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

TSSDR TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL

SSD Testing at TSSDR differs slightly depending on whether we are looking at consumer or enterprise SSDs.  For consumer SSDs, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide, although CPU C States have may or may not have been optimized depending on the motherboard base configuration. Benchmarks for consumer testing are also benchmarks with a fresh drive so, not only can we verify that manufacturer specifications are in line but also, so the consumer can replicate our tests to confirm that they have an SSD that is top-notch.  We even provide links to most of the benchmarks used in the report.

If you take a close look at our Test Bench in this picture, you might find the Plextor M6e PCIe X2 M.2 512GB SSD, IOSwitch Raijin with Plextor M6e PCIe X2 M.2 256GB SSD, and you might even catch a glimpse of our boot drive SSD, the Samsung EVO 1TB mSATA SSD.  Tucked away behind the GTX 770 is also a Mushkin Atlas 480GB mSATA SSD.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

This Test Bench build was the result of some great relationships and purchase; our appreciation goes to the below mentioned manufacturers for their support in our project.  Our choice of components is very narrow, in that, we choose only what we believe to be among the best available and links are provided to each that will assist in hardware pricing and availability, should the reader be interested in purchase.

PC CHASSIS:	InWin D-Frame Open Air Chassis
MOTHERBOARD:	ASRock Z87 Extreme11/ac EATX MotherBoard
CPU:	Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell 3.5GHz Quad Core
CPU COOLER:	Corsair H100 High Performance Liquid
POWER SUPPLY:	be quiet Dark Power Pro 10 1000W PSU
SYSTEM COOLING:	be quiet Silent Wings 2 PC Fans
GRAPHICS CARD:	EVGA GTX 770 Superclocked with ACX Cooler
MEMORY:	Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3-1600Mhz Memory
KEYBOARD:	Corsair Vengeance K95 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
MOUSE:	Corsair Vengeance M95 MMO/RTS Laser Mouse
ROUTER:	NetGear R6300 AC1750 Dual Band Gigabit WiFi Router
HBA	HighPoint RocketU 1144C 4 x USB 3.0 20Gb/s HBA

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BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software we will be using for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Info, Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD and PCMark Vantage. In consumer reports, we prefer to test with easily accessible software that the consumer can obtain, and in many cases, we even provide links. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to results already obtained.

 CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER 5.5.0

 Crystal Disk Info provides some excellent information about the SSD itself to include its health, product information, ‘power on’ information as well as the characteristics of the SSD. We can see that the SSD is capable of TRIM as it is not grayed out as with AAM.

 CDI identifies a fresh out of box SSD (FOB) and a healthy number of SMART attributes are identified that enable later monitoring of the Plextor M6e PCIe M.2 SSD.

METHODOLOGY

For our testing of the M6e, we are going to provide analysis results for the 256 and 512GB capacities, as well as RAID test results for both combined.

For our logical RAID drive, we are using a simple Windows setup where the capacities of both dynamic drives must match as we can see here:

As a bit of a comparison, we are going to be including test results of the Samsung PCIe M.2 SSD, as well as the Intel SSD 730 Series SSD, both in solo and RAID configurations.  We thought this might be an interesting mix as the Samsung is a PCIe X4 (4 lane) M.2 SSD, while the Intel 730 is the latest and greatest in Intel 2.5″ SSDs.  We will also be including the benchmark result of the Plextor M6e 512GB SSD as this M.2 SSD is the prime focus of our report.

For the full test results of all others, one can click links listed for the Samsung XP941, Samsung XP941 RAID, Plextor M6e 256GB and/or the Intel SSD 730.