Plextor M6e Black Edition PCIe 256GB SSD Review

Introduction It is always a pleasure to get an SSD in for review, and even more when it is a high-performance PCI-Express based M.2 SSD. We've previously had a look at the Plextor M6e and today it's time to take a closer look at the brand new Plextor M6e Black Edition PCI Express SSD with 256GB capacity. This drive doesn't just promise to be a high-performing SSD, but it is also a beauty to look at. The Plextor M6e Black Edition supports PCI Express Gen II x2 and can achieve sequential reads up to 770 and writes up to 580 MB/s. Random speeds aren't without either and the M6eBE broke through the 105K/100K IOPS barrier. The SSD also comes with native 256-bit AES encryption to keep your data protected. Speed isn't everything, reliability is just as important. The M6eBE supports both S.M.A.R.T and TRIM to keep everything running smoothly. It has also been exposed to Plextor's Zero-Failure Zero-Error standard where it's rigorous tested using the world's most advanced SSD testing facilities - FLEXSTAR testing chamber. The M6e Black Edition provides extreme reliability with an MTBF calculated at 2.4 million hours. To back up this statement, the drive comes with a five-year warranty. Plextor thought about people without the latest and most modern systems as well and retained the backwards compatibility through AHCI support. The M6e Black Edition is bootable through both UEFI and legacy BIOS. It is however strongly recommended to use UEFI if your system supports it, it will after all cut your boot times in half. The high-performance cooling fin design doesn't just help to cool your new SSD, it also looks very gorgeous. While cooling of such an SSD usually isn't a great issue, it can be very wise in several scenarios. If you got bad airflow in your case or the SSD sits nudged between a couple high performing GPUs, then you'll want the extra cooling that this great looking card has to offer. The PCIe card features a default SATA power connector in the event that your PCIe slot can't deliver the stable and needed power supply required. The card has a 2-pin header for lighting cues and five LEDs, three yellow for power and two blue for activity. It is Half-Height, Half-Length (HHHL) and would fit well with low profile brackets, although none are included. At the heart of the Plextor M6e Black Editon, we find the latest generation dual-core Marvell 88SS9183 SSD controller chip and Toshiba's A19 synchronous toggle NAND flash memory as well as 512MB DDR3 cache. I haven't even had this drive connected to my system for benchmarks yet, and I already love it. It looks so sleek with the black PCB, black bracket, black SSD, black cover, and red cooler. The finish is superb on everything from solder points to the metal coating. When we couple that with the amazing specifications, we know that the Plextor M6e Black Edition is one heck of a Solid State Drive. We had a first look at the PlexTurbo software in our Plextor M6 Pro review, and now the software has been improved even more; now reaching version 2.0. PlexTurbo is a RAMDisk feature, but it is also a lot more and comes with three main advantages. The first is the clear performance boost by using up to 4GB system RAM (max a quarter of the total) as cache. The application will write the data simultaneously on the cache as well as on the SSD but instead of rewriting the entire file, it compares for changes and only replaces those instead of everything. At the same time, the cache is used for quicker access to frequently used data. The second benefit is the extended life expectation due to the reduced unnecessary rewriting of redundant data. The third and last benefit over most other RAMDisk software is the safety against power loss. There won't be any data loss in case of a sudden power failure because the data is written simultaneously to both the cache as well as the SSD The presentation at CES 2015 showed us speeds over 8000 MB/s. This of course depends on memory as well as processor speed, so we won't get quite that far; it will still be interesting to see how well it performs in our own benchmarks. Test Procedure Test system: Gigabyte Z79X UD5H-BK Intel Core i7-4790K Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB 2400MHz OCZ Vertex 4 256GB SSD CoolerMaster Silent Hybrid 850W PSU Software used: Aida64 Anvil's Storage Utilities 1.1.0 AS SSD Benchmark 1.7.4739 ATTO Benchmark 2.46 CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 HD tach IOmeter PCMark 8 In a bid to make our testing as thorough and as accurate as possible, we have devised a testing methodology to give us the maximum amount of data. Whilst this means that testing each drive will take considerably longer to test – nearly 36 hours in fact, the picture that we are able to build up on the overall performance of each drive is far clearer, providing a more accurate analysis at how a drive performs under different conditions. I will be testing the drives performance when it is clean and fresh out of the box and then start to fill it up with data, namely 25%, 50% and 75% of the drives capacity and rerun the tests under each of these scenarios. I'll be using the same sample files under each test to keep the results as consistent as possible. The files in question are a collection of files from my personal NAS, composed of a mixture of small and big files, media, programs and archives. On top of this, I will also take the wear on the NAND into consideration and this process obviously takes a long time to perform – so long under real world conditions that it is simply not practical. In order to accelerate this conditioning process I will use the SSD endurance test that lies within Anvils Storage Utilities and read / write 10TB of data to the drive through a process of filling the drive with thousands of small files of various sizes and compressibility (with randomised duration between each of the writes), then reading each of them back with a randomised time between each file. After this has completed, the data is then erased and the process starts again. This process of conditioning the drive can take anywhere upwards of 12-15 hours on a typical 256GB SATA III SSD, however the performance and capacity of the drive will influence the time it takes to condition the drive. Following the conditioning process, the benchmarking process described above is repeated again with the volume filled with the same sample data to each percentage between test runs. Furthermore between each benchmark, the drive will get a TRIM command sent and further left alone for a while to make sure the TRIM command has done its job. TRIM can heavily impact a drives performance as it takes place, so allowing a period of time between tests will eliminate this factor and any subsequent false performance figures. On each page that follows with the benchmark results, I have inserted the screenshots from the benchmark results when the drive is 75% full. In the drive comparison charts, the performance at 0% fill is used as these are the performance figures that are recorded from drives in previous SSD reviews. There might be slight variations between the old results my predecessor Chris made as I might run the test slightly different. I’ve however tried to adjust it as close to the previous methods as possible while still giving them my own touch. AIDA64 AIDA64 is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. It provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives and is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also has a disk benchmark tool, and that is the one we'll be using. