Review

CORSAIR NEUTRON NX500 NVMe PCIe AIC SSD Review

PC storage solution have evolved a lot from mechanical hard disk drives (HDD) to a nonvolatile solid state storages (SSD). But when it comes to data speed and fast access SSDs are the definite winners. With no mechanical time barrier as HDDs, SSD memory chips can provide very high data speeds, but they are always pushed back due to the interface limitations between motherboard and actual drive.

Eventually the storage interface also changed a lot from SATA to M.2 to NVMe and now to PCIe interface. Still only x4 PCIe interface, but soon we will definitely have a full PCIe x16 interface storage solution.

So today we are reviewing one such PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 interface NVMe SSD from CORSAIR, the Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB NVMe PCIe AIC SSD. A top of the line Corsair product that promises to supercharge your gaming and PC experience with next level of bandwidth and speed.

So now let's see what CORSAIR NEUTRON NX500 400GB NVMe PCIe AIC SSD have for us.

Features

The CORSAIR Neutron NX500 NVMe PCle AIC SSD is up to 5x faster than SATA 3 SSDs and NVMe powered to deliver previously out-of-reach sequential and IOPS read and write speeds. The specially designed heatsink not only looks great in your build, but ensures unthrottled performance and cooler temperatures. The Neutron NX500 makes sure professional gamers, workstation owners, and content creators get the job done with ease.

NVME INTERFACE FASTER THAN SATA 3.0 – Up to 5X faster in sequential read and write than SATA 3.0 6Gbps.

PCI EXPRESS SSD GEN 3.0 X4 – The NX500 accesses your PC's PCI Express bandwidth and puts your data in the fast lane, leaving SATA SSDs in the dust.

DEDICATED COOLING – High-surface-area heatsink from the cooling experts at CORSAIR keeps your storage cool and always at peak performance.

MULTI-LEVEL CELL (MLC) ENDURANCE – Better reliability and higher performance than Triple-Level Cell (TLC) NAND SSDs.

HIGH-BANDWIDTH, LOW-LATENCY STORAGE – Easily handles demanding gaming, productivity, and content creation workloads.

COMPATIBLE WITH CORSAIR SSD TOOLBOX – Support for over-provisioning, Secure Erase, disk cloning and firmware updates, or monitor S.M.A.R.T attributes and SSD health, all from your desktop.

Specifications

Package

CORSAIR NEUTRON NX500 SSD comes in a nice cardboard box with logos and product graphics highlighting some of the features in front and back side shows write up about features in different languages

Inside the box

With this SSD CORSAIR also offers a Low profile bracket, x4 Screws, a quick start guide and Warranty card.

Looks

SSD is a half-height PCIe interface add in card, full black colour theme and aluminum heatsink for cooling of the main controller.

Inside

After opening the SSD we found both side of PCB is populated with total of eight Toshiba 15NM MLC NAND memory chips along with a Phison PS5007-E7 controller and two NANYA DDR3L 512MB chips making a total of 1GB of caches.

Testing

Bundled Software

SSD don't come with any bundled software inside the package, but one can download the Corsair SSD ToolBox app from CORSAIR's website. This is their SSD management utility which provide lot of information about the SSD along with some diagnostic tools and also help in upgrading firmware and secure erase.

Benchmarks

Pros

• Nice performance
• PCIe Add-in-card Interface
• Build in heatsink
• 5 Years Warranty
• CORSAIR SSD ToolBox Utility

Cons

• Little expensive

Conclusion

Corsair NEUTRON NX500 400 GB SSD is one of the fasted SSD we have tested yet and will definitely result in increased performance under large files workloads. Beside Samsung 960 EVO this Corsair NX500 SSD offers solid performance, runs cool, have excellent and complete peace of mind with 5 years of warranty.

Considering the price and capacity ratio, the Corsair NEUTRON NX500 400 GB SSD feels back over the Corsair's own MP500 480GB SSD. But if you are looking for a SSD with high performance and very high reliability for your gaming or workstation load and that too in a PCIe Add-in-card Interface, the Corsair NEUTRON NX500 400GB NVMe PCIe AIC SSD is the best recommendation and worthy of our PC TeK Reviews EXCELLENCE Award.

Manufacturers Info

Thanks.

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