If the only thing holding you back from purchasing Corsair’s Neutron NX500 PCIe SSD is capacity, fear not, it’s now available in up to 1,600GB (1.6TB). That’s twice the capacity as before, though cost remains a barrier.
Corsair’s asking price for the 1,600GB model is $1,575, which works out to nearly a buck per gigabyte. There’s really no sense in picking one up strictly for gaming, not unless you have a strong brand preference for Corsair and like the styling of the half-height card enough to pay through the nose for it.
The Neutron NX500 plugs into a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot and shuttles data through the PCIe bus for fast performance. If you were to disassemble the drive, you’d find Toshiba’s 15nm MLC NAND flash memory paired with a Phison PS5007-E7 controller.
According to Corsair, its Neutron NX500 drives can hit up to 3,000MB/s reads and 2,3000MB/s writes in ATTO, and up to 2,800MB/s reads and 1,600MB/s in CrystalDiskMark. Those are impressive figures, though not head of the class. Samsung’s 960 Pro in M.2 form is generally faster, on paper and in benchmarks—Anandtech compared the Neutron NX500 to the 960 Pro and a few other drives.
The two other capacities Corsair offers include 800GB ($660) and 400GB ($320). All three are available now.