One look at the Corsair MP600 Pro XT (starts at $149.99 for the 1TB model tested) with its humongous, finned matte-black heatsink should be enough to convince anyone that this internal solid-state drive is a beast built for high-impact gaming in a roomy desktop rig. This impression is borne out by the MP600 Pro XT's sizzling sequential read and write speeds, which exceeded its ratings in our testing, and its 4K write speed, the highest we've ever recorded. If you don't need such a hefty heatsink, though, plenty of gaming-centered speedsters—starting with the Editors' Choice award-winning Acer Predator GM7000—are waiting in the wings.

Two Cool Choices

The Corsair MP600 Pro XT is a four-lane PCIe 4.0 drive manufactured on an M.2 Type-2280 (80mm long) "gumstick" printed circuit board. It employs the NVMe 1.4 protocol over the PCIe 4.0 bus, and features Phison's E18 controller, which we've seen in other speedsters such as the Kingston KC3000 and the T-Force Cardea A440 Pro Special Series. The drive is based on Micron's 176-layer TLC 3D NAND flash. (Puzzled by some of this terminology? Check out our glossary of SSD lingo.)

With its heatsink, the MP600 Pro XT is just short of 20mm tall, much too large to fit into a PlayStation 5 or most laptops. If you really wanted to use this drive with a PS5, you could remove the heatsink by prying the finned part away from the frame and then lifting the M.2 stick out. (Corsair recommends using a plastic pry tool for this; if you don't have one handy—and who does?—a small flathead screwdriver will also work.) Removing the heatsink requires delicacy. It also sort of defeats the purpose of buying this drive, for we've found plenty of SSDs that work well with the PS5 right out of the box.

Corsair offers another version of this SSD, the Corsair MP600 Pro XT Hydro X, which swaps the aluminum heatsink for a water block and can be integrated into the cooling loop of a water-cooled rig. The Hydro X version is only available in the 2TB and 4TB capacities, respectively priced $30 and $15 over the air-cooled versions when you buy direct from Corsair. Retail pricing for the Hydro X, particularly the 2TB model, varies wildly, so you may need to shop around to find the best deal. Corsair and its partners also sell the block separately, for use with any M.2 drive, as the Hydro X Series XM2 SSD Water Block ($39.99).

Retailing for about $150, the MP600 Pro XT is in the middle of the pack, pricewise, for elite PCI Express 4.0 drives. You pay a bit extra for the Corsair's heatsink, but if you have a desktop rig that will fit it, it may be worth the premium.

The MP600 Pro XT's durability ratings are 700TBW for 1TB, 1,400TBW for 2TB, and 3,000TBW for 4TB. These figures match the Silicon Power XS70's for all three capacities and the MSI Spatium M480 HS for the two lower sizes (the MSI has no 4TB model). They're also similar to other TLC-based speedsters such as the Samsung SSD 980 Pro, whose 1TB and 2TB models are rated at 600TBW and 1,200TBW respectively. That said, a few PCIe 4.0 drives offer higher durability ratings, such as the MSI Spatium M470's 1,600TBW for 1TB and 3,300TBW for 2TB. At the other extreme, the Mushkin Delta—which uses less durable QLC memory—is rated at just 200TBW for 1TB, 400TBW for 2TB, and 800TBW for 4TB.

The "terabytes written" spec is a manufacturer's estimate of how much data can be written to a drive before some cells begin to fail and get taken out of service. TBW generally scales 1:1 with capacity, although the 4TB MP600 Pro XT is rated for a bit more than double the TBW of the 2TB stick, as with the 4TB versions of the Silicon Power XS70 and the Acer Predator GM7000.

Corsair warranties the MP600 Pro XT for five years (or until you hit the rated TBW figure in data writes, whichever comes first). The drive supports AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption, the gold standard for consumer-level data protection. 

Testing the MP600 Pro XT: A New 4K Write-Score Mark

We test PCI Express 4.0 internal SSDs using a desktop testbed with an MSI X570 motherboard and AMD Ryzen CPU, 16GB of Corsair Dominator DDR4 memory clocked to 3,600MHz, and a discrete graphics card.

We put the Corsair MP600 Pro XT through our usual internal solid-state drive benchmarks, comprising Crystal DiskMark 6.0 and PCMark 10 Storage. We're also including results for a relatively new test, UL's 3DMark Storage Benchmark, which measures a drive's performance in a number of gaming-related tasks.

Crystal DiskMark's sequential speed tests provide a traditional measure of drive throughput, simulating best-case, straight-line transfers of large files.

In Crystal DiskMark testing, the MP600 Pro XT exceeded both its sequential read and sequential write speed ratings, the read speed by more than 300MBps, putting it near the pinnacle of our test database as one of four drives to join "the 7,400 club." While its 4K read speed was merely average for a high-end SSD, the Corsair blew away the competition in setting a new 4K write score record for PC Labs.

The MP600 Pro XT's PCMark 10 Overall Storage test score put it in a close group at the top of the pack. This test measures a drive's speed in performing a variety of routine tasks such as loading games and launching programs including the Windows operating system. Game-launching speeds for Battlefield 5, Overwatch, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 fell in the middle of our test group. The drive's ISO Copy score was near the top, while other PCMark 10 trace scores were middling.

We've been building out our 3DMark test results, but for the most part have only benchmarked the newest of our comparison drives. The MP600 Pro XT's score was typical of these elite speedsters, falling within 100 points of all but two of the drives. Only the WD Black SN850 separated itself from the pack with a higher score, and even that wasn't dramatically different.

An SSD with Speed and Pizzazz

The Corsair MP600 Pro XT cuts a formidable figure with its matte-black, swept-back fins, and it delivered blistering speeds in our Crystal DiskMark testing. If it isn't the right fit (literally or figuratively) for your setup, there are other premium PCI Express 4.0 M.2 drives to choose from, such as the Acer GM7000 and the ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade, both PCMag Editors' Choice products. That said, upgrading to this SSD is a way to add style, substance, and speed to your rig.