Plextor is one of the legendary names in client PC storage and has been associated with high quality and performance for nearly three decades. But it looks like Kioxia thinks differently, as it has decided to shut down the Plextor brand for SSDs and use the Solid State Storage Technology (SSSTC) trademark instead, according to a report by HKEPC. SSSTC will focus solely on drives for enterprise, datacenter, and industrial applications.

The GoPlextor.com website has already been shutdown, and Plextor.com leads to SSSTC.com — which only lists products for enterprise, datacenter, and industrial applications and no longer lists consumer SSDs. 

SSSTC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Kioxia, which makes 3D NAND memory and various NAND flash-based products, including SSDs and memory cards. Kioxia obtained SSSTC from Lite-On, which decided to get rid of its solid-state storage business in 2019. It sold this unit for $165 million to Toshiba Memory, which was renamed Kioxia later that year. Plextor used to make some of the best SSDs. 

The main values of Lite-On's SSD unit were its capable R&D team, the brand's reputation for reliability and high performance among PC enthusiasts, and its well-established business relations with channel and OEM clients. 

Meanwhile, success of Plextor's SSDs was largely driven by the success of Marvell's SSD controllers and Plextor's ability to design competitive firmware. But Marvell was late to market with PCIe Gen4 and PCIe Gen5 controllers as its developers fled to InnoGrit. Unlike its rivals, Plextor never adopted Phison's platforms, but started relying on controllers from InnoGrit, Marvell, and Silicon Motion, which meant that the company had to disperse its resources and design three different branches of firmware — not a particularly good way of using limited resources. As a consequence, the value of the Plextor brand dropped among enthusiasts, and Kioxia has decided to kill it off instead of reviving it. 

In fact, from now on, Kioxia's SSSTC will no longer offer client SSDs at all, and will instead focus on enterprise, datacenter, and industrial drives. Kioxia itself will, of course, continue to provide SSDs for client applications, but the company is somewhat behind its rivals: it still does not have a single drive with a PCIe 5.0 interface, while many of its rivals have already launched two generations. 

SSSTC will continue to offer RMA services to current owners of Plextor drives, but don't expect new Plextor-branded products to emerge in the future. Something similar happened to the OCZ brand, which was also abandoned by Toshiba (the ancestor of Kioxia) in favor of its own brand SSDs. 

Plextor will be missed since the brand has been known for its excellent optical disk drivers and SSDs for over 30 years.

Kioxia has introduced its highest-performing SSDs to date, the Exceria Pro family of drives that combine extreme performance with compatibility with laptops. Typically, makers of 3D NAND memory do not tend to address the highest-end segments of client PC market, but Kioxia's Exceria Pro SSDs offer higher performance than the company's own Plextor M10P-series SSDs.

Kioxia's Exceria Pro lineup of M.2-2280 SSDs with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface includes drives with 1TB and 2TB configurations rated for up to 7300 MBps sequential read speed,  6400 MBps sequential write speed,  800,000 read IOPS and  1.3 million write IOPS.

The Kioxia Exceria Pro drives are based on an unknown NVMe 1.4-compliant controller as well as the company's own BiCS5 TLC NAND memory. Previously the company focused on mainstream SSDs, so, the Exceria Pro family for high-end client PCs as well as workstations is uncharted territory for the brand. 

Unlike most high-performance drives for high-performance client PCs, the Exceria Pro comes with a thin graphene heat spreader that allows you to install the SSDs into laptops and get uncompromised performance. However, the drive consumes up to 8.9W under loads, which is quite high for a laptop by today's standards, but is in line with Kioxia's Plextor M10P-series SSDs. 

As far as endurance is concerned, the Exceria Pro 1TB is rated for up to 400TB to be written (TBW), whereas, the Exceria Pro 2TB is rated for up to 800TBW, which corresponds to 0.21 drive writes per day (DWPD), which is comparable to other contemporary client drives. 

Kioxia's Exceria Pro SSDs are now available from Amazon Japan, reports PC Watch. Eventually, the drives will hit other markets.

Plextor, a division of Kioxia, has expanded the line-up of its M10P-series SSDs featuring a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and extreme performance. The family now includes 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB models that are rated for a peak sequential read speed of 7000 MB/s. The drives are powered by InnoGrit's Rainer controller that promises an ultimate power efficiency as its power consumption does not exceed 3W. 

Plextor's M10P family of solid-state drives with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface is based on Innogrit's IG5636 'Rainer' controller (multi-core, NVMe 1.4, eight NAND channels, up to 1200 MT/s NAND interface, 3W, 12nm) as well as Kioxia's 3D TLC NAND memory. The M10P SSDs are available in an M.2-2280 form-factor with a large aluminum radiator (M10PG) or with no radiator at all (M10PGN) as well as in an HHHL card form-factor (M10PY) with a massive heat spreader and some RGB LEDs.

From a performance point of view, Plextor's M10P 1TB and 2TB drives are rated for up to 7000 MB/s sequential read speed, up to 5000 MB/s sequential write speed, 650K random read IOPS, and up to 530K random write IOPS. By contrast, the 512GB model has a maximum sequential write speed of 4000 MB/s as well as a maximum random write speed of 530K IOPS. The SSDs are designed for a 0.35 drive writes per day (which is higher when compared to some cheap competing SSDs for client PCs) and are are covered with a five-year warranty. 

Plextor comes to the market with its first PCIe Gen4 drives considerably later than its rivals. To some degree, this situation can be explained with the company's acquisition by Kioxia. Yet, along with the uncertainties caused by the transaction, the company also transited to controllers from InnoGrit, which required some additional work to make sure that Plextor's firmware technologies work properly with the new controllers.

For those who wonder why Plextor, which relied almost exclusively on Marvell's controllers for years, decided to use a controller by InnoGrit after it became a part of Kioxia (which has been supporting Phison for years), there is a simple explanation. Many people from Marvell's SSD business unit have left the company for Innogrit. These people have good relationships with Plextor's engineers along with deep understanding of their requirements. As a result, Plextor uses Innogrit's controllers, at least for now.  

Plextor's M10P drives are available now. 

SSDs are dirt cheap because the market is flooded with excess flash, new technologies QLC (quad-level cell) have made memory cheaper than ever and companies are getting more aggressive with pricing. Prices have declined so drastically that you can now supercharge your PC with 500 GB of flash for well under $70 or under $100 for 1TB.  

Made for price-conscious buyers who need 2.5-inch SATA drives, Crucial BX500 performs competently, but doesn't even come close to being one of the best SSDs. With so many superior products in the same price range, it's hard to recommend.

Crucial's BX500 is the successor to its popular BX300 line of SSDs. Like the company's mainstream MX500 brand, the BX500 skips over the 400-naming scheme. But, unlike the MX500, the BX500 doesn't offer much of an upgrade path over its predecessor.

The BX series is a streamlined, no-frills SSD with fewer accessories and features than the MX series. Crucial launched the BX series to tempt buyers into purchasing flash when other options in the market were too expensive. The original BX100 came with 16nm planar (2D) MLC flash and a Silicon Motion (SMI) controller. That was Crucial’s first SSD with an SMI controller, and that trend continues with the BX500. The SSD uses the new SM2258XT four-channel SSD controller paired with Micron’s latest 64-Layer 3D TLC flash.

The base SM2258 is a good SATA SSD controller, and it offers impressive performance and reliability if it’s paired with the right flash. But it needs an expensive DRAM package for caching.

The SM2258XT, known as the XT model, combats this by removing the need for DRAM. This allows the SSD to store the critical flash translation layer directly on the flash instead of in a DRAM buffer. This lowers prices by a few dollars, but it also results in lower performance. NAND isn't as fast as DRAM, and the constant read/write modifications to the flash translation layer are a strenuous task. As a result, performance can be rather unflattering–even falling into hard drive territory.

Controller and 96-Layer Flash

If it goes on a huge sale, Crucial’s BX500 might be a decent choice if you’re in search of a low-cost SSD to store your games library. While it’s not a top performer, it outpaces HDDs with speeds of up to 540/500 MB/s of read/write throughput. It's also pretty cheap with a price of just $0.10 cents per GB, though it isn't quite as cheap as some of its competition.

Flash pricing has plummeted drastically in the past year, making higher-capacity SSDs much more affordable. You can now buy 1TB SSDs for as little as $100 (or less if you happen to snag a sale). This has driven up demand for higher capacities so much that Crucial released a 960GB model for its BX500 line.

The 960GB BX500 is not the fastest drive on the market, but Micron’s latest 96-Layer 3D TLC flash and a new SM2259XT controller help make it affordable. There are also 1TB and 2TB capacities that we didn't get to test.

Specifications

Crucial’s BX500 provides up to 540/500 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput, but that can drop to an average of just 100 MB/s during a sustained workload. Crucial doesn't disclose random 4K IOPS performance, likely due to unimpressive performance, but we'll measure it on the following pages.

The BX500 is available in 120GB, 240GB, 480GB, 960GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. The BX500 currently sells for ~$0.10-per-GB for the 960GB and 2TB models.

A three-year warranty and affordable prices designate the BX500 an entry-level SSD, but its rather low write endurance epitomizes its rank. The BX500's endurance rating starts at 40 TBW (Terabytes Written) and spans up to 120 TBW. Those are among the lowest endurance ratings on the market. Surprisingly, the BX500's endurance is even lower than its predecessor.

Crucial’s BX500 comes in a 2.5” 7mm form factor and communicates with the host system via a SATA 6Gb/s link. The 960GB model comes with the same performance rating of up to 540/500MB/s read/write. The drive features a 3-year warranty but has twice the endurance (up to 240TBW).

Accessories

Crucial includes Acronis True Image HD and Crucial’s own SSD toolbox, Crucial Storage Executive, with the BX500 SSDs.

True image enables end users to quickly and safely migrate their data from their old drive to their new BX500. You can also perform system backups with it, too. Crucial’s Storage Executive is also a handy tool. With it, you can update your firmware, monitor your SSD, and enable momentum cache, which Crucial states can help improve performance up to 10x in some cases.

A Closer Look

The BX500’s case consists of thin metal and plastic. That keeps it lightweight, but the plastic gives it a cheap feel, which stands in stark contrast to its predecessor and the MX series. It connects to the host via a SATA 6GB/s connection.

Taking the casing apart reveals a 1/4 sized PCB, which is another way to reduce costs while still keeping compatibility with the 2.5" form factor. The SM2258XT resides near the connector for the best signal, and the 64-Layer 3D TLC flash is distributed among four emplacements (two on each side). Raw NAND capacity is 51GB, but after over-provisioning, the user addressable space is just 480GB. That drops to 446GB of addressable space after you format the drive in Windows.

The BX500 features a plastic casing that simply snaps together to hold the small 1/4 sized PCB within. This helps to reduce weight and material cost but leaves it with a low-quality feel. And, unlike most other SSDs, there are no thermal pads to help dissipate heat from the controller.

Four Micron 96-Layer TLC flash packages are distributed in pairs on each side of the PCB. After factory provisioning, the 960GB model leaves you with a total usable space of 894GB within Windows.

The four-channel SMI SM2259XT controller sits near the SATA connector. While similar to the previous SM2258XT, this model comes with some data path improvements to boost performance.

