The Corsair MP400 1TB QLC NVMe SSD: A Quick Review
by Billy Tallis on December 11, 2020 2:00 PM ESTMixed IO Performance
Our tests of mixed read/write IO vary the workload from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The mixed random IO test uses a queue depth of 4 while the mixed sequential IO test uses a queue depth of 1. The tests are confined to a 64GB span of the drive, and the drive is given up to one minute of idle time in between each mix tested.
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The QLC NVMe drives like the Corsair MP400 have a clear advantage over the DRAMless TLC drives for mixed read/write workloads. This is particularly pronounced for the mixed random IO test, where the DRAMless TLC drives are even slower than the QLC SATA drive. On the mixed sequential IO test, those DRAMless TLC drives can compete with some of the slower QLC NVMe drives, but the 8-channel Phison E12 controller used in the Corsair MP400 and Sabrent Rocket Q helps them stay ahead as the faster budget NVMe strategy.
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The budget NVMe drives all have worse power efficiency during the mixed IO tests than any of the high-end options, but the Corsair MP400 has some of the best efficiency scores within the budget NVMe segment. The 8TB Sabrent Rocket Q trails behind the 1TB MP400 because of the extra power draw of so many NAND dies.
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The Corsair MP400's performance curves through the mixed random and sequential IO tests generally resemble what we saw for the Sabrent Rocket Q. On the mixed sequential IO test, the 8TB Rocket Q generally maintained a clear performance lead over the 1TB MP400 (at the cost of much higher power draw), but their performance scaling across the random IO test is very similar. The overall shape of the performance curves for these QLC drives has a lot more in common with mainstream TLC drives than it does with the entry-level DRAMless TLC drives; the QLC drives are slower than mainstream TLC drives, but not as obviously limited as the DRAMless drives.
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, and depending on which NVMe driver is in use. Additionally, there are multiple degrees of PCIe link power savings possible through Active State Power Management (APSM).
We report three 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. Our Desktop Idle number represents what can usually be expected from a desktop system that is configured to enable SATA link power management, PCIe ASPM and NVMe APST, but where the lowest PCIe L1.2 link power states are not available. The Laptop Idle number represents the maximum power savings possible with all the NVMe and PCIe power management features in use—usually the default for a battery-powered system but rarely achievable on a desktop even after changing BIOS and OS settings. Since we don't have a way to enable SATA DevSleep on any of our testbeds, SATA drives are omitted from the Laptop Idle charts.
The Corsair MP400 identifies itself as having the same idle power management capabilities as the Sabrent Rocket Q, and significantly lower maximum power draw in its active power states than the very pessimistic figures our 8TB Rocket Q sample provides to the OS.
The active and desktop idle power values we measured for the MP400 are a bit lower than for the Rocket Q 8TB, which is to be expected given the lower part count on the 1TB MP400. Waking up from the intermediate desktop idle state is extremely quick, but waking from the deepest sleep state is just a bit on the slow side.
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Spunjji - Monday, December 14, 2020 - link
This is the only one of the anti-QLC tropes I see routinely rolling around this comment section that I 100% unequivocally agree with.A quick scan through a certain UK retailer shows the cheapest 1TB drive is the Intel 665p at £89, with the cheapest (relatively crappy) TLC drive at £96 and a WD Blue at £103. Worse still, at the 2TB level the positions flip and the WD Blue is *cheaper*.
At the 1TB level, even though I know objectively that the 665p would be fine for my purposes I'd still be tempted to pay the £14 extra for the Blue. If the difference were £25 or more, I wouldn't.
GeoffreyA - Monday, December 14, 2020 - link
It's as if margarine were suddenly the same price as butter, or quite close, and the makers, exterting their marketing force, succeeded (almost succeeded) in blurring the distinction between the two.It would be nice if somebody did a giant endurance experiment, finding out exactly where these QLC drives stand, like the one Techreport tackled in 2015, writing an horrific number of TBs till the drives "breathed their last." There will be surprises.
Oxford Guy - Monday, December 14, 2020 - link
They will succeed. Getting everyone to go to a small form factor was very helpful, along with, apparently, not producing TLC in 1024Gbit dies.Margarine was superior to butter back in the day, remember? Superior partially hydrogenated technology. Because they said so.
Oxford Guy - Monday, December 14, 2020 - link
Not the best comparison, though – since butter was still widely available for reasonable prices.QLC, by contrast, is intended to ruin the economy of scale of TLC. We could find farmers with butter churns pretty easily. Not so easy to find small-scale TLC foundries for the peasantry.
GeoffreyA - Tuesday, December 15, 2020 - link
"Margarine was superior to butter back in the day, remember? Superior partially hydrogenated technology. Because they said so."Nice one.
Oxford Guy - Monday, December 14, 2020 - link
QLC doesn't need "tropes" any more than it needs cheerleading.Reality is that 16 voltage states is more problematic than 8 and fewer.
boredsysadmin - Monday, December 14, 2020 - link
I 100% agree with @kpb321I am also surprised that SK Hynix Gold P31 didn't make the last page budget consumer NVMe SSDs. MP400 1TB costs $114 on amazon, while one of the fastest budget drives in the review, P31 1TB, is currently at $120.60 - Which one you'd buy? I am "puzzled" by QLC drive makers' greed to raise the price per TB on bigger drives. They aren't the first to fill that niche - I expect the opposite - higher drives to be more expensive but priced the same or cheaper per TB.
Drkrieger01 - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link
I love how everyone's up in arms at 'Endurance'. Let me give you some insight on just how much 'endurance' you really need. I build a 'high speed storage' server, 16x 840 Evo 1TB, LSI MegaRaid 9750 16i back in 2014. We've been pounding the piss out of this server for *6* years. Not a single drive has reallocated sectors. I believe we've crossed a few petabytes on some of the drives, even after having to flash firmware updates and re-zero the drives due to the decay issue on the 840 Evo's.I'm sure these new drives will be just fine for the average user.
inighthawki - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link
Let's not forget that most people aren't coming *remotely* close to what you're doing. I bet even most power users would struggle to *consistently* write more than 10-20GB per day average to these drives. Hitting the endurance ratings at these rates would take decades. The SSDs will have been long discarded by that point.Even for the exceptional power user writing 100+GB a day, they would need to consistently do that every day for nearly 6 years to hit the endurance cap on the 1TB model. A user like this will also likely replace these drives within that time frame.
Tomatotech - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link
I have little to no worry about endurance for the vast majority of users even with QLC, and even that problem will go away with 2TB+ QLC.That said, your use is unusual, and the 840s were particularly good drives especially with 1TB. The same usage patterns with 256gb TLC or 512GB QLC might well have seen them wear out. Thankfully we’re past that stage now. However you still had to flash firmware and re-zero the drives, and most people with SSDs nowadays won’t know how to do that.