Corsair MX100 512GB meets the 2009 Mac Pro

The Corsair MX100 SATA III 512GB SSD recently hit the streets with reviews at Anandtech and the TechReport showing great performance at a bargain price for the first 16nm MLC SSD's to hit the market. Whilst the 512GB version performance is a great bargain for the $219 street price, the 256GB version's showing is completely forgettable and should be avoided.

How does the performance of this 512GB drive relate to usage in OS X? Read on...


Mac Pro Test Setup
2009 MacPro - originally shipped with 2.66 Quad Core & 3GB RAM
3.46 i7 990x CPU
24GB 1333Mhz Ram
680GTX 2GB
Velocity X2 SSD adapter

Drives Tested for comparison
Samsung XP941 128GB M.2/NGFF Boot disk W/Lycom Adapter
Crucial MX100 512GB
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
Samsung 8040 Evo 256Gb


Black Magic Disk Speed test
With an impressive score of 459.8 MB/s writes and 480MB/s reads, the MX100 looks promising.





iPhoto Launch and library display
In a quick test of opening a 116GB iPhoto Library to the events view, results between the 840 pro and the MX100 were nearly identical. With the MX100 sneaking in .08 seconds faster overall.

840 Pro - 2.44 seconds, 2.48 seconds
MX100 - 2.38 seconds, 2.48 seconds




Xcode full compile and display source in iPad Simulator
Using a current iPad project as a test, the times below show a full compile and the time to display the application in the iPad simulator. The MX100 and 840 Pro times are nearly matched with the MX100 squeaking into 2nd place, behind the XP941.

840 Pro - 3.16 seconds, 3.63 seconds
MX100 - 3.16 seconds, 3.03 seconds
XP941 - 2.06 seconds, 2.48 seconds




Quickbench Shootout: Crucial MX100 vs Samsung 840 Pro 256 vs Samsung XP941 128
While the MX100 has an impressive showing on Black Magic, it's results can be deceiving. Quickbench allows us to take a deeper dive into the drives performance on OS X to get a better understanding of a drives performance working with small and large files.

Is the MX100 worth $219.00? Maybe... While the drive has a good showing, it's sequential read times fall behind all of Samsung's offerings. Just how much of our data is sequentially in OS X VS writing files to fill spaces throughout the workspace. Writing data, the MX100 keeps pace with 840 Pro and 840 EVO. Once the 840EVO's once it's 3GB buffer is filled, it's write speed quickly drops as the true speed of it's TLC NAND comes into play.

Outside Standard benchmarks, When sequentially writing a series of 512KB files and reading them back in, the MX100 exceeds the 840 Pro's performance by almost 200% across the board.


Crucial MX100 512GB - $219 street price


Samsung 840 EVO 256GB - $134 street price


Samsung 840Pro - 256GB - $189.99 Street price


Samsung XP941 - 128GB - $240 Street price

Weaselboy said:

Thanks for the well written review. I saw the Anandtech review you mentioned when this drive came out and it does look like about the best cost/performance deal out there.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback! I thought some OS X users would appreciate a look into how this drive performs on OS X outside of the minimalistic reporting most review sites publish for our consumption.

Your assessment of the MX100 is spot on as this drive continues to amaze me the more I push the design. While the sequential read times of smaller sized files on the MX100 were initially concerning when compared to any of the Samsung offerings, in real world usage - the speed difference is not overly apparent.