The Silicon Motion SM2259XT SATA controller uses a DRAM-less architecture, so there is no need for a DRAM package. Instead, the critical mapping information is stored and modified on the flash. While this helps reduce BOM cost and allows for lower prices overall, it can drastically reduce performance, which you will see on the following pages.

240GB Comparison Products

We included the Intel SSD 545s, Samsung 860 EVO, Crucial MX500, Plextor M8V, Toshiba OCZ TR200, and WD Blue 3D as comparisons in this review. All feature 3D TLC flash and current-gen controllers optimized for consumer workloads. We have also added results from a 960GB Intel Optane SSD 905P and a 2TB WD Blue HDD in certain tests.

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

The BX500 has the lowest performance of our comparison pool. As we can see, the DRAMless architecture is a definite weakness in tests that replicate real-world applications that tend to have large datasets.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

In this test, most of the top-performing SSDs achieve a total load time of about 22 seconds. The BX500's 28-second load time is better than the HDD, but still much slower than the fastest SSDs. 

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom 50GB block of data. Our data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. We copy the files to a new folder and then follow up with a read test of a newly-written 6GB file.

Crucial’s BX500 is unimpressive during our copy test. Again, it falls into last place against the other SSDs. The BX500's average speed of just 68 MB/s is a slim 21 MB/s faster than the HDD. The BX500 averaged 498 MB/s during the read test, which is slightly faster than the WD Blue 3D SSD and a huge advantage over the HDD.

SYSmark 2014 SE

Like PCMark, SYSmark uses real applications to measure system performance. SYSmark takes things much further, however. It utilizes fourteen different applications to run real workloads with real data sets to measure how overall system performance impacts the user experience. BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 SE installs a full suite of applications for its tests, which includes Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, Corel WinZip, several Adobe software applications, and GIMP. That also makes it a great test to measure the amount of time it takes to install widely-used programs after you install a fresh operating system.

SYSmark installed on the BX500 three and a half minutes faster than it did on the HDD, but it still served up low performance during the application performance tests. The BX500 provided more than twice the performance of the HDD, but it was still the slowest SSD in the test pool.

ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

The 240GB BX500 delivers the typical throughput performance we expect out of a SATA SSD. In this test, it matched its 540/500 MB/s of read/write throughput specification.

Anvil's Storage Utilities

Anvil's Storage Utility is a commonly-referenced benchmark that simplifies the complex IOMETER benchmark and its underlying Dynamo engine with a one-click software wrapper.

Crucial’s 240GB BX500 achieved a low result during the read test, but it beat the M8V and WD Blue 3D during the write test. The mismatched read and write performance leads to a total score that ranks second to last.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a simple and easy to use file size benchmarking tool.

The BX500 reached 560/494 MB/s of peak sequential read/write throughput at QD (queue depth) 32. At a QD of 1, it achieves the second-fastest result during the read test, but again, the lowest result during the write test. The drives' 4K random performance, which is a key measure of snappiness in real-world applications, again proves to be lower than the norm.

Sustained Sequential Write Performance

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement an SLC cache buffer, which is a fast area of flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the SLC cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We hammer the SSDs with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the SLC buffer and performance after the buffer is saturated.

Just like many other SSDs, the BX500 utilizes an SLC cache to absorb small bursts of write traffic. After about 13GB of continuous writes, performance degrades from an average of 500 MB/s to 100 MB/s.

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited one's sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

The 240GB BX500 manages its power consumption rather well. It consumes just 27mW with LPM enabled, and 0.4W with the feature disabled. Both results land in third place.

The 240GB BX500 continues to sip power during the file copy test. It averages 1.55W, which is the second lowest result. Crucial’s BX500 may sip power at idle and under load, but that doesn’t mean it is efficient. The BX500's average of 44 MB/s-per-watt lands in last place, which is surprising given the DRAMless architecture.

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480GB Comparison Products

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

The 480GB BX500 is even slower in this test than the 240GB model–it lags significantly behind the other drives and lands in last place.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Most 500GB-class SATA SSDs load the Final Fantasy game level in 22-23 seconds. The 480GB BX500 isn't too much slower with a 24.5 second load time, but it still trails the other SATA SSDs. It does, however, offer significantly improved game load performance over the HDD, making it a viable option for storing your games library. 

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

Crucial’s BX500 is unimpressive in our real-world copy test. Again, it falls into last place against the other SSDs. Its average of just 58 MB/s is just an 11 MB/s faster than an HDD.

The BX500 read data at an average speed of 496 MB/s, landing just ahead of the WD Blue 3D SSD.

SYSmark 2014 SE

SYSmark installed onto the BX500 faster than our HDD by about three and a half minutes, but that was still a minute slower than any other SSD in our comparison pool. The BX500’s poor performance continued during the application testing.

ATTO

Like the 240GB model, the 480GB BX500 surpassed its sequential read specifications.  

Anvil's Storage Utilities

Crucial’s BX500 ranks behind our comparison pool once again. It displays strong sequential performance, but performance in random workloads holds it back.

CrystalDiskMark

The BX500 reached sequential read/write speeds of 557/492 MB/s at QD32. These aren't world-beating numbers, but they are more than acceptable for a SATA SSD. The drive scored the fastest QD1 sequential read result in our test pool, but the lowest result in the sequential write test.

Random performance isn't very promising. The BX500 ranks in last place again at QD32. The drive reads data at just 31 MB/s at QD1, making it the slowest in the group, but its 107 MB/s of random write performance ranks second. 

Sustained Sequential Write Performance

The larger 480GB model can write more data continuously than the 240GB model before it slows down. Performance degrades to just 100 MB/s after about 24GB of continuous writes.

Power Consumption

The BX500’s sips just 31mW at idle with LPM enabled, and 0.4W when we disable the feature. Both results rank in second place, just behind the Samsung 860 EVO.

The BX500 averages 1.42W during the file copy test, which is the best in our comparison pool. The BX500's peak consumption comes in second.

Like the 240GB model, the 480GB BX500 isn’t that efficient. It averaged 44 MB/s-per-watt during the file copy, again trailing the other SSDs.

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960GB Comparison Products

We have added a few mainstream options to our comparisons for our 960GB BX500 testing. These include Crucial’s own MX500, Samsung’s 860 QVO and EVO, as well as WD’s Blue 3D and Intel’s SSD 660p. We have also added results from a 960GB Intel Optane SSD 905P and a 2TB WD Blue HDD for reference in a few of the real-world workloads.

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

Crucial’s 960GB BX500 scores a total of 4580 points and an average bandwidth of 157 MB/s. This ranks as one of the lowest-performing SSDs we've tested and lands in last place. While it will be suitable for light workloads, it can’t keep up with the rest of the mainstream options under slightly tougher conditions.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Loading Final Fantasy’s game scenes proved to be a task for the BX500. While it features similar read performance as the other drives, the BX500 was 2-5 seconds slower. Performance is still much better than any HDD, however.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom 50GB block of data. Our data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. We copy the files to a new folder and then follow up with a read test of a newly-written 6 GB file.

Crucial’s 960GB BX500 provided great read performance during our real-world copy test. It read our 6GB test file at an average rate of 494MB/s, which is in line with most other SATA SSDs.

The BX500 fell on its face during our 50GB file transfer. With an average of 49 MB/s, the BX500’s copy performance proves to be rather pitiful, at best.

SYSmark 2014 SE

Like PCMark, SYSmark uses real applications to measure system performance. SYSmark takes things much further, however. It utilizes fourteen different applications to run real workloads with real data sets to measure how overall system performance impacts the user experience. BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 SE installs a full suite of applications for its tests, which includes Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, Corel WinZip, several Adobe software applications, and GIMP. That also makes it a great test to measure the amount of time it takes to install widely-used programs after you install a fresh operating system.

Just as we have seen during previous tests, the larger BX500’s performance isn’t much different during SYSmark. The 960GB BX500 installed SYSmark faster than an HDD by about 30 seconds, but other SSDs accomplished the task 3-4 minutes faster overall. The drive notched a responsiveness score of 1552 points, which nearly matches the Samsung 860 EVO and surprisingly surpasses the Samsung 860 QVO.

ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

The BX500's performance in ATTO is similar to other SATA SSDs. Here the BX500 matched its ratings of 540/500 MB/s of read/write throughput. However, we see there is a dip in write performance that spans the 128KB-512KB file sizes. This is due to the DRAM-less architecture, which causes the BX500 to “get into a condition or state where background garbage collection briefly has to take precedence over I/Os” during the test.

Anvil's Storage Utilities

Anvil's Storage Utility is a commonly-referenced benchmark that simplifies the complex IOMETER benchmark and its underlying Dynamo engine with a one-click software wrapper.

Crucial’s 960GB BX500 delivered low scores across the board in the Anvil benchmark. It achieved a total score of 4,282 points, which ranks in last place.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a simple and easy to use file size benchmarking tool.

Crucial’s 960GB BX500 reached 562/337 MB/s of write performance at a queue depth (QD) of 32. At a QD of 1, it reached 504/442 MB/s of read/write throughput. Looking at random performance, the BX500 scored the lowest read and write scores. During heavier random access it hit just over 50,000 read IOPS, and a pitiful 1,875 write IOPS.

This goes to show that the BX500, again, hit a situation where background activity took precedence over delivering the IOs the host requested.

Sustained Sequential Write Performance

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement an SLC cache buffer, which is a fast area of SLC-programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the SLC cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We hammer the SSDs with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the SLC buffer and performance after the buffer is saturated.

As expected, the 960GB BX500 uses an SLC cache for burst write performance of up to its 500 MB/s rating. After 48GB of data written, performance degrades to a write speed of 85MB/s. While this allows it to keep up with our comparison pool for the initial burst, most other SSDs will easily surpass its performance during long sustained write workloads.

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

At idle the BX500 consumes fairly low power. Without LPM enabled, it consumes just under half a watt. With it enabled, it sips just 0.028W.

The drive consumes the least amount of power in our comparison pool under load, and the maximum power draw is similar to the Samsung 860 EVO. But, while it consumes the least amount of power, the slow transfer speed of 49 MB/s during the 50GB copy test leads to an average of just 39 MB/s per watt. The DRAM-less architecture lands it in the last place for efficiency.

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After Micron’s 96-Layer TLC flash became available, Crucial took the opportunity to add in a 960GB model to the BX500 SSD series and then the 1TB and 2TB (which we haven't tested). Crucial also moved the higher capacity drives to a newer, SM2259XT controller.

While Crucial's transition to the new 96-Layer flash and improved controller were welcome, it didn't  drastically change performance for the better. Looking through both the 480GB and 960GB results, we see a slight decrease in performance in some situations, like sustained write performance. The BX500 averaged 85 MB/s of sustained write speed after the SLC cache filled, so we see the decreased performance in our 50GB copy transfer test. Power efficiency suffers as a result.

The majority, if not all, of the similarly-priced (or cheaper) drives outperformed the 960GB BX500. The BX500 did well in SYSmark, but when we factor in the overall performance results, the result is a rather underwhelming SSD.

The BX500 does have a low price point, though. At $99, or $0.10 per GB, it is very affordable. However, it is only $7 cheaper than its much faster brother, the MX500. The MX500 also comes with a higher endurance rating. It’s well worth the extra few dollars for the increased performance and endurance.  Considering the performance delta, it's not worth saving that $7.

