2.12.2018

TLDR: Very fast, and faster than a standard SSD. Boots to Windows 10 in 6s. Runs cool (51C peak whilst constantly running Crystal Disk Mark, came nowhere near the throttling temp of 70C). Very good for gaming and video editing, but a standard SSD with a memory cache may beat an NVMe on cost/performance for non CPU intensive applications.I own a gaming laptop (MSI Apache, i7, 16GB, 1060 6GB, 17.3” 1080p screen), bought in 2016. Still a very good laptop as it still plays latest game releases at high quality and 1080p. Trouble is that in 2016, NVMe drives ran hot, were not the most reliable, and very expensive… so a common trick was to tick the NVMe box on the specs,but actually put in a standard SSD in a NVMe form factor!That is what I got; a Kingston standard drive that only looks like a NVMe drive. Oh well, at least NVMe drives are now cheaper, so upgrading is not expensive anymore… which is where the Corsair Force series comes in.I’ve been put off upgrading for a while not because of price but the horror stories of NVMe drives not working, plus the high temps, which are very bad for laptops as there is no cooling (only the CPU and GPU are cooled via heat pipes on mine; everything else is convection cooling).Okay, so first thing; Installation. As with many people who use a machine for work as well as play (I’m a web developer and this is my work machine), I am unwilling to do a clean install of Windows, and want an easy revert path. That meant I needed to clone the Corsair before I installed it, and keep my original Kingston drive intact for quick re install if anything went wrong. A NVMe USB3 caddy with M slot compatibility is what I needed, but these are not cheap; search Amazon on B07FJ6F2K6 for the one I bought; this caddy worked perfectly. Upside is that I now have a fast USB3 external drive, so all good! NB – A less expensive route for me was to image the old drive as then no caddy required, but that does not allow me to revert quickly.Also, a major tip – upgrade your BIOS firmware before starting. Recent NVMe drives need it!Anyway, after installation I hit a common problem; the NVMe is detected by the BIOS, but Windows 10 says it is inaccessible. A long 2 hour head scratching exercise followed, where the web was no help because most of the solutions were legacy, and the current solution is actually far easier than messing about with the BIOS or windows updates; assuming a recently updated firmware, just boot into safe mode once and then reboot and the problem goes away! Probably something to do with Windows needing to update its config before recognising the drive, but that won't happen unless Windows boots at least once... but until it does, it can't update the config. A chicken and egg situation that requires a little bit of lateral thought.I have included an image of my NVMe installed (middle right in the photo). My second drive is visible far left; it’s a Crucial MX300 1TB SSD. This is fairly typical; a high performance but small NVMe with a higher capacity SSD.A common concern with NVMe is how much heat they generate, especially in a laptop with little general airflow. As well as reduced lifetime, there is the potential of performance throttling.I used HWInfo to check the NVMe temps as I ran Crystal Disk Mark for a long test. Peak temp was 51C, with the drive averaging 49C over the test. Ambient temperature for the drive (30 minutes of web browsing and writing this review, including creating the video) was 39-44C. So, temperature is not a problem with this drive even in a laptop with no forced airflow. With just convection cooling, it never gets anywhere near the throttling temperature, and even on load it remains cool. Looking at the drive SMART value table, the throttling temperature looks to be 70C, and significant life-reducing overheat is 90C. Not even close!On to performance.As standalone hardware, the NVMe is always faster than a SSD, and much faster on boot time (look at the video for my boot time post update; as soon as you see the parrot background wallpaper, windows 10 has loaded; 6 seconds!).However, for my Crucial SSD, I am using it with Momentum cache enabled. This uses 4GB (but I have never seen it use more than 2GB) of your memory as a read-lookahead and write cache. You can see in my Crystal Disk Mark results that the SSD plus cache is actually faster than the NVMe!Not clear cut though; during the benchmarks Momentum Cache uses up to 100% of my i7-6700HQ CPU time, whereas the NVMe uses none.For gearheads who want the absolute fastest system overall, it has to be a 100% hardware solution via NVMe. For those of us with fast i7s and lots of memory to spare, a SSD+cache is almost as good though.Not something you hear often in hardware reviews on the big youtube channels and web review sites, but it is certainly something to consider.Downsides?I’m using a 240GB MP510, which means its really only big enough for the OS and applications. Games have to go on the 1TB Crucial MX300, so I’m relying on the NVMe to make my OS faster, and Momentum Cache to keep texture-load times and load-time micro glitches to a minimum.It has to be said though that the MP510+SSD+cache makes for a very smooth gaming experience, with the 16GB memory, CPU and GPU all working as a well loaded system with no bottlenecks; the laptop simply runs at optimum, and is pretty close to my desktop other than gaming resolution (my desktop is an Alienware, i7-6 core, 24GB, GTX1080, 4k-60Hz main screen, 1080p-144Hz second screen).Overall, there’s a lot to like with my upgrade to an NVMe.Boot time is practically instantaneous, windows is much more responsive, applications load faster, and the whole computer just feels better. Not as much as the transition from standard hard drives to SSDs, but definitely a significant refinement.Coupled with the Crucial with cache as my data drive, the whole thing runs like butter throughout!

