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 |
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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 |
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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.
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gunnys - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
I've been looking to upgrade the drive in my laptop for a while now, and will end up going with this over the 970 Evo. IMO, Samsung needs more serious competitors.It also helps that my experience with Corsair SSDs was back in the days of the Neutron GTX. It was a great drive back in the day.
fadsarmy - Thursday, September 15, 2022 - link
My 240GB MP510 has 15TB out of 400TB written so that leaves 96.25% health remaining. Corsair toolbox and Crystal Disk Info both report 87% health remaining. This equates to about 110TB endurance, way off the 400TB claimed by Corsair. Is there any logical explanation for this?