CONCLUSION

   With all the latest mainboards featuring at least one M.2 NVMe compatible slot (most come with two) it’s a safe guess that the majority of people interested in the NX500 and other PCIe SSDs will be owners of older models like the X79 of our test rig. This is what I’ve always liked with PCIe SSDs, the ability to use them regardless of mainboard model or type. True some slight performance issues may come at play with older non Gen.3 compatible mainboards but even so you’re still getting superior performance compared to any SATA III SSD in the market and that I think is what really matters. Still there’s one more thing the NX500 has over regular M.2 NVMe’s and that’s its reduced temperature levels thanks to the two large heatsinks placed on both sides of the PCB. This is also why in our SNIA tests the NX500 outperformed even the 960 EVO 1TB by Samsung with ease since the 2^nd had to throttle down on numerous occasions. Of course we don’t expect many people to run heavy workloads on their SSDs for 12 or more hours continuously (and you can always add a heatsink on any M.2 SSD to partially solve overheating issues) but for professionals this is quite important. Unfortunately all this performance comes at a cost so although you basically have a 512GB SSD in your hands at the end of the day just 372GB is actually usable.

   At a current price of USD362 inside the US (Amazon.com) and 436Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) the Neutron NX500 400GB PCIe Gen.3 x4 Add-In Card SSD is certainly somewhat expensive but we do feel that it’s worth every penny CORSAIR asks for it if performance (especially sustained) is something you want. On the other hand however if enthusiast-grade sustained performance is something you don’t need there are more “affordable” PCIe models currently available in the market. Long story short it all comes down to your needs but for us since the Neutron NX500 delivers on everything CORSAIR promises it’s well worth of our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Excellent Build Quality
- Top Of The Charts Read & Write Performance
- Sustained Performance Levels
- Endurance (2 Million Hours MTBF / 698TBW)
- Compatibility (PCIe)
- 5 Years Warranty

CONS

- Price (For Some)
- Only 372GB Usable (Over Provisioning)