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil's Storage Utilities is a new benchmarking utility that we have started using here at eTeknix, it's completely free to download and has the ability to test mainly hard drives and solid state drives, but also any other form of storage medium that you can throw at it. As well as testing the drive in a variety of benchmarking tests, it also has a drive endurance test that consistently reads and writes data to the selected medium to give days, months and potentially even years of use in a shorter period of time to see how the drive copes in the longer term. Compressible Data Incompressible Data Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison, I will be using the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data-fill. AS SSD The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD. These tests are performed without using the operating system caches. In Sequential tests, the program measures the time it takes to read and write a 1 GB file respectively. To give a clearer picture of the drives tested, I've chosen to include all tests. Special the copy test is one that I think is relevant on the consumer level as it gives the user a view into one of the operations he's going to do many times. New Drive Conditioned Drive Performance Drive Comparison It hasn't been that long since I've re-introduced the AS SSD tests, so the drive comparison chart isn't as long as on some of the other tests. ATTO The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Performance Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison, I will be using the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data-fill. CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random 4KB/512KB read/write speeds. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Performance Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison, I will be using the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data-fill. HD Tach HD Tach is a program that tests the sequential read, random access and interface burst speeds of the attached storage device (hard drive, flash drive, removable drive etc.). Drive technologies such as SCSI, IDE/ATA, IEEE 1394, USB, SATA, and RAID are all supported. Version 3.0.4.0 is sadly the final version and the software and it has reached its end-of-life support. It's still a nifty benchmarking tool and it can't hurt to include it in our tests. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive PCMark 8 Storage PCMark 8 Storage benchmark is used to test the performance of SSDs, HDDs and SSHDs with traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office and a selection of popular games. The benchmark application will work for any recognized storage device, including local external drives. Unlike synthetic storage tests, the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark highlights real-world performance differences between storage devices. Fresh Drive Plex Turbo Software Plextool is Plextor's software toolbox for their SSD drives. It offers you both a quick and easy view of your drives state as well as a simple benchmark test and SMART details. It has a feature for secure format of your Plextor drives. Using this feature will basically restore the drives performance to the same state as it was when new. The Plextool also has a built-in firmware update. Hit the button and it will automatically connect to the internet and check for new versions. The diagnostic scan is a simple benchmark tool that quickly can give you some performance figures about your drive. No need to install any other software if you just need a quick look on your figures. SMART information is always a great thing to have at hand, allowing you to see all the drives raw figures to find possible reasons for trouble. The final page in the Plextool is to enable or disable the PlexTurbo software. This is awesome and I highly recommend to use it. PlexTurbo Once you've turned on PlexTurbo, you'll have to reboot your computer for it to take effect. When rebooted, you'll enjoy speedy transfers thanks to the help from this intelligent caching mechanism; below you'll find a list of benchmarks that have been performed with PlexTurbo turned on. Anvil's Storage Benchmark AS SSD Benchmark ATTO Disk Benchmark CrystalDiskMark Final Thoughts Pricing The Plextor M6e Black Edition is a first-class premium product, there is absolutely no doubt about it. Premium however also carries a price tag and this drive will most likely not come cheap, or will it? We do not have an official pricing at the time of review, but an estimated guess would be slightly below £1.00 per GB of storage. I could find a single Dutch retailer listing the drive for €280.00, but that's it. We will have to be a little more patient on that area, but we will update with the information as soon as we have them. Conclusion Let us start with the pure aesthetics of this drive. The Plextor M6e Black Edition is a beauty, there is absolutely no doubt about that. The black PCB has just as a superb finish as the black coating on the cover and bracket. The red heatsink in the middle stands out and not only helps to keep the SSD cool, but also looks pretty sexy. Some people might argue that adding a cooler like this to an SSD is overkill and only for the looks, but it does serve its purpose in many situations. Think of cases with generally bad airflow, for one reason or another. Or situations where the SSD will be nudged between two high-powered graphics cards that produce a lot of heat. Those are the situations where the M6e Black Edition will stand out and stay cool. The card is generally well designed and the PCB has an additional SATA power connector in case your PCIe slot can't deliver enough power. This ensures that your SSD will perform optimally even in those situations. The Half-Height, Half-Length card would also be suitable for use in SFF enclosures. When moving to the PCI Express bus, we eliminate the speed limitations that otherwise happen on the SATA 3.0 ports. We saw impressive transfer speeds of up to 780MB/s while reading and 600MB/s while writing. The card's performance is further aided by a 0.04ms access time. The PlexTurbo software is amazing and better than ever before in the new version 2.0. It managed to push transfer speeds up and above 6000MB/s. The performance depends a lot on your setup and memory, that's a given. Since my memory is running on 1333MHz at the time of testing and the Xeon CPU only has 1.8GHz, the speeds could be a better with other hardware. I highly recommend any PlextTurbo owner with 8GB or more RAM to use this tool, the benefits are amazing and something you'll notice for sure. Pros Looks great Impressive speeds up to 780MB/s Increased cooling ability PlexTurbo 2.0 software Cons Price could be a factor Neutral LEDs might be to bright for some people in some setups, but that is a matter of taste "Plextor took their already great M6e PCIe SSD and improved upon it with a stylish new design and with improved cooling capabilities. The PlexTurbo 2.0 software further increases the value of the Plextor M6e Black Edition and takes its transfer speeds to a whole new level." Thanks to Plextor for providing us with this sample