDs should be able to reach parity with mechanical HDD in terms of density and price as far as non enterprise users are concerned...
Wolfclaw - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Not fussed about top end speed, just cheap mass storage in raid or Microsoft Storage, that wipes the floor with HDD's and can satuate a SATA3 interface is more than enough for me.