Plextor M6e PCIe M.2 SSD Review – RAID Tested at 1.4GB/s

Some time ago, we conducted a review of a new PCIe Card called the IOSwitch Raijin and it was constructed of a M.2 to PCIe x4 adapter, along with the Plextor M6e native PCIe M.2 (NGFF) 256GB SSD.  At the time, the M6e was an unreleased SSD and it seemed that even Plextor was caught off guard at the publicity that report received, politely asking us to lay low with our M6e samples for a while.  A few days back, we received the 512GB version of the M6e PCIe M.2 SSD and within the packaging, we found an included PCIe X4 adapter which was a bit unexpected.

In our Plextor coverage this past January at CES,  Plextor displayed their M6e PCIe M.2 SSD, as well as a separate product called the M6e HHHF (above) that included the adapter card to maximize system compatibility. Receipt of our product sample confirmed that the M6e will be available as a M.2 SSD alone, or with the M.2 to PCIe adapter as a PCIe solution to maximize compatibility.  For us, the added benefit of also possessing the M6e 256GB capacity M.2 SSD is that we can do a bit of RAID 0 testing with the two cards.

PLEXTOR M6E PCIE M.2 SSD

The Plextor M6e PCIe M.2 SSD is a PCIe X2 device and, as much as that doubles the performance compared to SATA 3 SSDs, using only 2 lanes also means that the M6e is bottle-necked at 1GB/s speeds.  The M6e will be available in sizes of 128, 256 and 512GB and performance is variable depending on capacity.

While read speed is consistent at 770MB/s for all sizes, write speeds are 625MB/s (512GB), 580MB/s (256GB) and 335MB/s (128GB).  As well, IOPS are listed at 105,000 IOPS read/100,000 IOPS write for 256 and 512GB capacities, while they drop just a bit to 96,000 IOPS read and 83,000 IOPS write for the 128GB capacity.  Product release is believed to be Q2 2014 and pricing has yet to be set in stone, however, the M6e will come with a 5 year warranty and Plextor has also released a new utility called the ‘Plextool’.

The Plextor Plextool provides information about Plextor SSDs, but more importantly, it is a very convenient utility for  updating firmware, secure erasing, and it also has a diagnostics scan should you feel something might be wrong with your SSD.

M6E COMPONENTS

We have covered the components of the M6e 256GB SSD within our IOSwitch Raijin Review and thought it might be interesting to throw in a picture as it is a shorter 42mm (2242) length M.2 PCIe SSD.  Test results of that SSD are also published in our recent look at the ASRock Fatal1ty FX990 Killer motherboard where we put 8 different M.2 SSDs to the test.

At that time, we had to dig up our own adapter card. One of Plextor’s smartest moves with this new form factor SSD is that they will market the M6e M.2 SSD alone, or M6e M.2 with M.2 to PCIe X4 adapter card that eliminates compatibility issues with any system containing an empty PCIe 2.0 x4 slot.  If one purchases the drive with adapter, there is a security sticker over the fastening screw that will void the warranty should it be damaged in any way.

The back of the adapter card is nondescript and there are three lights on the end, red for error, green for PCIe X2 travel and the yellow is for drive activity.

The M6e M.2 SSD itself contains the Marvell SS9183 controller, Hynix DDR 3 DRAM cache, along with 8 pieces of Toshiba 19nm Toggle Mode NAND flash memory.  It will also be available in different lengths, the 2242 (42mm) shown in the 256GB version here while the 2280 (80mm) is shown in the 512GB capacity.

Although the RAW capacity of our M6e sample is 512GB (8×64), only 477GB is available to the user after the drive is formatted.