Meanwhile, the Intel SSD 660p is a few dollars cheaper and offers much more performance across the board. That is due to it being an M.2 NVMe SSD, so it is not a direct comparison if you can’t use an M.2 SSD in your system.

Be sure to weigh your options according to what you value most. Your hard-earned dollars could be better spent or saved by looking to alternatives.

Crucial 240GB and 480GB Conclusion

Crucial’s BX500 has a cost-reducing DRAMless architecture, but that has a big impact on performance. Even without DRAM, the SSD can achieve the typical sequential throughput we expect from a SATA SSD, but the BX500's all-important 4K random performance, a key measurement of drive snappiness, is lower than most SSDs.

We have seen this type of performance before from drives like Toshiba's TR200, which also doesn’t have a DRAM cache. Like the BX500, that drive exhibits low performance in random workloads. Write performance also suffers during extended write workloads.

As we saw in the PCMark 8 and SYSmark 2014 benchmarks, the Crucial BX500 is unimpressive in tests that measure real-world application performance. The BX500 surpasses an HDD, without question, but there is a clear divide between it and other SSDs. While it comes with an SSD toolbox and Acronis True Image HD for migrating your data, the BX500's value proposition still leaves a lot to be desired.

The BX500 family is priced competitively at $0.15- to $0.22-per-GB, but there are better options for only a few dollars more. It appears the viability of lower-tier products has nearly vanished at these low capacities. The BX500 would need to have a significantly smaller price tag for us to recommend it. Even if you are pinching pennies, we would recommend the WD Blue 3D, MX500, or Samsung 860 EVO. All those drives boast longer warranties, greater performance, and endurance at competitive price points.

Image Credits: Tom's Hardware

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QLC Flash Gone Mild

7/15/19 Update: We've updated this article with new testing for the 500GB Crucial P1, as well as tweaked parts of the review to reflect current pricing.

Crucial's P1 is the company's very first NVMe SSD, but it is almost identical to the Intel SSD 660p we recently reviewed that came out around the same time. Just like the 660p, the P1 features Micron’s latest 64-layer 3D QLC flash and a Silicon Motion NVMe SSD controller.

The P1 breaks the SATA 6Gb/s barrier with its NVMe interface and delivers sequential throughput of up to 2/1.7 GB/s read/write, but we found that its real-world application performance is similar to the company's SATA MX500 SSD. Coupled with higher-than-anticipated launch pricing, the P1 was a tough sell in the ultra-competitive SSD market when it was brand-new. Its street price has slid down rather dramatically in the last several months, but so has that of its silicon sibling, the Intel 660p, as well as other competing drives. So despite lower prices the P1 is still tough to recommend, unless you see it on a sweet sale that brings the price down even further.

Crucial is the well-established consumer-facing brand of Micron, which is one of the few manufacturers of NAND flash. Being part of a NAND manufacturer ultimately means cheaper flash costs, and over the years Micron has passed that advantage to its customers by delivering competitive pricing and value. The company's most recent SSD, the MX500, is the epitome of its ability to deliver value and reliability. It delivers enough performance to satisfy most, comes with multiple accessories, a robust feature set, and usually costs less than most of its mainstream competitors.

That’s why anticipation has been building for the last year for Crucial's first NVMe SSD. With the company's track record, we surely thought it was going to be worth the wait. Well, today’s the day. We finally have the all new Crucial P1 in our hands, let's see how it fares in our testing. 

Specifications

Crucial’s P1 series delivers up to 2/1.75GB/s of sequential read/write throughput and up to 250,000/250,000 random read/write IOPS. As listed above, performance varies based upon the capacity of the drive. 

To achieve these speeds, the P1 uses Crucial's Hybrid-Dynamic Write Acceleration technology. The P1's firmware is exclusive to Micron, but the feature set is suspiciously similar to Intel's SSD 660p, which also just happens to come with the same components.

Like most modern SSDs, the P1 has an SLC buffer that absorbs incoming data to boost performance. Crucial's implementation takes a two-step approach to buffering. The drive has a fixed SLC buffer capacity of 5GB on the 500GB drive and 12GB on the 1TB model. In addition to the fixed buffer, the drive has a dynamic buffer that expands or contracts based upon the amount of data stored on the drive. This buffer can be located anywhere in the NAND array and consumes up to 14% of the usable capacity. That means the 500GB model should have a maximum buffer capacity of roughly 75GB and the 1TB model expands to 150GB.

The 500GB and 1000GB (1TB) drives are available at launch, but the 2TB model will come to market in November. Crucial's MSRP of $109.99 for the 500GB model and $219.99 for the 1TB model are higher than the Intel SSD 660p and most SATA SSDs but undercuts most other NVMe SSDs.

The P1 comes with a lengthy five-year warranty, but as we expect from a QLC SSD, endurance comes up short. The P1 can absorb 100TB of data writes per 500GB of SSD capacity, which equates to 200TBW of endurance for the 1TB model. That's the same endurance rating as Intel's QLC-powered 660p. However, the competition has stepped up its game. Many 1TB class NVMe SSDs have endurance ratings of up to 600TBW. Some SSDs, like Corsair's new MP510, offer more than eight times more endurance than the P1. Even Crucial’s own MX500 offers almost twice the endurance.

The P1 supports the NVMe low power states, so active power consumption is rated at just 100mW and stretches up to a maximum of 8W. It also has an impressive 80mW idle power consumption rating. The P1 also features power loss protection for data-at-rest and has a multi-step data integrity algorithm that protects against data loss. Crucial's Adaptive Thermal Protection protects the components from overheating, and the RAIN (Redundant Array of Independent NAND) feature provides device-level data redundancy as a further layer of protection.

Unlike many new SSDs, including the Crucial MX500 and Intel SSD 660p, the Crucial P1 doesn't support AES 256-bit hardware encryption.

Software and Accessories

Crucial offers Acronis True Image HD software, which you can use to clone over your OS from your old drive or for backing up your data, and its Crucial Storage Executive software. The Storage Executive software provides SMART value monitoring, capacity monitoring, and performs firmware updates. The software also enables Crucial's Momentum Cache, which is a RAM caching program that absorbs incoming random write data and flushes it to the drive as sequential data. That improves both performance and endurance.

A Closer Look

The Crucial P1 is an NVMe 1.3 compliant SSD that communicates over a PCIe 3.1 x4 connection. It comes in an M.2 2280 form factor and both the 500GB and 1TB models are single-sided, meaning all the components are on one side of the PCB. The 2TB model has components on both sides of the PCB (double-sided) and is a bit thicker. The SSD comes with a blacked-out PCB, which is a nice touch, but the white sticker on top doesn't match the color scheme, and you can't remove it without voiding your warranty.

The Crucial P1 comes equipped with the four-channel Silicon Motion SM2263EN controller that limits it to a maximum of 2GB/s of throughput. Silicon Motion's pricier eight-channel SM2262/2262EN controllers are faster, but you'll only find those on more expensive SSDs. 

The 1TB model comes with two NAND packages filled with 128GiB dies and has 931GB of usable capacity after formatting in Windows. The drive also uses a DDR3 buffer to accelerate the Flash Translation Layer (FTL). All models have 1MB of DRAM per 1GB of NAND. 

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1000GB Performance Results

Comparison Products

We put the 1TB Crucial P1 against a few very competitive options. Of course, we have the Intel SSD 660p that has the same components and is basically the same drive. We also have the Plextor M9Pe, Samsung 970 EVO, WD Black, Adata XPG Gammix S11, and MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro. These represent most of the mainstream NVMe options available. We also threw in the Crucial MX500, a SATA drive, to gauge the performance of the more expensive NVMe products. 

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

The P1’s first result is rather alarming. The P1's total score of 4970 points and the average bandwidth of just 301MB/s is nearly the same as the best SATA drives. In fact, despite its faster NVMe connection, the P1 barely outperforms the SATA MX500. The P1's NVMe-based competition, however, scores much higher. 

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Most flash-based drives load the StormBlood benchmark in 21 to 22 seconds. The Crucial P1 scores the lowest total time of 21.97 seconds, but the difference between the fastest and slowest flash-based SSDs is slight. In either case, it's clear that any SSD is much faster at loading games than any HDD.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom 50GB block of data. Our data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. We copy the files to a new folder and then follow up with a read test of a newly-written 6 GB file.

If you want to transfer a bunch of files of various sizes, the Crucial P1 can handle that without a problem. It isn’t the fastest drive in the test pool, but the 288MB/s average in our copy test is respectable. The Crucial P1 is very similar to the 660p during our read test, reminding us that these drives are built from the same basic building blocks.

SYSmark 2014 SE

Like PCMark, SYSmark uses real applications to measure system performance. SYSmark takes things much further, however. It uses fourteen different applications to run real workloads with real data sets to measure how overall system performance impacts the user experience. BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 SE installs a full suite of applications for its tests, which includes Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, Corel WinZip, several Adobe software applications, and GIMP. That also makes it a great test to measure the amount of time it takes to install widely-used programs after you install a fresh operating system.

The Crucial P1 installed SYSmark in 15 minutes and 32 seconds, outperforming the WD Black and the Intel 660p by nearly a minute. The Crucial MX500, however, was six seconds faster. After the SYSmark run, the Crucial P1 scored 1600 points in the responsiveness test. On its own, that is almost three times faster than an HDD. But the SSD competition is faster, including the SATA-based MX500.

ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

The MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro takes the overall win in this test. Once again, the Crucial P1 is very similar to the Intel 660p, though it does have higher read performance and slightly lower write throughput. We do see the advantage of the NVMe interface in this test, though: The P1's read and write throughput are three to four times faster than the SATA-based MX500.

Anvil's Storage Utilities

Anvil's Storage Utility is a commonly-referenced benchmark that simplifies the complex IOMETER benchmark and its underlying Dynamo engine with a one-click software wrapper.

The Crucial P1 outperforms Intel 660p, but lands in sixth place overall. The P1's slower sequential performance lands a tier below some of the other mainstream competitors. 

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a simple and easy to use file size benchmarking tool.

Crucial’s P1 exhibited strong 4K random performance at a QD (Queue Depth) of 1. The drive is also strong in the all-important QD 1 to 4 range. It also meets its QD32 specification, but this heavy workload is irrelevant for most desktop file transfers.

Sustained Sequential Write Performance

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement an SLC cache buffer, which is a fast area of SLC-programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the SLC cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We hammer the SSDs with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the SLC buffer and performance after the buffer is saturated.

The Intel 660p is faster than the P1 for the first 20 seconds of this heavy write workload, but after that, the P1 took the lead until the buffer was full. Crucial’s P1 wrote 149GB of data before its write speed degraded from 1.7GB/s down to an average of 106MB/s. Overall, this is an impressive result in a worst-case scenario, but you won't be able to take advantage of the P1's full write speed unless you're transferring files from an equally fast storage device.

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

The P1 consumed just under 700mW with ASPM disabled, and just barely 11mW after we enabled the feature.

The P1 consumed an average of 2.53W of power during our 50GB file transfer. That's slightly more power than the MX500, but you get almost twice the performance in exchange. The P1 also had the lowest maximum power consumption. The P1's efficiency measurement of 114MB/s per watt is also plenty impressive, but Intel's 660p is slightly better.                            

