Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

A Sexy Form Factor You'll Want More Than Need

Plextor M6e 256 GB PCI Express SSD Review: M.2 For Your Desktop
By

The M6e is fast. There's no doubt about that. It's able to hang with the other high-end SSDs we've ever tested. In fact, SanDisk's M.2-based, PCIe-attached A110 is similar, though also a bit faster. But you can't buy the OEM-only A110, whereas Plextor's offering is for sale on Newegg right now.

There's just one catch: two models are up on the site, and both include a four-lane adapter card for the two-lane M6e. The M.2-only version is still on its way. If you pop the little card off of its adapter, your warranty is voided. So, you don't want to buy the M6e for a notebook or desktop motherboard with an M.2 interface just yet. Rather, the 128 and 256 GB drives available today should live life inside a desktop machine with a spare PCI Express x4 link. That lets us narrow down our focus for making recommendations.

Our synthetic benchmarks show sequential read and write performance hundreds of megabytes per second faster than the quickest SATA-based SSDs. Random performance is also excellent, though it's not interface-limited, so PCIe doesn't really convey a quantifiable benefit. I can't say you're going to notice those blazing-fast sequential numbers in day-to-day use, and with random performance no better than the fastest SATA 6Gb/s drives, performance is ultimately a wash for the M6e.

We do see praiseworthy behavior in our write saturation testing, though. With one-second granularity, Plextor's M6e looks a lot like Intel's consistent SSD DC-series drives, including the enthusiast-oriented SSD 730. Those offering surpass Plextor's I/O throughput thanks to significant over-provisioning, but the M6e is at least able to serve up information in well-controlled bands.

This consistency is something Plextor is cooking up for enterprise-class storage, and we're glad to see it applied in the consumer space as well. Most enthusiasts won't see or feel the difference in consumer workloads, but that isn't the point. Devices like Intel's SSD 730 and Plextor's M6e are two of the only drives we've seen behave this way, displaying grace under the pressure of more taxing applications.

TRIM testing turns up another bright spot. Plextor's 9183-based drive behaves exceptionally for an SSD with just 7% over-provisioning, outshining the M5 Pro. It cannot lay a finger on SanDisk's X210 though, a device that shows itself to be outstanding in a number of metrics. You don't get the same screaming sequential numbers (it's hamstrung by the SATA interface, after all). In its degraded state, however, the X210 maintains the lowest write access latency imaginable.

All of that is to say the M6e's PCI Express controller and M.2 form factor, on their own, don't confer an advantage in the most meaningful benchmarks.

There are still questions left to answer about PCI Express storage and its interaction with the AHCI standard. In our Tom's Hardware Storage Bench, we recorded notably different service time profiles under Windows 7 and 8.1. In Windows 7, using Microsoft's built-in MSAHCI.SYS, the numbers look great. Windows 8.1, on the other hand, employs a newer AHCI driver that's far less kind to the M6e, other PCIe-based devices, and even familiar SATA SSDs. Intel may address this in the future with its own software for integrating AHCI- and NVMe-based PCIe storage into its platform architecture.

Finally, our newest PCMark 8-based storage test doesn't give the M6e much of an advantage either. Samsung's 840 EVO and Plextor's M5 Pro soar in the Storage Consistency test. Drives from Intel, SanDisk, and Adata dominate as well. Meanwhile, the M6e's performance is more ordinary than I was expecting given its interface and pedigree.

All of that would be fine if Plextor was hitting the right price points. But you can pick up three Crucial M550s for what the same $300 being asked for a 256 GB M6e. Sling them together in RAID 0 and you have enough throughput to saturate Intel's DMI interface (I'd be willing to guess that's almost 1500 MB/s in sequential reads and 1000 MB/s in writes).

Plextor's price tags could make more sense if we were looking at M.2 models (without the adapter) for notebooks, where multiple SATA drives aren't as easy to pull off. In a desktop, it's slightly more difficult to make a case for $1+/GB solid-state storage, even if it's attached through the PCI Express bus.

Of course, there's another way of looking at this. The M6e's simplicity and elegance (that is, a native PCIe controller) put it far ahead of the PCI Express-based SSDs we've reviewed in the past. Most of those needed multiple SATA controllers attached to host bus logic. And they were way more expensive than $300 for 256 GB.

There are pros and there are cons. No matter what, though, enthusiasts are going to find Plextor's M6e desirable. It's a great solution for loading Windows and launching performance-sensitive applications, leaving native SATA ports open for a big RAID array. As a storage fiend, it's easy to see how the M6e matched up to big mechanical disks would be a fun combination. And even if the M6e only really moves the needle in sequential transfers, the M.2-based version, without a bundled adapter, promises to satisfy mobile enthusiasts.

If Plextor can bring its price down over time, its unique brand of performance and this cutting-edge form factor should attract lots of attention. Again, though, we're most excited about the M.2-specific version. On the desktop, for what Plextor is charging today, there are more compelling solutions available.

