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REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
The Plextor M6e will most likely be the first consumer retail native PCIe M.2 SSD to have mass market effect. Release is set for Q2 2014 butprice has not yet been set. The M6e eliminates the SATA 3 bottleneck which is a step in the right direction, but things don’t stop there. With LSI working on their SF3700 1.8GB/s flash controller, and Marvel fine tuning their 88SS9293 1.5GB/s Altaplus controller, PCIe X2 SSDs just may be a second thought sooner than later as PCIe X4 takes the stage. Expect much more on this at Computex 2014 in June.
As much as moving into the age of 4K media will require transfer speeds in the area of 1.4GB/s for compilation and editing, the Plextor M6e native PCIe M.2 SSD will be a more than welcome SSD for the vast majority of media professionals who realize the faster transfer speeds equate to higher productivity and revenue. The other way to look at it might also be faster transfer speeds equate to getting the job done quicker and more time to enjoy the things we love most.
There is a side of Plextor that we really haven’t addressed as of yet, and that is that they are one of the few companies that don’t run around looking for the best price on the best parts. Plextor, Marvell, and Toshiba have been very happy partners for years now and this provides a great opportunity for Plextor firmware engineers to put out the highest performing and longest lasting product possible. This is also why Plextor has a five-year warranty, something that remains extremely rare for SSDs. Come to think about it, Plextor is probably one of, if not the top SSD, for customer satisfaction as so few failures result, once again, from their insistence on remaining with a solid controller and a solid memory manufacturer.
We believe Plextor is deserving of our Innovation Award for the M6e as they went above simply throwing together a PCIe M.2 solution. They manufactured a very well-built, high performing product with a 5 year warranty, and made available a separate solution that includes a M.2 to PCIe adapter available for maximum compatibility.
Check Out M.2 SSD s Availability at Amazon
Great review, thanks! I have a quick question: How would you quantify the “real world” performance gain of a PCIe x4 SSD over a PCIe x2?
Transfer speeds. PCIe X4 will be the stuff used to edit and compile high end 4K video whereas X2 will do just about everything else. For now, the only step up is X2.
why are You so excited with useless RAID0 setup. it only increase stream read/write.Are You only copying big files from one disk to another. that is Your main task for computers? RAID0 also increase failure probability. Try RAID1 ti is more secure and gives boost for random IO reads (depends on RAID controller), random IO read is weakest area for SSD. RAID1 also makes Your data more secure. Please remember RAID0 is not RAID is antithesis of RAID. It is not redundant (R). Who uses RAID0 for keeping data, this is only test setup, no one is using it at home otherwise he is complete idiot.
Nice review, thanks.I ma planning to buy such a SSD but i would ike to use it externally like a bigger and better USB stick, does anybody know if such external enclosures are planned, or is it technically not practicable(the speed limit over usb 3.0 doesn’t hinder me)?
There isn’t a USB enclosure that I am aware of just yet but I might watch MyDigitalSSD as they will probably be the first. There are, however, several PCIe adater cards and we have done an article in such in our M.2/NGFF section.
you could buy a m.2/ngff to sata 2.5 inch enclosure and then purchase a sata to usb adapter. like this https://www.microsatacables.com/ngff-m-2-ssd-to-sata-adapter-with-case also search on ebay and amazon.
I don’t understand why you would do that. The purpose of introducing PCIe is to get the higher performance we see outside the barriers of SATA. One needs to find either an X2 or X4 PCIe adapter, much as we have used in our reports.
Actually….when you doing the comparison to USB 3.0, I see where you are coming from.
There will be an external USB 3.0 enclosure on the market in early June designed to accept PCIe M.2 SSD’s. Stay tuned on that one.
Why the CrystalDisk shows it is SATA 3. Thanks
The same shows on their own test as well and it is undoubtedly the reason of this being such a new technology.
Hi, I have a question. Why Plextool shows speed: 6Gb/s (SATA 3), when the M2 interface has a speed 10 Gb / s, even if it is in the PCI-e!
It is a matter of technology advancing to quickly to cover all the bases. They will update soone enough I am sure.
Did you were able to put this m.2 SSD into laptop (like Zbook) and is Zbook 15 really m.2 PCIE or only SATA compatible – in other words is this interface in current laptops only a gimmick, or is it really reaching PCIe speeds.
I don’t know what you are asking. there is no gimmick. M.2 is a specific form factor of PCIe and differs from former, and other custom, variations. There are two forms of M.2 and they are native PCIe and SATA. As I haven’t had the Z in my hands, I cannot address which form that might be. Sorry.
From your very excellent reviews innovations in this ssd market adding through way to the PCle lane adds an educational element to my profile as speed is always something we want to improve. From comparison the Samsung XP941 seem to be the leader, yet lacks the advantage of boot capability through PCle bios recognition, where as the Plextor does.(at least from my understanding).
My question is, if I was to Raid 0 2x256GB Plextor PCleX2 cards, do I used a double adaptor card sold by a third party, thus lose the warranty or use 2 separate cards? (or is this even possible using 2 cards on my Rampage Black MB, since open bays are limited. There are optional double adaptor cards available, just wondering how to do this correctly with Plexor and keeping everything right, since you need to remove the ssd sticker.
Lastly, I am wondering if it might be better to wait for Samsung to “catch up”, I’m sure their technology is not behind, (judging by the benchmarks especially) it’s like I have read about the supply demand with consumer feedback and competitive influence to issue a product superior not before the time is ready, this being Software related). It’s like other areas where Samsung dominates and blows the competition away, yet Plextor and the benchmarks we see here have something to be proud about, proof being a 5yr guarantee and in real world benchmarks you may not see much difference in raid 0 anyways?
Mykal Spencer
Thanks for all the work you have done with M.2 PCIe SSDs. Is the hardware that allows the M6e to be recognized as a boot disk integrated in the actual M.2 SSD or the adapter? In other words, could the M6e M.2 SSD be swapped into another M.2 to PCIe adapter and the M6e still boot?
We had initially tested the M6e in our IO-Switch Raijin review and spoke to this. The initial boot files were located in the SSD, and not the adapter. Check back to our initial report.
SKYPE=ROCKY-TIGER-USA G-TALK=PRINCESS.JASMINE.WOOD@GMAIL.COM MSN LIVE=TIGER_0717@HOTMAIL.COM MSN LIVE=ROCKY_0717@YAHOO.COM MSN LIVE=ROCKY-TIGER@WINDOWSLIVE.COM QQ=859061471 AOL-AIM=ROCKY_TIGER@AOL.COM
Yes…unfortunately things change quickly with tech. I cannot answer whether they went with a change of heart or will only be releasing the smaller form factor to oem. Sorry.
Plextor is very good .. but cheapest SSDs are crucial ones
is it poss. you could do vs battle like reviews ? (of max two) for example these plextor and crucial ones below ?
https://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/p/Crucial-M500-SSD-PCIe-M2-480-GB_44374.html
Thank you
did you happen to take crystal disk mark benches of the drives in raid-0? I have four of the 256GB m6e’s and I’m trying to figure out a baseline. Thanks,
ahh nevermind