Corsair’s NX500 line of high-performance PCIe based solid-state drives has been expanded with the launch of a new 1600 GB (1.6 TB) model to accompany the current 400 GB and 800 GB offerings. The sleek enclosure looks more akin to the design of a graphics card than a typical PCIe SSD. It is a single-slot card with a low-profile design at 21 mm (0.83 inches) thick and 165 mm (6.50 inches) long. A large part of that thickness is due to the heatsink on the front of the card.
The NX500 achieves blazing speeds with sequential read up to 3000 MB/s, and sequential write up to 2300 MB/s, although this write speed is slightly slower than the smaller versions. 4K IOPS are reasonably healthy with 300k/270k read/write, but these are lacking when compared to something like the Samsung 960 Pro (m.2) which gets IOPS up to 440k/360k read/write when tested with a queue depth of 32. To drive all this Corsair uses a Phison E7 controller rather than alternatives like SandForce or Marvell.
The flash storage used is 15 nm MLC NAND from Toshiba. MLC has a higher endurance than TLC, and we assume the Phison E7 controller might have had an update in the way it handles wear leveling, because Corsair is proudly stating a rated write-endurance of 2793 TB. That is four times higher than both smaller models, and 2.3 to 3.5 times higher (2 TB model and 1 TB model respectively) than the TLC based Samsung 960 Pro. A five-year warranty is in place to back up these endurance claims.
The only thing putting a damper on this SSD is the price of roughly US$1 per GB. Corsair is listing the 1.6 TB NX500 at US$1575 (EU€1770 in Europe), limiting these to a very niche audience.
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I grew up in a family surrounded by technology, starting with my father loading up games for me on a Commodore 64, and later on a 486. In the late 90's and early 00's I started learning how to tinker with Windows, while also playing around with Linux distributions, both of which gave me an interest for learning how to make software do what you want it to do, and modifying settings that aren't normally user accessible. After this I started building my own computers, and tearing laptops apart, which gave me an insight into hardware and how it works in a complete system. Now keeping up with the latest in hardware and software news is a passion of mine.
> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2017 12 > Corsair's new 1.6 TB Neutron NX500 PCIe SSD is fast, sexy, and durable
Craig Ward, 2017-12-19 (Update: 2017-12-20)