The Corsair MP400 1TB QLC NVMe SSD: A Quick Review
by Billy Tallis on December 11, 2020 2:00 PM ESTConclusion: Entry Level QLC
The Corsair MP400 has proved to be a competent budget NVMe SSD in its 1TB version. The recent crop of drives like the Corsair MP400 and Sabrent Rocket has raised the bar for consumer QLC SSDs. That being said, the a 1TB QLC drive is relatively low capacity for the controller, and there are performance compromises that go along with that (compared to the 8TB relatives we looked at last week). At mainstream capacities they can compete against many budget TLC SSDs, and at the higher capacities where there are few or no budget TLC options, many of the benefits of QLC NAND come into play.
The MP400 sits on the boundary between a good TLC drive and an entry level QLC drive. It performs as expected, and the key arbiter in going for this drive is going to be in the cost.
When Does QLC Make Sense? An Overview
Based on our testing, QLC drive capacities below 1TB (such as 500 GB), we recommend avoiding QLC SSDs. These smaller capacities are where DRAMless TLC SSDs are clearly the better value, and more mainstream TLC drives with DRAM are often on sale for entry-level prices as well. Above 1TB, the DRAMless TLC options are few and far between, and we don't expect any of them to handle heavier workloads as easily as 2+TB QLC drives with DRAM do.
At the 1TB capacity point we're focused on today, the conclusion is not as clear. The Corsair MP400 generally outperformed the low-end TLC drives we have to compare against, though our collection is missing a few of the best-performing budget TLC options on the market today. It is pretty clear that DRAMless TLC SSDs have the edge in power efficiency.
For general purpose consumer desktop usage, both QLC and TLC entry-level NVMe drives offer better performance than SATA SSDs, and with little or no price premium. Which kind of entry-level NVMe drive is the better really comes down to day to day pricing.
| Budget NVMe Consumer SSD Price Comparison December 11, 2020 |
|||||||
| PCIe DRAM |
NAND | 500GB | 1TB | 2TB | 4TB | 8TB | |
| NVMe PCIe 3.0 | |||||||
| ADATA XPG SX8100 | 3.0 x4 Yes |
TLC 8ch |
$59.99 (12¢/GB) | $94.99 (9¢/GB) |
$229.99 (11¢/GB) | $499.99 (12¢/GB) | - |
| ADATA Swordfish | 3.0 x4 No |
TLC 4ch |
$54.99 (11¢/GB) | $94.99 (9¢/GB) |
$189.99 (9¢/GB) | - | - |
| Corsair MP400 | 3.0 x4 Yes |
QLC 8ch |
- | $114.99 (11¢/GB) | $244.99 (12¢/GB) | $662.00 (17¢/GB) | $1498.00 (19¢/GB) |
| Inland Platinum | 3.0 x4 Yes |
QLC 8ch |
- | $94.99 (9¢/GB) |
$193.99 (10¢/GB) | $499.99 (12¢/GB) | - |
| Intel 660p | 3.0 x4 Yes |
QLC 4ch |
$59.99 (12¢/GB) | $109.99 (11¢/GB) | $209.99 (10¢/GB) | - | - |
| Intel 665p | 3.0 x4 Yes |
QLC 4ch |
- | $109.99 (11¢/GB) | $239.99 (12¢/GB) | - | - |
| Kingston A2000 | 3.0 x4 Yes |
TLC 4ch |
$53.99 (11¢/GB) | $102.99 (10¢/GB) | - | - | - |
| Mushkin ALPHA | 3.0 x4 Yes |
QLC 8ch |
- | - | - | $599.99 (15¢/GB) | $1299.99 (16¢/GB) |
| Mushkin Helix-L | 3.0 x4 No |
TLC 4ch |
$54.99 (11¢/GB) | $89.99 (9¢/GB) |
- | - | - |
| Sabrent Rocket Q | 3.0 x4 Yes |
QLC 8ch |
$64.99 (13¢/GB) | $109.98 (11¢/GB) | $219.98 (11¢/GB) | $599.98 (15¢/GB) | $1299.99 (16¢/GB) |
| WD Blue SN550 | 3.0 x4 No |
TLC 8ch |
$53.99 (11¢/GB) | $104.99 (10¢/GB) | $247.99 (12¢/GB) | - | - |
| NVMe PCIe 4.0 | |||||||
| Sabrent Rocket Q 4.0 | 4.0 x4 Yes |
QLC 8ch |
- | $149.98 (15¢/GB) | $319.99 (16¢/GB) | $689.98 (17¢/GB) | - |
| Addlink S92 | 4.0 x4 Yes |
QLC 8ch |
- | $145.88 (15¢/GB) | $277.88 (14¢/GB) | $649.99 (16¢/GB) | - |
| SATA | |||||||
| Samsung 870 QVO | SATA Yes |
QLC | - | $89.99 (9¢/GB) |
$199.99 (10¢/GB) | $419.99 (10¢/GB) | $861.27 (11¢/GB) |
The handful of multi-TB QLC drives using the Phison E12S controller are competing not just on price, but on the vendor's ability to keep the drive in stock. From day to day, we're seeing the best-priced models quickly end up backordered, so there's clearly demand for these massive SSDs but the prices should drift downward a bit as these drives become more widely available from multiple brands. The Corsair MP400 hasn't been on the market for as long as the Sabrent Rocket Q, so the latter currently has it beat on pricing and availability. Microcenter's Inland Platinum QLC drive seems to still be the cheapest Phison E12S+QLC drive on the market, with especially attractive pricing for the 4TB model.
Even though the proliferation of new QLC alternatives has broadened the scope of the entry-level NVMe market segment, these drives are still almost always overshadowed by the best deals in the more mainstream NVMe market segment that is dominated by drives with TLC and DRAM and 8-channel controllers. Right now with holiday pricing, it is very easy to score a drive that doesn't have any of the acute weaknesses of DRAMless or QLC models, without paying a premium. The best example is ADATA's XPG SX8100, a TLC drive with Realtek's 8-channel controller with DRAM. The SX8100 is one of the few TLC models with a 4TB option so it competes against high-capacity QLC models, and beats many of them on price at all capacity points.
Our next look into consumer QLC SSDs will be Sabrent's Rocket Q4, the successor to the Rocket Q that adopts the Phison E16 PCIe 4.0 controller. Even though the newer Phison E18 Gen4 controller is starting to ship in high-end SSDs, The E18 is probably overkill for QLC models, and it's certainly more expensive. The E16 controller may stick around for a while to offer a more affordable path toward better QLC performance.
Next Review: SSD Benchmark Suite Update for PCIe Gen 4
This review marks the end of our current generation of SSD testing equipment and procedures. Our new overhauled test suite designed for PCIe Gen4 SSDs will be launching soon, along with a new section in Bench for the new test results. The existing SSD18 results will remain available with no further updates. Many recent drives we have already reviewed will be re-tested on our new SSD test suite and their results will be added to the new SSD21 section as they are completed.
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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.