Ask a Category Expert

Create a new thread in the Reviews comments forum about this subject

Example: Notebook, Android, SSD hard drive

Display all 22 comments.
This thread is closed for comments
  • 8 Hide
    blackmagnum , May 1, 2014 1:08 AM
    Nice product design, please make one in red (it will be faster).
  • 3 Hide
    dgingeri , May 1, 2014 5:21 AM
    Someone needs to build an adapter that connects to a PCIe x8 slot and has mounting points for up to 4 or 8 PCIe M2 SSDs.
  • 4 Hide
    Au_equus , May 1, 2014 7:05 AM
    lots of empty space on that PCB and its only a half height card. Maybe its possible we can see multiple TB PCIs SSDs in the consumer space or they may just restrict it to enterprise.
  • -3 Hide
    Amdlova , May 1, 2014 7:31 AM
    300 dollar for 256 gb... i can buy 4x 120gb v300 kingston (2200mb/s R) (1920mb/s W)
    raid 0. too expensive. that plextor
  • 1 Hide
    menetlaus , May 1, 2014 9:09 AM
    Who keeps telling you there is no demand for M.2 drives?

    I bought a Lenovo Y410P shortly after they were released (and was incorrectly told it had mSATA not NGFF/M.2 for the SSD), and have been waiting over a year for a decent M.2 drive to put in it.
  • 0 Hide
    swordrage , May 1, 2014 9:16 AM
    May be in a few years we will see an ssd connected to a PCIe x16 the and size of a graphics card.
  • 0 Hide
    nekromobo , May 1, 2014 9:23 AM
    How much does it add to boot-time with its bios loading stuff? Other PCI-e cards add as long as a 1-2 minutes to boot time.
  • 1 Hide
    dgingeri , May 1, 2014 10:40 AM
    It's only a single AHCI device, and it doesn't have to wait for spinup like other raid controllers, so likely only a second or so extra init time.
  • 1 Hide
    cryan , May 1, 2014 11:23 AM
    Quote:
    lots of empty space on that PCB and its only a half height card. Maybe its possible we can see multiple TB PCIs SSDs in the consumer space or they may just restrict it to enterprise.


    The drive itself has no wasted space. The bridge board has plenty, being that the drive is only 22mm x 80mm.

    Regards,

    Christopher Ryan

  • 2 Hide
    cryan , May 1, 2014 11:24 AM
    Quote:
    How much does it add to boot-time with its bios loading stuff? Other PCI-e cards add as long as a 1-2 minutes to boot time.


    It adds all of about a second. You'll never notice, and based on UEFI settings, you might never even see the Plextor op-rom splash screen at post.

    Regards,
    Christopher Ryan
  • 0 Hide
    cryan , May 1, 2014 11:29 AM
    Quote:
    Who keeps telling you there is no demand for M.2 drives?

    I bought a Lenovo Y410P shortly after they were released (and was incorrectly told it had mSATA not NGFF/M.2 for the SSD), and have been waiting over a year for a decent M.2 drive to put in it.


    On the desktop, the demand for M.2 storage is not very high yet. In laptops, SATA M.2s are in high demand, but there isn't much reason to have a pure M.2 native PCIe Phy drive in a desktop yet. The M6e we looked at is built around the AIB bridge board, and thus isn't detachable from the M.2 drive itself, so despite the M.2 drive at the heart of the board, you still really can't buy a M.2 native PCIe drive yet. And even if you bought a M6e, ripped it out of the bridge board, and installed it in the Lenovo -- it probably wouldn't see more than a single lane of connectivity.

    Regards,
    Christopher Ryan
  • 0 Hide
    RedJaron , May 1, 2014 4:14 PM
    Fun stuff here. Makes me interested what options I'll have to work with when I'm due for an upgrade in two years.
  • 0 Hide
    Drinkperrier , May 1, 2014 8:30 PM
    Work on the asus impact VI on the MPCIe combo 2 slot?
  • 0 Hide
    west7 , May 2, 2014 11:04 AM
    this is a great product great speed and a nice price
  • 0 Hide
    west7 , May 2, 2014 11:04 AM
    this is a great product great speed and a nice price
  • 0 Hide
    Vadamo , May 2, 2014 1:16 PM
    Ill pick one up, alot of space on that card tho, why not put another set and make it a full sized card?
  • 0 Hide
    foscooter , May 8, 2014 5:31 PM
    If you remove the SSD drive from the PCI-e adapter board, will it work in the new Z97 motherboards, in the M.2 slot?
    BTW: I know it will void the warranty.
  • 0 Hide
    foscooter , May 8, 2014 5:33 PM
    If you remove the SSD drive from the PCI-e adapter board, will it work in the new Z97 motherboards, in the M.2 slot?
    BTW: I know it will void the warranty.
  • 0 Hide
    foscooter , May 8, 2014 5:33 PM
    If you remove the SSD drive from the PCI-e adapter board, will it work in the new Z97 motherboards, in the M.2 slot?
    BTW: I know it will void the warranty.

    I posted the same question in the forums, and got an answer: NO!

    If I wish to use a m.2 SSD, it looks like I'd have to get a Crucial M550 m.2 SATA SSD. No PCI-e SSD's available yet!

    EDIT: 06/11/2014 - BTW, YES it will work. Mine does! And it uses the 2 PCI-e channels. My Z97 mobo sees it with no problems! That's what I'm running now.
  • 0 Hide
    catilley1092 , May 12, 2014 4:57 PM
    I believe this type of product will kick the mSATA drives to the curb before these can become popular. Won't be the first time I've seen this, though. A technology released, then quickly superseded for another.

    Will be great to have these for notebooks, though an adapter will be needed for current releases, negating any performance gains. Because this option isn't dependent on, nor was designed for, a SATA 3 port. A true PCI-e port will be needed.

    Who said that the PC was dead, again? We have every reason to keep them very much alive.

    Cat
Display more comments