29.11.2019

Bought this 240gb Corsair M.2 to serve as a system drive to Windows 10 on PC I put together. I wanted to change OS to a 'built-in' option directly on the motherboard to allow me to upgrade my other drives as needed, however as this drive has plenty room for Windows and any other essential applications it's unlikely I will ever need more. The drive is FAST! I am not getting the advertised speeds but that's probably due to my limited understanding of PC architecture and BIOS setup (I'm an Apple User historically and in training) and I also think my placeholder CPU and Athlon 200GE may also be bottlenecking my system somewhat, rather than a problem with the MP510. It was easy to install,

2.1.2019

Looking for near supersonic read and write speeds as well as rapid data access? Had enough of fragile and noisy mechanical hard drives? Then you have come to the right place.This Corsair M.2 Solid State Drive features 240gb of storage (with other capacities available), compact form factor with NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 interface (please ensure you have a compatible motherboard or laptop), software for tweaking as well as updating and a five-year warranty.In simple terms regardless of your computing needs - be it gaming or editing, or even just for day to day use - this storage solution ticks all the boxes. It allows insanely fast reading and writing speeds of data both small and large files,

19.11.2018

This was pretty much a one for one replacement with a Samsung I had in my laptop. Once windows was reinstalled it did indeed boot up faster, but ad I not timed it, I wouldn't have noticed. Taking into account that it was a clean install I would say the performance is roughly on par. So I wouldn't consider this as an upgrade to a reasonably well made M2 drive. If you have a slot and you are considering upgrading from an HDD or SATA SSD then you will notice an improvement. The off-set is that the capacity is a lot less £ for £.If you are fortunate enough to have a SATA and M2 port then I would recommend it for the OS drive and the SATA drive for data storage.If you are looking for a fast pen drive,

24.11.2018

This lends itself to being a fast external drive when installed inside a Trascend external drive enclosure. While you will get even more benefits installing this directly into a motherboard it is a versatile plug in and forget drive.While it has performance overkill when used with USB 3 I'll be upgrading my small form factor gaming computer next year with a compatible motherboard and this will be plumbed in to gain full performance advantage.For my personal preference I use this as a plug in virtual go anywhere drive that is compact and lightweight. In operation it does warm up a little but there have been no problems so far.If you decide to use it for confidential files storage Corsair toolbox software can erase or update the firmware.

25.3.2020

I bought this product for a recently upgraded PC where I wanted the storage to be equally as good as the other upgraded areas (CPU, memory and graphics card). I'd never installed a M.2 drive before and found it very simple; plug and play. The product at first posed some problems with my motherboard, but this corrected quickly with MSI releasing a compatibility BIOS update. Very fast with load heavy games including Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA 5. The different is noticeable compared to a standard SSD regarding load times, but it is questionable whether the price is worth it?I would recommend this PC for the gaming enthusiastic who is wanting ultimate performance from a storage drive and very short loading times,

15.7.2019

With a cheap adapter on an ancient PCIe-2 motherboard, this is absolutely flying. Without Primo-Cache it natively reads at around 2400MB/s, with Primo-Cache enabling this as Level 2 storage, it's as you see above.Whether this figure is actually valid in day-to-day use, remains to be seen, but it impressed the hell out of me.There is a possible workaround to make this a bootable drive using grub or some other bootloader, initiating from the normal SSD boot-C and swinging over to this for the rest, but I haven't done that yet.If Primo-Cache can enable a fast boot from this as it stands, I'll probably leave it as it is and not furtze around with it too much as I intend to upgrade the motherboard reasonably soon,

