Corsair’s thick new SSD smokes all first-gen PCIe 4.0 drives

The fastest SSDs all leverage the PCIe 4.0 bus, but not all are created equal—in terms of rated specifications, it largely boils down to when they were released. Timing matters, because the first crop of PCIe 4.0 SSDs topped out at around 5,000MB/s. Then came a new round of memory controller hardware, which pushes speeds north of 7,000MB/s. Corsair’s new MP600 Pro XT falls into the latter category, while also boasting incredibly high IOPS.

This is Corsair’s fastest SSD to date. It’s available in 4TB, 2TB, and 1TB capacities, and while specifications vary between the smallest and two biggest drives, all three are rated to deliver up to 7,100MB/s of sequential read performance. Here’s a snapshot of the relevant speed metrics:

• 4TB—7,100MB/s seq. reads; 5,800MB/s seq. writes; 1.2 million random read IOPs; 900K random write IOPS
• 2TB—7,100MB/s seq. reads; 6,800MB/s seq. writes; 1.2 million random read IOPs; 1 million random write IOPS
• 1TB—7,100MB/s seq. reads; 5,800MB/s seq. writes; 1.2 million random read IOPs; 900K random write IOPS