For several years now, Corsair has consistently delivered high-performance SSDs under the MP series branding, primarily catering to the deep-pocketed gaming community, enthusiasts, and professionals. However, with the recent introduction of the MP400 and, more notably, the MP600 Core series, Corsair has shifted its focus towards affordability. The MP600 Core XT, in particular, stands as Corsair’s latest endeavour to offer competitive performance for modern systems at a budget-friendly price of around R2,600
While Gen3 drives continue to dominate the entry-level market, Corsair’s MP600 Core XT offers a Gen4 alternative that aims to exploit the theoretical performance capabilities of Gen4 connectivity. Its Gen4 lineage grants it the capacity to achieve read speeds of up to 5GB/s and write speeds of 4.4GB/s. While these figures aren’t amazing when compared to Corsair’s other high-end Gen4 drives, they do underscore the drive’s potential when operating at its native Gen4 link speed under ideal conditions.
How Corsair achieves this price point, and performance is via a 980MHz Phison E21T 4-channel controller, paired with QLC (Quad Layer Cell) NAND and no DRAM cache to speak of. This combination allows CORSAIR to price the drive aggressively without significant compromises in performance for the intended audience. The inclusion of a substantial 450GB dynamic SLC cache goes a long way toward compensating for this absence of cache memory. This choice of IC also means the MP600 Core XT can do without a heatsink, remaining cool even under intense write/read situations.
That said, I recommend installing this drive in any of your M.2 sockets that have a heatsink. In heavy stress testing, the MP600 Core XT reached a maximum temperature of 39°C when passively cooled by the motherboard heatsink. Without a heatsink, temperatures could potentially be 20°C higher. This is still within the safe operating temperature range, but it could be harmful to other components and the overall system temperature.
Test System
| CPU | Intel Core i9 13900 K |
|---|---|
| Memory | G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB DDR5 6400 |
| Motherboard | ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Apex |
| Power Supply | CORSAIR 1500i |
| Operating System | Windows 11 (22H2) |
| CPU Cooling | EKWB Phoenix 360mm CLC |
Benchmarks
First in the benchmarks is sequential read/write performance. Compared to the ADATA Legend 750 Gen3 drive, the MP600 Core XT is performing exceptionally well. True to the claimed figures, the drive manages just over 5GB/s in read performance and 4.4GB/s in write speeds. Impressive results, however, keep in mind that sequential read and write speeds do not represent typical use cases and that includes gaming scenarios as well.
3DMark Storage Bench is a great benchmark for testing SSDs and here we can see that while raw read and write figures showed a large difference between the MP600 Core XT and the ADATA Legend 750 drive, in practice, they offer similar performance. The MP600 Core XT offers just 400 points more in this test and, in fact, falls behind the ADATA Legend 750 drive.
Copying large folders or files across drives is a common task and one where you can directly see or experience the performance (or lack thereof). The difference between the Gen3 Legend 750 and the MP600 Core XT is significantly less than what synthetic benchmarks would suggest. While the MP600 Core XT is obviously faster, its advantage over the Gen3 ADATA drive is only 30 seconds. For larger file transfers, the advantage would obviously grow in favour of the CORSAIR drive. However, it is not often that you are moving hundreds of gigabytes between folders and drives.
Overall, the Corsair MP600 Core XT 2TB is an appealing drive for general users and mass storage. The only downside is that write performance can drop to as low as 110 MB/s when the SLC cache fills. However, this only happens when the drive is copying more than 450 GB of data, which is not a common occurrence. For normal use, such as gaming, media, and everyday tasks, the MP600 Core XT will provide excellent performance.
At a slightly lower price, this drive would be a near-perfect entry-level PCIe Gen 4 offering. If you are looking for affordable storage with reasonable performance, the MP600 Core XT is a great option.