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500GB Performance Results

Comparison Products

Going up against the 500GB Crucial P1, we have a few popular competitors. Starting off, the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro and Gigabyte Aorus RGB both feature Phison E12 NVMe controllers and 64L Toshiba TLC NAND. As well, we have the Adata XPG SX8200 and Intel SSD 760P, which both feature Silicon Motion SM2262 NVMe controllers and IMFT 64L TLC NAND. Additionally, we threw in the Samsung 970 EVO Plus, which has their Phoenix NVMe controller and the Samsung 860 EVO, a SATA based SSD for referencing. Finally, we added a PCIe 3.0 x2 device, the MyDigitalSSD SBX, to see just how much better the P1 can be with its PCIe 3.0 x4 link.

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

Crucial’s P1 scored the lowest out of the bunch here. With a total score of 4895 points and an average bandwidth of 229MB/s, performance is even less than the SATA based Samsung 860 EVO. The QLC NAND isn’t looking too good. This NAND and a rather expedited SLC cache folding algorithm are what are keeping the P1 from scoring higher.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Game load time is rather good for the , on the other hand. While it wasn’t able to outperform the 860 EVO in PCMark 8, our Final Fantasy load time benchmark shows a rather speedy result of 20.85 seconds. This ranks it 5th overall and proves that the P1’s PCIe NVMe interface can deliver improved performance over its SATA based competition at game loading, though it isn’t as drastic as an SSD vs HDD.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom 50GB block of data. Our data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. We copy the files to a new folder and then follow up with a read test of a newly-written 6 GB file.

As well as performing well in our game load test, Crucial’s P1 performs well in our real-world file copy and read tests, though there is some room for improvement. The SLC cache was enough to handle our 50GB file folder and rank it fourth overall on our chart. The 6GB read test shows performance that is more than double what SATA SSDs are capable of, but is much lower than many of the better-performing NVMe competitors.

SYSmark 2014 SE

Like PCMark, SYSmark uses real applications to measure system performance. SYSmark takes things much further, however. It utilizes fourteen different applications to run real workloads with real data sets to measure how overall system performance impacts the user experience. BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 SE installs a full suite of applications for its tests, which includes Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, Corel WinZip, several Adobe software applications, and GIMP. That also makes it a great test to measure the amount of time it takes to install widely-used programs after you install a fresh operating system.

The Crucial P1 took a bit longer to install SYSmark than competing NVMe SSDs, but not by much. With a total install time of 15 minutes and 12 seconds, it ranks ahead of the Samsung 860 EVO and surprisingly, the Intel SSD 760P. After the initial installation, however, the Intel SSD 760P scored very well. The P1 on the other hand, scored a little better than the 860 EVO, but much more responsive than the MyDigitalSSD SBX.

ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

The Crucial P1 hit its sequential performance specs of 1.9/1GB/s read/write in its ATTO run. It did rather well with smaller files too. Compared to the MyDigitalSSD SBX, the performance difference is almost night and day on the ramp-up curve. While the P1 is in line with most competitors up until the 16KB file size, the SBX lags far behind until it hits the 128KB file size.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a simple and easy to use file size benchmarking tool.

As we saw in ATTO, the Crucial P1 delivers similar performance numbers of 1.9/1GB/s in CDM. This is at a rather high QD of 32, so, pulling things back down to a QD of 1 reveal a bit lower read performance, 1.4GB/s, but basically, the same 1GB/s write performance.

Looking to 4K random speeds, we hit 93K IOPS read and 240K IOPS write at a QD of 64. Testing at a more realistic QD of 1 shows performance numbers of nearly 16K IOPS read and 42K IOPS write. This is rather impressive and proves to be a good margin better than the Phison E12 powered SSDs. It even outperforms the ever so expensive 970 EVO Plus in read performance.

Sustained Sequential Write Performance

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement an SLC cache buffer, which is a fast area of SLC-programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the SLC cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We hammer the SSDs with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the SLC buffer and performance after the buffer is saturated.

Crucial’s P1 features a rather large SLC write cache. It helps the SSD to absorb about 73GB of data at a rate of 1GB/s before it fills. This is sufficient for most consumer workloads, but after that, performance suffers drastically. We all know when you add more bits to a NAND cell, write performance suffers without an SLC cache. But in the Crucial P1’s case, performance is dreadful. After its SLC cache exhausts, the native direct to QLC write speed is just 60MB/s on average.

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

Crucial’s P1 is rather power efficient. At idle it sips just 11mW when ASPM is enabled in the UEFI. With it disabled, it sips 0.6W, which is about the same as the Samsung 970 EVO Plus.

During our 50GB file copy, it consumed on average 2.4W of power, tying the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro, as well as tying that drive for an efficiency score of 109MB/s. With a slightly faster copy speed, here it even edged up to first place overall.

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Conclusion

Intel's 660p debuted just a few weeks before the P1 as the first consumer SSD to feature QLC flash. It proved that with enough tweaking and the right pricing, QLC NAND could be competitive despite its lower endurance. The 660p makes the jump to a QLC SSD a bit easier, but the Crucial P1, which features the same components, isn't as convincing.

With synthetic specifications of up to 2/1.75GB/s of sequential read/write throughput, it seems like the Crucial P1 is a faster alternative to the Intel 660p and any SATA-based drive. But while synthetic testing tells you some of the basic capabilities of a drive, real-world application testing tells all. Unfortunately, the Crucial P1 came up short at times during our real-world testing. Times where it matters.

Our goal is to measure the real-world performance that you'll see during daily use. As part of that ethos, we test the drive as a boot volume and fill it to half of its capacity to mirror real-world operating conditions. This process can reduce SSD performance, and the Crucial P1 didn't live up to our expectations under those conditions.

We reached out to Crucial about the lower than expected results. Crucial and Silicon Motion are investigating the issue and a possible fix. In their testing, the 500GB Intel 660p exhibited similar behavior when half full, too. We do not have a 500GB 660p model to verify their findings, but our 1TB Intel 660p did not slow down as much when we filled it to 50% of capacity. We also retested an empty P1 and found that it scored similarly to an empty Intel 660p.

Both Intel and Crucial say their firmware is separate of one another, but with such similar performance between the two drives, we surmise that both are based heavily on Silicon Motion’s firmware.

The P1 scored as low as some SATA SSDs during our PCMark 8 testing, while the Intel 660p was nearly twice as fast. The Crucial P1 also displayed SATA-like performance in SYSmark and lagged the competition in the responsiveness test. Conversely, the P1 installed SYSmark quickly, was agile during our file transfer tests, and was on par with other SSDs during our gaming test. The P1 also displayed stellar sequential write performance during our write saturation test.

Still, pairing this mostly lower application performance with comparatively higher pricing doesn’t make things easy on the P1. Sure, it is faster than a SATA SSD most of the time and is significantly better than any HDD, but competition is brutal in the SSD market.

While the pricing of both the 660p and the P1 have dropped dramatically since launch, the P1 is still slightly more expensive than the Intel 660p. To become competitive, Crucial’s P1 needs a bump up in performance and a better price. If you want faster performance and have room in your budget, the Adata XPG GAMMIX S11, Samsung EVO, and WD Black are better options. The MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro or Corsair Force MP510 are good choices if you're looking for more endurance. Even among low-cost QLC-based NVMe drives specifically, we think the Intel 660p is a better choices if you're on the hunt for a value SSD.

Photo Credits: Tom's Hardware

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Long Warranty, High Endurance, and a Price to Match

Sony isn't the first name that comes to mind when we think of SSDs, but the company does have a few of them under its belt. The fact is, the company's SSDs aren't for most consumers as much as they are for the media professionals or prosumers. It isn't surprising, then, that the Sony G Series Professional SSD is packed with endurance and boasts a ten-year warranty, much like the Samsung 850 PRO and SanDisk Extreme Pro that debuted four years ago.

Sony has adopted the endurance marketing tactic to convey its reliability to the prosumer market. As a media recording device with sequential read/write throughput of 550/500MB/s, the SV-GS48 excels. But beyond a big price tag, the SV-GS48 has little to offer for the typical PC gamer that doesn't need higher endurance or the long ten-year warranty.

Sony developed the SV-GS48 for media recording first and foremost. Specifically, Sony designed it for Atomos on-camera, portable recorders, and Blackmagic recorders. A sturdier connector that could stand the test of time with constant use is imperative for media professionals, so Sony beefed up the SATA connector: The G Series is rated to withstand up to 3,000 repeated insertions and removals. The G Series also has data protection technology that preserves the data on the drive, even if it is disconnected improperly or in the case of a power loss event.

Wear adds up quickly if you're recording terabytes of video a month. Consumer drives with ratings of 100-400TBW can die within a year or two of constant use with extreme workloads. That's why Sony included beefy ECC algorithms to help extend drive life beyond the norm. The 480GB model offers 1200TBW (terabytes written) of endurance, while the 960GB has a 2400TBW rating. That’s double the Samsung 860 PRO and almost a petabyte more than the newest 1TB Phison E12-powered M.2 SSDs.

Sony also optimized the firmware for extended sequential write workloads. This enables consistent write performance, which in turn allows users to record 4K RAW footage in high-end recorders. But it comes at a cost: due to the firmware tuning, 4K random performance is lower than the average mainstream SATA SSDs for desktop PCs.

Specifications

Sony rates the G Series for up to 550/500 MB/s of read/write throughput but doesn't disclose random performance. Sony’s G Series Professional SSD comes in two capacities of 480GB and 960GB. They currently retail for $299.95 and $533.35, which is roughly double the price of the Samsung 860 PRO.

A Closer Look

Sony’s G Series Professional SSD connects to the host system or video recorder via the SATA 6Gb/s interface. It features a sleek black brushed metal finish and comes in a 2.5” 9.5mm form factor. It is slightly thicker than most modern mainstream SSDs, which are 7mm thick, but this isn’t a concern for its target market.

Sony isn't disclosing the controller model, but we were able to track down the DRAM and NAND. The SV-GS48 has 512MB of DDR3L DRAM from SK Hynix and Toshiba’s planar 15nm TLC NAND flash. In all, there are eight 64GB NAND emplacements on the PCB. The SV-GS48 exposes 446GB of usable capacity after formatting.

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480GB Performance Results

Comparison Products

While we do not have any of the SV-GS48's direct competitors, we included the Intel SSD 545s, Samsung 860 EVO, Crucial MX500, Plextor M8V and WD Blue 3D. All feature 3D TLC NAND and current-gen controllers that are optimized for typical desktop PC workloads. We have also added results from a 960GB Intel Optane SSD 905P and a 2TB WD Blue HDD.

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

The Sony SSDs sequential write-focused firmware doesn’t fare well in PCMark 8, ranking sixth overall in the Storage 2.0 benchmark. Other mainstream SSDs, such as the WD Blue 3D and Samsung 860 EVO, deliver significantly faster application performance.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Sony’s SV-GS48 comes up last in the SSD group with a total time of nearly 30 seconds. Other SSDs offer twice the performance on the HDD, but the Sony SSD isn't as impressive.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom 50GB block of data. Our data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. We copy the files to a new folder and then follow up with a read test of a newly-written 6 GB file.

The Sony G Series copied files at 129MB/s, which is similar to both the Plextor M8V and WD Blue 3D. The G Series' average read throughput of 488 MB/s edges ahead of the WD Blue 3D by just a few points. Overall, the Sony drive is three to four times faster than an HDD during file copies and reads.