12.11.2018

The PCI-e SSD needs a compatible slot.The first thing you need to do then is check your Motherboard manufacturer and they will normally advertise what slots are available.The slots may not be obvious as often this kind of SSD slots horizontally so you won’t spot anything obvious like a PCI bus (Like in my second photo.)So if your motherboard is 2 years old or less you’re probably going to have a slot.IF NOT .... You can buy a PCI bus to PCI adapter for around £30. HOWEVER at this price it may not be worth it. Check very carefully bus speeds and what you need because now this is costing you £100 for 240Gb SSD and at this price there are lots of them that will simply plug into your SATA

30.11.2018

Very easy to migrate my OS and Apps from a smaller SSD to this 240 GB SSD. My laptop already had a 128 GB m.2 SSD set as drive C while with a 1TB SATA Hard Drive set as drive D. I was critically running out of storage that it was no longer possible to install any more applications to the SSD as some Applications cannot be installed on drive D and even those that accept to be installed to the D drive still saves a lot of files to the C drive.No issues migrating my OS, and all installed Applications. Everything works as before except now I have been able to install more Applications and still have some space on C drive. No noticeable change in speed, boot time or Applications performance.

25.12.2018

Other reviews have said how easy set-up is, once you have access to the motherboard. If you're not particularly computer literate, however, you may find this is not all that easy. The first thibng to note is that there are no installation instructions with this module (common enough when adding memory, etc, to a computer). You therefore need to start by checking whether this item is compatible with your PC/laptop and consult the user manual (if you haven't got a hard copy, you should be able to find one on-line) before attempting installation.That said, once you are up and running, this can make a significant increase to the speed of your computer. at a reasonable price.

21.9.2018

Built two office PCs and wanted a M.2 drive to boot from.Very impressed with boot speeds. Unmatched to any SSD I’ve used. Installed Windows 10 from a USB in just a few minutes. Quickest install I’ve ever done!! Didn’t benchmark, but speeds are noticeably faster.Installing the drive was a breeze. Drives came with the single screw that is required to hold the drive in place. Does require a very fine philips head screw driver.My one complaint is they seem to run a bit hot. Showing 60 at idle. Should be fine as cases have good air flow. I would probably avoid if I was going for a smaller form factor.Will monitor temps but overall very satisfied!

24.11.2018

When i built my current PC several years ago I chose to use a solid state drive with a SATA connection over the pcie drives due to cost more than anything.After i had installed which is very easy, literally just plugging it into the mother board. Checked the formatting of the drive and then put the operating system on this drive. There is a noticeable difference in speed i find from moving to pcie from SATA.Overall this is a very reasonable price point. Corsair is a brand i have trusted for years with CPU cooling, PSU and RAM this drive shows that they are making very good products at competitive prices and I would highly recommend

30.11.2019

I gave 4 stars as apposed to 5 the heat sink is a bt on the big side. it's extremely fast but that's to be expected found games don't stutter when gaming. so it's a big difference. it runs nice and cool but my nvme drives have active air cooling as well as heat sink. on my motherboard its mounted on a dim.2 card vertical to motherboard the heat sink overhangs fan headers not a real prob just need to run wires all over the place.The software from corsair to look after it is simple to use as mine had a firmware update that it performed automatically just a click of a button. mine runs at 29* at idle and around 35-40* when gaming

12.7.2017

The m.2 stick is brilliant I am using it for my OS and seems a lot quicker than my SSD that I was using originally. I have had no issues cloning the SSD to this and relatively quickly although I did worry the first time I was cloning it as it didn't appear on my devices (My Computer) but the software knew it was there and so did the Bios. I would say check around for the prices, as I ordered this from a different website for £80 so cheaper than Amazon.Yes the Samsung Evo 960's are quicker, but unless your a computer or can do bullet time, I doubt you will notice it as it loads the OS within a few seconds.

5.7.2019

Very happy with this product. I have a read speed of 3 Gbs and a Write speed of 1 Gbs. My computer is just more responsive. My games load 1 to 3 seconds quicker than my Samsung 850 SSD. It is a similar to when i move my operating system from HDD to SSD many moons ago. I can notice the difference. I am afraid i will not go back to a SSD for my operating system to be installed on again as they are just not fast enough. The M.2 Tech is going to just get better. I regret not getting the 960 GB version as it is faster from the benchmarks i have read. Well it is M.2 for my operating systems from now on.

Corsair Force MP500 - Reviews

Info

Analysis

Detail