Skip to main content

Corsair Neutron NX500 SSD burns with speed, but doesn’t scorch your PC

CORSAIR NX500 - The Fastest Drive CORSAIR Has Ever Made
Looking to beef up your desktop with super-fast storage? Corsair has a new solid state disk that takes advantage of your PC’s speedy PCI Express lanes by plugging directly into an add-in card slot. It’s called the Neutron NX500 NVMe PCIe SSD AIC, and it’s available in two capacities now, to be followed by a third capacity at the end of the month.

Traditionally, mechanical hard drives and cartridge-like solid state disks connect to the Serial ATA (SATA) bus (freeway) on a motherboard via ports and cables. The third revision of the specification powering this bus caps read and write speeds at 600MB per second, which is fine for general applications like browsing the internet, checking email, writing documents, and performing other mainstream tasks.

Meanwhile, the PCI Express bus is extremely fast. It’s built for handling add-in cards shoved into slots that are essentially an extension of the motherboard. Short for Peripheral Component Interconnect, this bus relies on “lanes” for sending and receiving data from multiple card-focused slots. Because SATA was created with slow hard drives and optical drives in mind, it bottlenecks the full capabilities of the newer, super-fast NAND Flash technology that drives today’s solid state drives.

Thus, moving SSD storage to PCI Express makes sense. As of late, stick-shaped SSDs have become a popular form factor, connecting to special “M.2” card-style slots on a motherboard. These slots can be based on the PCI Express or SATA 3 bus, depending on the manufacturer. These slots also rely on the NVM Express or the SATA Express storage access interface, the latter of which uses a PCI Express bus to provide transfer speeds of up to 1,969MB per second.

But what if you don’t have an M.2 slot on your motherboard supporting PCI Express? That’s where Corsair’s Neutron NX500 add-in card comes into play. Just shove it into an open slot, and you immediately have a crazy-fast SSD without disrupting the other storage devices installed in the PC. It’s based on the NVM Express interface, which was originally designed for the high-speed needs of the enterprise market. Corsair’s SSD requires a slot that supports the PCI Express 3.0 specification, and at least four lanes.

Here are some of the details:

Sequential Read Speed: Up to 3,000MB per second
Sequential Write Speed: Up to 2,400MB per second
4K Random Read: Up to 300K IOPS
4K Random Write: Up to 270K IOPS
Interface: NVM Express via PCI Express 3.0 x4 slot
Operating Temperature: Zero degrees to -70 degrees Celsius
Storage Temperature: -40 degrees to -85 degrees Celsius
Lifespan: 2,000,000 hours
Dimensions: 4/76 (W) x 6.49 (L) x 0.82 (H) inches
Storage Capacities: 400GB ($320)
800GB
1,600GB (1.6TB)
Storage technology: MLC NAND

Outside the speed factor, the Neutron NX500 add-in SSD comes packed with a high-surface-area heatsink to keep the card cool and fanless, enhanced error correction, dedicated DDR3 cache, and a five-year warranty. It’s compatible with Corsair’s free SSD Toolbox software, too.

The 400GB ($320) and 800GB ($660) models are available now. The 1.6TB version won’t be made available until the end of August.

Kevin Parrish
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kevin started taking PCs apart in the 90s when Quake was on the way and his PC lacked the required components. Since then…
Why you should buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook Air
The 14-inch MacBook Pro on a window sill.

There are plenty of reasons to buy a MacBook Air instead of a MacBook Pro. If you want a MacBook on a budget, you don't necessarily need the goodies that come with upgrading to the MacBook Pro.

That being said, I'm going to argue for spending a little more. In my experience, the MacBook Pro offers several distinct advantages that help justify a higher price, especially with the introduction of the more affordable MacBook Pro 14 with the base M3. If you can stretch your budget a bit, here's why I think you should buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook Air.
Setting the stage: pricing

Read more
Windows 11 vs. Windows 10: finally time to upgrade?
The screen of the Surface Pro 9.

Windows 11 is the newest version of Windows, and it's one of the best Windows versions released. At launch, the operating system was very similar to Windows 10, but it has morphed a lot over the past several years. Now, Windows 11 has several key differences compared to Windows 10.

If you've been holding out on upgrading, we have everything you need to know about Windows 11 and how it's different than Windows 10 in this article. We'll detail the differences, as well as show you the areas where Windows 11 is growing faster than Windows 10.
Windows 11 vs. Windows 10: what's new

Read more
Usually $299, this HP Chromebook is discounted to $149 today
HP Chromebook 14b sits on a desk.

If the laptop deals that you come across are too expensive because all you need is a basic device, then you may want to check out Chromebook deals. Here's an affordable offer that may catch your attention -- the HP Chromebook 14a for only $149, following a $150 discount on its original price of $299. That's insanely cheap, and we don't think that price will hold for a long time. If you're interested in taking advantage of this bargain, it's highly recommended that you proceed with the purchase immediately because it may be gone as soon as tomorrow.

Why you should buy the HP Chromebook 14a
A Chromebook is a laptop that's powered by Google's Chrome OS, which is a web-based operating system that allows devices to run fast and smooth despite cheap components. For example, the HP Chromebook 14a is only equipped with the Intel Celeron N4120 processor, Intel UHD Graphics 600, and 4GB of RAM, but it's good enough for the basic tasks that you'll need to complete for work or school such as typing documents, doing online research, and making presentations. The HP Chromebook 14a doesn't have much built-in storage as it only comes with a 64GB eMMC, but you'll have all the space that you need for your files on Google Drive.

Read more