SYSmark 2014 SE

Like PCMark, SYSmark uses real applications to measure system performance. SYSmark takes things much further, however. It utilizes fourteen different applications to run real workloads with real data sets to measure how overall system performance impacts the user experience. BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 SE installs a full suite of applications for its tests, which includes Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, Corel WinZip, several Adobe software applications, and GIMP. That also makes it a great test to measure the amount of time it takes to install widely-used programs after you install a fresh operating system.

The Sony SV-GS48 installed SYSmark faster than an HDD and blew the HDD’s score out of the water. But, compared to other SSDs, the SV-GS48 landed in last place.

ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

The SV-GS48 attained peak results of 554/511 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput, which is average for a SATA SSD.

Anvil's Storage Utilities

Anvil's Storage Utility is a commonly-referenced benchmark that simplifies the complex IOMETER benchmark and its underlying Dynamo engine with a one-click software wrapper.

The Sony Professional G Series displays the lowest performance out of the comparison pool. While it is strong in sequential read and write tasks, lower-than-average 4K random read and write results take a toll. Read workloads suffer the most – even the nearest competitor is 33% better.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a simple and easy to use file size benchmarking tool.

The G Series SSD delivers peak sequential read/write speeds of 552/509MB/s at a QD (queue depth) of 32. Those are the lowest results in the test pool, but still respectable. The other SSDs have a 40-45MB/s lead in read performance at QD1, which is more important because it represents much slower performance for the Sony SSD in real-world desktop workloads. 

Random performance is the G Series' weakness. 4K random read speed is only 23MB/s at QD1. The random read and write results still remain the lowest in the group even after we intensify the workload.

Sustained Sequential Write Performance

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement an SLC cache buffer, which is a fast area of SLC-programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the SLC cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We hammer the SSDs with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the SLC buffer and performance after the buffer is saturated.

Most of the TLC-based SSDs jet out with faster write performance for the first few gigabytes of writes, however, performance degrades anywhere from 50-100MB/s after the buffer is filled.

This is what the Sony G Series was designed for. The SV-GS48 delivers consistent write results just over 500MB/s on average, all without a hiccup along the way.

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

Sony’s G Series Professional SSDs are heavily optimized for recording video data at a fast pace, but it isn't optimized for power efficiency.

At idle the SV-GS48 consumed 1.25W, the worst result of the group, and it does not support LPM like the other drives.

It consumed a little over 3W of power during the 50GB file copy test, which is nearly 50% more than the next SSD. Peak consumption hit 4.82W, which is still the highest result in the group.

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Conclusion

The Sony G Series Professional SSD may be effective for video recording, but it isn't as impressive as a Samsung 860 PRO, or even the 860 EVO, when it comes to performance for the storage enthusiast or gamer. The drive lived up to its specifications during our testing, but it consistently wound up in last place, or next to last, and it isn't very power efficient. These weaknesses come as a result of its firmware tuning that optimizes for sequential write workloads, thus boosting video recording performance.

Due to lower-than-average 4K random performance, the drive trails other SSDs in our application tests. It was even 20% slower than the nearest SSD during our game scene loading benchmark. In PCMark 8 it was over 40% slower than the Samsung 860 EVO. And in SYSmark, its score was significantly lower than the rest of the comparison pool. It did fare better during the 50GB file copy test and 6GB file read test, but its results were still near the bottom of the group.

While the Sony drive's performance wasn’t too impressive against the average consumer SSD, it was significantly faster than an HDD. Compared to an HDD, the SV-GS48 can deliver three to four times the performance depending on the task.

It looks good, too. With a sleek black and brushed metal finish, Sony’s G Series has the looks to match the price tag, but that is one hefty price tag for the sub-par performance. What you are really paying for is double the endurance and warranty of the Samsung 860 PRO.

If you're willing to give up the Sony's ten-year warranty for Samsung's five-year, you can get a Samsung 860 PRO at twice the capacity of the G Series for nearly the same price. We don’t have a Samsung 860 PRO to compare to the Sony, but based on the ranking history and its newer 3D MLC flash, we can confidently say the 860 PRO would come out on top. In exchange for a shorter warranty, you will gain better application performance in desktop PC workloads, twice the capacity, and a similar cost-per-TBW of endurance to top it off. When it comes to weighing the value of the SV-GS48 for video recording, it’s a hard toss-up between these two SSDs.

For the sole usage as a recording device, Sony’s G Series Professional SSDs hold their merit. They excel in media recording and offer high reliability and durability for the task. The SATA connector is even rated for six times the insertions and removals as standard connectors. So, if you will constantly swap between your Atomos Inferno or Blackmagic recorder and computer all day, you won’t have to worry over the interface failing on you after a year or two of work.

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RGB SSDs Done Right, Kinda

The SSD market is riding the wave of a new RGB trend, and Team Group's T-Force Delta RGB SSD is yet another example of the newfound brightness. Recently we reviewed Kingston’s HyperX Fury RGB, and while it looked like a beast, it was timid in our testing. It's clear that RGB doesn’t always mean performance–it really is more about form over function for some products.

Team Group’s T-Force Delta RGB tries to bring both of those aspects to the table. The Delta RGB reaches peak speeds of 560/510MB/s courtesy of Micron’s last-gen 32L 3D TLC NAND flash and a Silicon Motion controller. While it isn’t a leaderboard king with its mainstream performance, the Team Group’s T-Force Delta RGB is a good blend of SSD and a blingy light show. However, the somewhat low endurance, a three-year warranty, and a slight premium for the flashy lights might be deal breakers.

Team Group hit the market early with its RGB SSD. Focusing on multiple products to cover this ever-expanding gamer-focused market, Team Force developed multiple versions of their Delta RGB SSD.

You can decide between a black or white casing, but there are more options: There are different Delta RGB SSD models with different types of RGB support. It is important that you check the motherboard compatibility lists on Team Group’s website to ensure your system is compatible. Otherwise, you might be stuck with the wrong drive for your application.

We're testing the Delta RGB with 3-pin 5V ADD header support. Team Group includes a micro USB cable that connects to the SSD’s USB input and the appropriate header of your motherboard. The SSD is the first to feature a water flow light effect, which is actually the default setting. The water flow light effect cycles through the color range until you change the lighting settings with any of the following software per your respective motherboard supplier: ASUS Aura Sync, GIGABYTE RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light Sync, or ASROCK Polychrome Sync.

Team Group also has the Delta S, which is compatible with 4-pin 12V RGB headers, and the Delta R, which plugs into a USB 2.0 header. The Delta R, however, has only one lighting mode and cannot be controlled or synced with software. If you purchase a Delta RGB 5V variant and don’t have a motherboard to support it, you can use a Corsair Lighting Node PRO and its LINK software instead, just like we did. Most other RGB lighting controllers do not support 5V.

Specifications

Just as any other SATA SSD, sequential performance isn’t anything to write home about. The Delta RGB is capable of sequential speeds up to 560/510MB/s read/write, and random performance spans up to 90,000/80,000 IOPS read/write. Much of the write performance comes from the integrated SLC buffer.

Team Group’s Delta RGB is available in capacities of 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB. There is a slight premium for the bright and unique RGB look.

Like the Kingston HyperX Fury RGB and WD Blue 3D, the Delta RGB comes with a three-year warranty, but it doesn't have the endurance to match. Competing SSDs offer 360 to 600TBW endurance ratings at the 1TB capacity, but the Delta RGB comes with just 240TBW of endurance.

A Closer Look

Team Group’s Delta RGB comes in a 2.5” 9.5mm form factor, so it is a little thicker than the typical 7mm thick SSD. It is also slightly heavier at over 80 grams (rather than the average 30-40 grams), so it wouldn’t be a good choice as a replacement drive for a thin laptop. But that doesn’t matter much: This SSD is designed to be on display in desktops. With the extra 2.5mm of space, Team Group has added in RGB lighting and a light diffuser which results in some beautiful lighting and transitions.

Unlike the HyperX Fury RGB and its 75 embedded lights, the T-Force Delta uses just eight LEDs to produce its light range, but it can still deliver over 16.8 million colors. The Delta's LEDs reside on a separate circuit board that's powered by a separate cable, rather than being powered directly by the SSD’s PCB.

The Delta features a Silicon Motion SM2258 controller. Well established and mature, this 4-channel controller provides solid performance and uses a DDR3 DRAM cache. Pairing it with Micron’s last-gen 384Gb 32L 3D TLC, however, might not be the best combination for competitive performance, but it does provide more spare area for the SLC cache, garbage collection, and other background tasks.

The 250GB model actually has 288GB of raw NAND, with usable capacity weighing in at 238GB after formatting in Windows. We weren’t able to decode the NAND packages on the 1TB model, but it has 931GB of usable capacity after formatting. 

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250GB Performance Results

Comparison Products

We included the Intel 905P and a 2TB WD Blue HDD in our performance charts. We also have the Crucial MX500 and Plextor M8V that come with the same SM2558 controller. The MX500 features Micron’s latest 64-layer (64L) TLC flash while the M8V hosts Toshiba’s latest 64L TLC flash. Also, we have the WD Blue 3D and Toshiba OCZ TR200 with Toshiba 64L TLC flash, and we threw in Samsung’s 860 EVO, which comes with its own in-house controller and 64L 3D TLC. Finally, we added in the Intel SSD 660p, which is one of the least expensive NVMe SSDs.

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

Team Group’s Delta RGB lands in fifth place behind the Crucial MX500. Thanks to its four-channel controller and DRAM, it leads the Toshiba OCZ TR200, which only has a two-channel controller and no DRAM. If you're searching for the best performance in these types of applications, the Samsung 860 EVO is your pick.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

There isn't much difference between the SSDs during our game loading test in Final Fantasy. Most of the SATA SSDs take about 22-23 seconds to load the game, including the Delta RGB. Here the Delta RGB takes fourth place. It is also much faster than the Toshiba OCZ TR200.    

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom 50GB block of data. Our data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. We copy the files to a new folder and then follow up with a read test of a newly-written 6 GB file.

The Delta RGB delivers average file copying performance. The Samsung 860 EVO takes the lead when copying and reading data, but the Delta RGB nearly matches the M8V, which also has an SM2258 controller. It even outpaces both the WD Blue 3D and Toshiba OCZ TR200. It's almost three times faster than an HDD during the file copy test and over four times faster during the read test.

SYSmark 2014 SE

Like PCMark, SYSmark uses real applications to measure system performance. SYSmark takes things much further, however. It utilizes fourteen different applications to run real workloads with real data sets to measure how overall system performance impacts the user experience. BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 SE installs a full suite of applications for its tests, which includes Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, Corel WinZip, several Adobe software applications, and GIMP. That also makes it a great test to measure the amount of time it takes to install widely-used programs after you install a fresh operating system.

SYSmark installed very quickly on the Team Group Delta RGB. It outperformed the HDD and landed just behind the Crucial MX500 and Intel 905P. During the performance portion of the test, the Delta RGB scored a respectable 1555 points. This lands just behind the Plextor M8V, but clearly ahead of the HDD and TR200.      

ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

The Delta RGB delivers average performance during the read and write tests, although it lands on the lower side of the average. Our 250GB sample attained over 560MB/s of read throughput and over 520MB/s of write bandwidth, which should satisfy anyone looking for a new SATA SSD.

Anvil's Storage Utilities

Anvil's Storage Utility is a commonly-referenced benchmark that simplifies the complex IOMETER benchmark and its underlying Dynamo engine with a one-click software wrapper.

The newer 64L TLC flash has much faster write performance than the older 32L TLC NAND flash in the Delta RGB. While Team Group’s T-Force RGB Delta landed in third place, its low write performance isn't quite as impressive.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a simple and easy to use file size benchmarking tool.

The Samsung 860 EVO, WD Blue 3D, and the Team Group Delta RGB offer similar sequential read and write performance. With results of 564MB/s read and 534MB/s write, there’s nothing to complain about.

Low queue depth performance is critical for SSDs because it directly impacts the user experience. At a queue depth (QD) of 1, sequential read and write speeds of 493/470MB/s are average results, but QD1 4K random read performance of 29MB/s is the slowest result in the group. 4K random write performance is also average at QD1. Once we dive into the deeper QDs of 2, 4, and 8, the Delta RGB continues to show weaker than average read and average write performance.

Sustained Sequential Write Performance

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement an SLC cache buffer, which is a fast area of SLC-programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the SLC cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We hammer the SSDs with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the SLC buffer and performance after the buffer is saturated.

The Delta RGB’s write cache is much larger than the cache on the other drives. While the Samsung 860 EVO can hold about 12GB of writes before the cache is full, the Delta RGB absorbed 90GB of data before it filled. Once the SLC write cache filled, however, the Delta wrote at an average of 90MB/s for an additional 22GB. Once again, performance fell even further to an average of 64MB/s, which is much lower than the competition.

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

Team Group’s Delta RGB SSD is quite efficient. It drew an average of 1.51W during the 50GB file transfer and hit a maximum of 2.6W. With this and an average transfer speed of 120MB/s, it ranks as the most efficient 250GB SSD in its class during this workload.

At idle, the 250GB Team Group Delta RGB continues to show off its efficiency. It consumed nearly half a watt with LPM disabled, which is 2.5x more than the Samsung 860. With LPM enabled, the Delta RGB consumed under 50mW, which is a very good result.

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1TB Performance Results

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

The 1TB Delta delivers a notable improvement over the smaller 250GB model, but it isn't enough to take the crown. Instead, the drive ranks 5th overall, closely behind Crucial’s MX500. 

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

The 1TB Delta RGB was actually loads game scenes slower than the 250GB model. Here it loaded the scenes in 23.1 seconds, which ranks ahead of both the TR200 and WD Blue 3D.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom 50GB block of data. Our data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. We copy the files to a new folder and then follow up with a read test of a newly-written 6 GB file.

The NVMe-based Intel SSD 660p teases its SATA competitors with an average of 291MB/s. But the Delta’s results are very similar to the Crucial MX500 and WD Blue 3D. The Delta RGB performs three times faster than an HDD and almost twice as fast as Toshiba’s OCZ TR200 during our file copy test.

SYSmark 2014 SE

Like PCMark, SYSmark uses real applications to measure system performance. SYSmark takes things much further, however. It utilizes fourteen different applications to run real workloads with real data sets to measure how overall system performance impacts the user experience.

BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 SE installs a full suite of applications for its tests, which includes Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, Corel WinZip, several Adobe software applications, and GIMP. That also makes it a great test to measure the amount of time it takes to install widely-used programs after you install a fresh operating system.

The Team Group T-Force Delta RGB installs SYSmark faster than any other SATA device in our comparison pool. This lead is short-lived, however. The Delta RGB ranks sixth place in the responsiveness score, just a few points below the Samsung 860 EVO and WD Blue.

ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

Like the 250GB model, the 1TB model lands the lower portion of the chart but still delivers speeds of 560/525MB/s read/write. While a bit more than just a few bucks more at the 1TB capacity, the Intel SSD 660p clearly takes the lead when it comes to sequential workloads–it's over three times faster.

Anvil's Storage Utilities

Anvil's Storage Utility is a commonly-referenced benchmark that simplifies the complex IOMETER benchmark and its underlying Dynamo engine with a one-click software wrapper.

The Delta takes fifth place due to its lower than average read and write scores. We really see the weakness of the TR200's DRAMless architecture in the write performance results, but that type of workload is the Delta RGB's strength.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a simple and easy to use file size benchmarking tool.

The Intel 660p takes the lead in sequential performance at QD32. The Delta RGB, however, delivers a respectable result of 562/526MB/s read/write. Unlike the 250GB capacity, the 1TB model delivered similar 4K results at queue depth 32 compared to the rest of the drives.

The Delta scores an average result at QD1, but, like in Anvil, the Delta is more competitive during write workloads than it is during reading tasks.

Sustained Sequential Write Performance

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement an SLC cache buffer, which is a fast area of SLC-programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the SLC cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We hammer the SSDs with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the SLC buffer and performance after the buffer is saturated.

The 660p offers three to four times the write performance but slows down to just over 100MB/s after 135GB of data writes. Like the 250GB model, the 1TB Team Group Delta RGB slows down after being written to for more than a few seconds. After writing 11GB of data at a rate of 525MB/s, our 1TB sample’s write performance degraded to 470MB/s for the remainder of the test. Compared to the Samsung, WD, and Crucial comparison products, it’s a small difference.

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

We were surprised to see how closely the 1TB results were to the 250GB model. With an average of 1.55W, along with a maximum of 2.68W recorded during the 50GB copy test, the Delta RGB has very low power requirements under load. The Delta is also very efficient at 97MB/s per watt. The Samsung 860 EVO’s 108MB/s per watt and the NVMe Intel 660p’s 120MB/s per watt are better, though.

The drive sipped 0.366W of power at idle with LPM disabled. But while we were hoping to see an improvement with LPM enabled, unlike other SSDs we've tested, the Delta RGB wouldn’t drop into a lower power mode. Thus, its 0.366W lands in last place.

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Conclusion

RGB strikes, but this time around, slower performance does not totally overshadow the allure of the shiny bright lights. Unlike the HyperX Fury RGB, which we suggested for those of you chasing aesthetics above all, there isn’t as much of a compromise in performance for looks–now it is mainly just price.

Both the 250GB and 1TB capacities performed well during testing. The drives often ranked in the middle or near the tail end of the comparison pool but were still within a few MB/s or points of the MX500 or WD Blue. It can’t hold a candle to the Samsung 860 EVO’s performance, nor the Intel SSD 660p's sheer raw read and write speed, but the Delta RGB SSD will still get the job done in a timely manner with regular applications. Most importantly, unlike the DRAMless Toshiba OCZ TR200 and the Kingston HyperX Fury RGB, there's no period of laggy performance after filling the drive, bombarding it with our benchmark routine, and continuing to use it as an OS volume.

The Delta RGB's main detraction stems from its premium pricing. Both our Crucial and Samsung comparison products both offer five-year warranties while the Delta RGB only has a three-year warranty. We expect this from an entry-level SSD, but the Delta RGB's pricing isn’t in that class.

Then there's the NVMe Intel SSD 660p and ADATA XPG SX8200 that also offer five-year warranties and much more performance than the Delta RGB, but for just a few dollars more. While they can’t necessarily compete on aesthetics, they are a much better value for those looking for the most bang for the buck, especially at the 500GB capacity point.

Finally, while the Delta's endurance rating is greater than the Intel SSD 660p’s, most SSDs still offer more. This mostly is Team Group's decision to use Micron’s last-gen 32L TLC flash. But, in all, this last point is rather moot because most SSDs won’t see tens of terabytes written within the three year warranty period.

Team Group’s T-Force Delta will provide a cool aesthetic for any build, new or old. While it does come at a premium and trades off a little bit of performance here, and comes with a slightly low three-year warranty, we recommend it to those looking for an RGB SSD. It gets the job done, and it looks good doing it.

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The Force is strong with this one

Corsair’s Force series SSD line has a strong lineage tracing back to 2010. Having gone through multiple controllers, NAND types, and recently evolving from strictly SATA to the PCIe interface with multiple form factors, Corsair’s decisions and products have been on the leading-edge year after year, getting better every step of the way.

Today, that history is what drives the company’s latest SSD, the Force MP510. With a blacked-out PCB, Phison’s E12 controller, and Toshiba’s BiCS3 TLC NAND flash, the MP510 looks good--and brings the performance to match. The drive is flat-out fast, rated up to 3,480/3,000MB/s of read/write throughput. And to top things off, it comes with a longer warranty, greater endurance, and cheaper pricing than its predecessor. With all that said, it is hard not to recommend the MP510 to those looking for a robust M.2 NVMe SSD that comes into the market at a decent price.

Corsair’s Force MP510 is a refresh of the Force MP500 series that brings with it some much-welcomed improvements. Released back at the beginning of February 2017, the MP500 featured Phison’s E7 controller and Toshiba’s 15nm MLC NAND flash. Together, this rather popular combination delivered good performance, but Corsair’s premium pricing kept it out of the hands of many and left it rather uncompetitive. The company is looking to change that with the new MP510.

Continuing its relationship with Phison and Toshiba, Corsair has replaced the MP500’s components with the latest offerings from those two companies. It utilizes Toshiba’s 64L 3D TLC NAND flash and Phison’s latest (and highest performance) SSD controller, the PS5012-E12. Many technologies are built into this controller, including StrongECC, SmartRefesh, and SmartFlush.

These technologies work to monitor, refresh, and reconstruct the data in the NAND pages and blocks to ensure data stability and reliability, even during the event of a power loss. The drive also has built-in thermal throttling: If the controller temperatures get too high, thermal throttling will kick in and performance will drop by 50MB/s for every degree over 80 degrees C. That said, operating temperature is rated at up to 70C and the E12 controller runs fairly cool compared the previous E7, so thermal throttling shouldn’t be an issue in most cases.

Specifications

Corsair’s MP510 delivers up to 3,480/3,000MB/s of sequential read/write throughput and is capable of up to 610,000/570,000 random IOPS (read/write). If that doesn’t spark your interest just yet, here’s the kicker: The 960GB model comes with an MSRP of just $239.99, or about $40 less than the competing 1TB Samsung SSD 970 EVO.

While the Force MP510 will eventually be available in four capacities, only the 960GB model is available at launch. The others are expected by the end of 2018, but timing and pricing for the other capacities wasn’t finalized at the time of publication.

The Corsair Force MP510 features a five-year warranty, an appreciated upgrade from the previous-gen MP500’s three-year warranty. The MP510 smashes even the Samsung 970 Pro’s endurance figures. But while the Corsair drive is essentially the same drive internally as the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro, Corsair rates its endurance figures a bit higher. At 1.7PB for the 960GB model, the endurance is almost three times that of the Samsung 970 EVO and the WD Black. To put it into perspective, the MP510’s endurance rating at over eight times higher than the Intel SSD 660p!

Note though, that while it supports AES 256 hardware encryption and TCG Opal specifications, the MP510 is not compatible with Windows BitLocker/eDrive. You will need special software like Wave or Win Magic, which are usually deployed in enterprise and business environments, to activate encryption.

Power consumption is also well regulated. The MP510 supports APST, ASPM, and the L1.2 power saving mode. It also has a low idle power consumption rating of just 30mW. We will see if our sample aligns with these numbers later in testing.

Software and Accessories

As an optional download, you can install Corsair’s SSD Toolbox. With it, you can monitor the health of your drive, secure erase the drive, update the firmware, and more. While it is a great drive tool, the SSD Toolbox GUI is fairly dated. An updated interface would be welcome considering Corsair’s other software (like LINK and iCUle) is much sleeker looking.

A Closer Look

Corsair’s Force MP510 is a PCIe 3.1 x4, NVMe 1.3-compliant SSD that comes in a standard M.2 2280 form factor. The 240GB and 480GB models are single-sided, meaning they only have components on one side of the PCB, while the 960GB and 1920GB models are double-sided, meaning there are components on both sides.

Along with the single Phison E12 controller, the 960GB model features two SK Hynix DDR4 chips (one on each side of the PCB) and 4 Toshiba BiCS3 TLC NAND flash emplacements (two on each side). Once we formatted it in Windows, the 960GB MP510 had a usable capacity of 894GB.

Overall, the blacked-out PCB is gorgeous. But note that the sticker here is just that this time around, unlike the copper-based sticker on the previous model, which acted as a heatsink.

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960GB Performance Results

Comparison Products

In today’s test pool we have included the Plextor M9Pe, Adata XPG Gammix S11, WD Black, and Samsung 970 EVO for comparison against the Force MP510. Additionally, we added the Intel 660p, the cheapest NVMe SSD in the market and a Crucial MX500 to show the performance difference if you step up from SATA to NVMe.

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that utilizes Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft and Battlefield 3 to expose the performance differences between storage devices in real-world scenarios.

Corsair’s Force 510 scored nearly identically to the MyDigitalSSD’s BPX Pro in PCMark 8. With a score of 5068 points and an average bandwidth of 483MB/s. However, this ranks the MP510 third to last.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free to use, real-world game benchmark that enables us to easily and accurately compare game scene load times of storage devices without the use of a stopwatch.

The total load time results are fairly fast for all the drives in the test pool, with most averaging about 21 seconds. The Corsair Force MP510, however, breaks out of this average and had a total load time of 22 seconds, landing in last place. It did still beat the HDD we’ve included, however, by about 14 seconds, or a result that is 33% faster.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

Developed by Nodesoft, DiskBench is a storage benchmarking tool that allows us to test the copy performance of a storage device with our own 31,227-file, 50GB data set. After we do a copy test, we follow up with a read test of a 6GB file within the folder.

While copying the 50GB file folder, Corsair’s MP510 averaged 272MB/s. This gave it a slight lead over the M9Pe, and it absolutely smashes the SATA based Crucial MX500 score, but it is slower than the BPX Pro here, which outperformed it ever so slightly, by 2MB/s.

During the 6GB read test, the MP510 read the test file at over 2.2GB/s, which is faster than most of our comparison pool, second only to the WD Black.

SYSmark 2014 SE

Like PCMark, SYSmark uses real applications to measure system performance. SYSmark takes things much further, however. It utilizes fourteen different applications to run real user workloads with real data sets to measure how overall system performance impacts user experience, including how responsive the system is. It also gives us the opportunity to compare the software installation time on different storage devices, as the installation consists of over 18GB of applications.

Like the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro, Corsairs Force MP510 installed SYSmark 2014 SE in a bit over 15 minutes and was faster than the Crucial MX500. It ranked 6th overall.

When we ran SYSmark, the MP510 scored 1635 points, which placed it ahead of the BPX Pro, but left a gap in performance between it and the other drives in the test pool. Here, the WD black took back 6th place and left the MP510 in 7th place overall.

ATTO

ATTO is a popular storage benchmarking suite. It is often used by manufacturers to establish a storage device’s rated sequential performance and gives us insight into how fast the device can read and write different sized files.

With speeds of 3.5/3.0GB/s read/write, both the Phison E12 powered drives, the BPX Pro and MP510, delivered the highest sequential performance out of all the drives in our test pool.

Anvil's Storage Utilities

Anvil Storage Utilities is an easy-to-use benchmark built on Iometer. In contrast to Iometer, ASU’s intuitive GUI lets anyone quickly benchmark their storage device without frustration.

In Anvil, the MP510 came in second place in read performance, third in write performance, and third overall. These scores are all three times greater than the SATA-based Crucial MX500 and rank the MP510 just above the BPX Pro. Both the WD Black and Samsung 970 EVO outperform the MP510 here.

CrystalDiskMark

CDM is a simple and intuitive file size benchmarking tool. Anyone can download it and get easy-to-read performance numbers out of any drive.

Corsair’s Force MP510 nearly matches the BPX Pro in Crystal Disk Mark. It tied for second place in sequential reads and landed in first place in sequential writes at QD32. When backing down to QD1, it ranked third, just behind the BPX Pro and Samsung 970 EVO, but then again came in second during sequential writes.

Random performance of 50/169MB/s nearly matches the BPX Pro again, but the MP510 ranked 4th in performance overall. From QD1-8, the MP510 delivers respectable results. It has pool-leading write performance, but read performance is just average.  

Sustained Sequential Write Performance

Rated write speeds are only part of the picture when it comes to an SSD’s performance. Because most manufacturers are now implementing an SLC cache buffer, or in other words, a way to program TLC or QLC NAND as SLC over a specific region of the flash, sustained write speeds can differ dramatically from their rated specs after we write as little as 6GB to the device. Here we hammer the SSDs with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure the SLC buffer size and direct-to-die performance once it fills.

The Corsair Force MP510 utilizes a write cache buffer to improve write performance, just like most of the current SSDs in the market. When writing data to the drive, the MP510 writes at up to 3GB/s, but once the write cache fills after about 30GB of data, performance degrades to an average of 1050MB/s, which is still twice the bandwidth of SATA drive.

Power Consumption

Power consumption is an important aspect to consider when determining which drive is better suited for your needs--particularly if you’re a laptop user. With the help of a Quarch HD Programmable Power Module, we can gain a deeper understanding of a storage device’s power characteristics.

Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially when looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited one’s sip just milliwatts. Average workload consumption and max consumption are also two other aspects to consider. To consume less power is obviously better than more, but we can also take these metrics and compare throughput per watt. While a drive might not seem that efficient during a task, it could make up for it by completing the task quicker.

When it comes to power, the MP510 has a similar power consumption characteristic as the BPX Pro. With an average of 2.95W consumed during the 50GB file copy test, the MP510 consumes very little power compared to the Samsung 970 EVO and ADATA S11. In terms of efficiency, the MP510 attained 92MB/s per watt, landing it in fourth place just behind the BPX Pro. Max power consumption is also well regulated. We measured a peak of 4.89W, which is below the active read and write ratings from Corsair.

The MP510 consumes 0.434W at idle with ASPM disabled, placing it second to the BPX Pro. While it is rated at 30mW from Corsair, we measured 51mW at idle when we enabled ASPM with our Quarch HD power module.

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Conclusion

Corsair revitalizes its Force MP500 series with an infusion of the latest components. The Force is indeed strong with this one. Utilizing Phison’s new E12 controller and Toshiba’s BiCS3 64L TLC NAND flash, the Force MP510 is a much-welcomed successor that brings more value to the table and the best endurance rating from any consumer SSD we have seen yet. With over 1.7PB (yes, that’s nearly two petabytes of endurance), the MP510 is a workhorse that’s designed to keep on going and going.

Like the BPX Pro, we feel that it is a great buy for content creators who write terabytes of data daily. Unlike other SSDs that degrade down to just a few hundred MB/s write speed after their write cache buffer fills, the MP510 maintains 1GB/s speeds when hammered with heavy sequential write transfers. And, with a price of $239.99, it is this drive is rather cheap. You don’t need to spend big bucks on the Samsung 970 PRO for longevity anymore. The MP510 is where it’s at, and it’s even a bit more affordable than the similar MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro, too.

Like the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro, though, it also has slightly lower application performance than some of the other SSDs we’ve tested. SSDs with Marvell, Silicon Motion, and in-house built controllers seem to deliver a bit better performance scores throughout our test regimen. It isn’t usually by much though. The difference is almost imperceptible in day-to-day tasks. And, there may be a new firmware in the works that addresses this issue in the future.

Looking at the product line, we like the fact that Corsair has expanded the capacity range to up to 2TB, rather than limiting the maximum capacity to just 480GB. This stems from the new parts having lower prices (especially the newer 3D NAND from Toshiba) and the market’s demand for higher-capacity flash storage devices. Let’s face it: Most users only need 250-500GB of storage, but gamers, content creators, and avid enthusiasts demand more. With the release of the Force MP510, Corsair is giving their customers what they want. More options with higher capacities.

Additionally, Corsair has bumped the warranty coverage up to five years from the MP500's three years. This is somewhat of a given based on the endurance, but now at least it can compete as it should as a premium enthusiast-class M.2 NVMe SSD.

Speaking of enthusiast class, just as enthusiasts want more capacity, more endurance, more speed, and more warranty coverage, they also love aesthetics. The blacked-out PCB of the Force MP510 is much appreciated. With motherboards coming out with RGB lighting and different color schemes with dark or black PCBs, a blue or green PCB can stick out like a sore thumb. While Corsair’s Force MP510 does not feature any fancy RGB lights like some of the company’s RAM, its stealth aesthetics will complement almost any build.

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The last Plextor Extreme branded SSD was little more than a firmware tweak that significantly increased performance. The company sold new products under the M5 Extreme name after the update, but owners of the original M5 Pro could download the firmware to get the same performance with identical hardware.

Going into Computex, we saw the same signs coming into focus. The Plextor M9Pe came to market with less performance than we expected. Since the launch day reviews hit the web, the company tweaked the firmware, and the new performance is reminiscent of what we saw in the past. Plextor sent out invitations to see the new Plextor M9Pe Extreme and we expected another firmware upgrade to build a new product.

We were wrong. Instead of taking the easy base hit for a double that would have re-energized the M9Pe with new branding and putting a spotlight on the new 1.04 firmware that makes this a very competitive SSD, the company swung for the fences and missed. The Plextor M9Pe Extreme is an extreme failure. It's still early enough in development to kill the idea without taking a big loss.

The company displayed a Marvell 88NR2241 development board loaded with four M9PeGN M.2 SSDs that use the aging Marvell Eldora NVMe controller. The 88NR2241 is a PCIe 3.0 x8 PCIe bridge chipset that fans to four PCIe 3.0 x4 for M.2 SSDs. There is an obvious bottleneck from the SSD, to the host system but using a bridge removes the bifurcation requirement needed to ensure compatibility with most systems. Existing products like the Asus Hyper M.2 x16 and Asrock Ultra Quad M.2 only work on motherboards with bifurcation like AMD's X399 and Intel's X99/X299 chipsets.

The Marvell 88NR2241 has a place in the market, but not where Plextor wants to use it. In our testing with a single M9Pe running the new 1.04 firmware, we measured random read performance 63.03 MB/s CrystalDisk Mark, the same application Plextor used to show the M9Pe Extreme. Our single drive random write performance result was 175.8 MB/s. The M9Pe Extreme with the data running through the Marvell 88NR2241 bridge shows around 41 MB/s for both, a significant decrease in performance over a single drive.

In our meeting, Plextor stated the new Extreme aims at enthusiasts, workstations users, and potentially the server market. Most of those already run systems based on the X399, X299, and equivalent server chipsets with software NVMe RAID-like Intel's VROC. In our testing, VROC delivers roughly twice the throughput and around 50% more random performance compared to the Plextor M9Pe Extreme Plextor had on display. You can get these benefits with VROC and AMD's interpretation free for RAID 0, whereas the 88NR2241 and add-on board would add to the cost of four M9Pe SSDs.

Specifications & Pricing

The SanDisk Extreme Pro M.2 NVMe 3D SSD is like the hot sister of Western Digital's new enthusiast SSDs. We tested the WD Black SSD recently and found it to be a worthy alternative to the Samsung 960 EVO. SanDisk's first consumer NVMe SSD has the same components, performance, and price, as the Black, but it targets a different type of user.

SanDisk products have always been marketed specifically to photographers, videographers, and other so-called "creative" types. The category has grown over the years, but companies can't restrict excellent products to specific applications. The SanDisk Extreme, Extreme II, and Extreme Pro are all good examples of breakout products that bled over to the enthusiast market.

The Extreme Pro SATA SSD was more than just an excellent product, though; it was the best for years. It was also the last Extreme Pro branded SSD to come to market. Even though the new WD and SanDisk SSDs use the same components, we had several reasons for not combining them into the same review. The Black branding has its own storied history that dates back to the days of spinning disks, but the Extreme Pro was a giant among flash. The Extreme Pro was the first consumer SSD with a ten-year warranty period, so early adopters still have up to six years of warranty coverage left.

The Extreme Pro raised the warranty bar, and Samsung was forced to match it with the 850 Pro. In most capacities, the Extreme Pro delivered better performance. For years, the two companies battled it out with performance-improving firmware updates.

Today we'll see if the new SanDisk Extreme Pro M.2 NVMe 3D SSD is a gem like its predecessor, or if it's just another rock in a growing pile of NVMe SSDs.

SanDisk will bring its first retail consumer NVMe SSD to market in 1TB and 500GB capacities. The Extreme Pro delivers up to 3,400/2,800 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput. The 1TB model also boasts up to 500,000/400,000 random read/write IOPS, but these performance specifications vary by capacity. Most users will not notice these differences during normal use.

Features

We covered the full feature set in the WD Black 3D NVMe SSD review, so we won't go through the slide deck here. The important takeaways come from the controller that SanDisk has worked on for the last three years. It's a three-core controller designed by SanDisk using the latest NVMe 1.3 protocol and the company's new aggressive nCache 3.0 SLC buffer system, which boosts performance.

Pricing, Warranty, & Endurance

SanDisk covers the new Extreme Pro NVMe series with a five-year warranty that covers up to 300TB of data writes for the 500GB model and 600TB for the 1TB drive. Pricing at retail appears to be holding steady at $229.99 and $449.99, respectively.

Packaging

The new Extreme Pro comes to market with a better-looking retail package than the WD Black, but it conveys the same information on the box.

A Closer Look

We thought the Extreme Pro's metal sticker would make it faster than the new Black, which comes with a plastic sticker, but it turned out to be nothing at all. In our testing, neither SSD entered a thermal throttling condition during typical workloads, so the sticker doesn't appear to have an impact.

Specifications

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1TB Performance Testing

Comparison Products

We didn't include the WD Black 3D NVMe SSD in our test pool because it uses the same hardware and firmware as the SanDisk Extreme Pro. That means performance is identical. The Plextor M9Pe and Toshiba XG5 also come with the same BiCS flash as the Extreme Pro, but Plextor uses a Marvell controller, and the Toshiba features an in-house custom controller. The Samsung 960 EVO and 960 Pro are the SSDs everyone wants to match (or beat) in performance. If an SSD can't outperform the two Samsung drives, it has to grapple with Intel's low 600P pricing.

Very few NVMe SSDs have been able to accomplish either, but the HP EX920 represents a new generation of products using the SM2262 controller. These SSDs manage to outperform the 960 EVO but sell for 600p prices.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

We experienced a testing abnormality at queue depth (QD) 2 during the sequential read test. The low performance wasn't isolated to just QD2: The Extreme Pro's performance lags behind our expectations from QD2 to QD8. This is likely a firmware-related issue, so we may see a targeted firmware update that addresses the issue.

The drive does deliver 1,500 MB/s of sequential read performance at QD1, but it still trails the two Samsung 960 series products and the HP EX920 at this important metric.

Sequential Write Performance

The Extreme Pro makes up for its lacking read performance with blistering fast sequential writes. Our burst test recorded an impressive ~1,800 MB/s at QD1, but then performance shot into the stratosphere with 2,800 MB/s at QD2. That's over four and a half lossless music CDs written to the drive in one second! The Extreme Pro 3D NVMe is a jukebox hero. 

The Extreme Pro can transfer a large file from a high-speed source at 1,400 MB/s after it saturates the SLC buffer. The drive has a fairly small buffer compared to some competing products, but this is representative of the majority of the drives. The Extreme Pro's post-buffer write speed is higher than nearly all the TLC NVMe drives on the market.

Random Read Performance

Random read performance at low queue depths is unanimously considered the most important metric, but it is the Extreme Pro's weakest point. The Extreme Pro breaks 10,000 random read IOPS at QD1, which we consider the crossover point between mainstream and premium SSDs. The Extreme Pro is on the good side of the line, but we expected more. The Samsung PM981 reaches 18,000 IOPS, and the HP EX920 surpasses 17,000 IOPS. The Plextor M9Pe even reaches over 12,000 with the same 64-layer BiCS FLASH memory that SanDisk uses in the Extreme Pro. That means there is more performance available if SanDisk can tune the firmware and controller to be more responsive.

Random Write Performance

We found the Extreme Pro in the middle of the chart during this test. The nCache system works really well during write workloads.

70% Mixed Sequential Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

The new SanDisk drive didn't have issues with mixed sequential workloads. SanDisk's QD2 performance trails the Toshiba and HP, but the Extreme Pro obliterates the two Samsung SSDs throughout the queue depth range. The Extreme Pro stands alone at higher queue depths, but don't expect this level of performance to last for long. We'll look at steady-state performance later in the review.

70% Mixed Random Workload

The low random read and mediocre random write performance combine to provide lackluster mixed random performance.

Sequential Steady-State

Several factors go into steady-state performance. The firmware ties together the flash, controller, and DRAM buffer. The Extreme Pro and its stunt double with WD branding set new records for sequential steady-state performance from a consumer-focused SSD.

SanDisk went on a buying spree circa 2013 and 2014 and acquired Smart Storage Systems. Smart developed a firmware and cache system that was generations ahead of its time. Some of that expertise found its way into the Extreme Pro SATA SSD that dominated the high-performance market for several years. We just wish the new controller architecture addressed some of the burst performance issues at low queue depths.

Random Steady-State

After the performance we saw in the sequential steady-state test, it's easy to forget we're talking about TLC flash. Those feelings come rushing back when we see the steady-state random performance results. This flash can deliver consistent performance, as we can see with the Plextor M9Pe and Toshiba XG5. 

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

In typical consumer workloads, high-performance NVMe drives all complete the tasks within split seconds of each other. Over a work day, a few tenths of a second add up. But most of us rely on what feels fast. If your previous system used a hard disk drive, every product on this list would feel lightning fast. In many applications, even an older SSD will feel slow compared to a new NVMe model.

Application Storage Bandwidth

This is where pricing becomes important. If you are going to spend the money, you might as well get the most performance per dollar. The SanDisk Extreme Pro delivers strong performance for heavier workloads, but it doesn't have high enough random performance to be a great consumer SSD.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

The Extreme Pro 3D NVMe SSD splits the gap between the 960 EVO and 960 Pro during the heavy workload. If the company increased the endurance rating, it would make an excellent low-cost alternative to the 960 Pro for workstation users. SanDisk gives you a generous 600TBW dose of endurance with the 1TB model, but the 960 Pro supports 800TBW during the warranty period.

Total Service Time

The new SanDisk drive is very similar to the 960 Pro as it exits the heavy workload phase. The nCache 3.0 system and background activity algorithms produce strong results that compare well against the best in the business.

Disk Busy Time

The new SanDisk NVMe SSD doesn't have to work nearly as hard as many of the other SSDs to complete the application tasks. This usually carries over to long notebook battery life because the drive can drop back down into a lower power state much faster. That's not always the case, as you will soon see.

BAPCo SYSmark 2014 SE Responsiveness Test

The low random read performance shows during the SYSmark Responsiveness Test from BAPCo: The Extreme Pro scores in the same range as high-performance SATA SSDs like the 850 EVO. The SanDisk SSD also consumes more power, which will play a role in the next test.

BAPCo MobileMark 2012.5 Notebook Battery Life

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

The SanDisk Extreme Pro 3D NVMe SSD delivered the least amount of battery life with our Lenovo Y700-17 gaming notebook. That's still a hefty five hours on a system designed to play games when it is plugged into an outlet. There would be more separation between products with a business-focused notebook designed for all-day battery life. The Extreme Pro would still be at the bottom of the list, but the divide between the best and worst would be much larger.

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Conclusion

If SanDisk released the Extreme Pro 3D NVMe SSD in January, we would have erupted with thunderous applause. A lot has happened since then, but there is even more just under the surface.

For SanDisk, the slew of products shipping with the new SMI SM2262 controller pose a much larger threat. When it comes to consumer storage HP doesn't have strong brand recognition or the long history of reliability like SanDisk has, but the SMI-powered 1TB HP EX920 is impressive. That said, what about Adata, or Intel? Both will have 1TB SM2262 products on the market soon. More will show up before the end of the summer, and at some point, the performance-oriented SM2262EN will finally land.

The SanDisk Extreme Pro is still a very good product. The company obviously built this as a Samsung 960 EVO challenger, and it hit the mark. The two drives traded shots in our testing, and if you understand your workload, you can choose one or the other based on certain strengths. The Extreme Pro is better for sequential workloads, so the true "creatives" have a targeted drive that performs best with large files (videos, high-resolution pictures, high-bit-rate audio). In contrast, the 960 EVO works best for general computing due to its stronger performance in random workloads.

Given the Extreme Pro's history, we really wanted to see a 960 Pro competitor with a ten-year warranty and class-leading performance. Instead, we got a more subdued upper mainstream NVMe SSD that is targeted to a specific segment of the market. In this case, the segmentation actually works, but that only means a smaller group of users will actually benefit.

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Features & Specifications

The M8V is Plextor's new value-driven SATA SSD that takes advantage of the latest in flash technology. Strong performance drives the SATA upgrade market, but soft pricing moves the products off the shelf. Today we see if Plextor's latest low-cost entry reaches the critical balance.

Armed with Toshiba's new BiCS3 flash, Plextor has begun the process of rebuilding its entire product stack. The flagship M9Pe NVMe SSD was the first step: it delivered exceptional performance and took the fight to Samsung. Today, Plextor moves to the entry-level market where price-conscious shoppers seek out the best value. 

Historically, Plextor has had a weak position in the low-cost segment. The company still bills itself as a premium provider based on products it released two decades ago, but the Plextor name is less esteemed if you're not familiar with bit-for-bit copying from optical disks. Even those of us that still own iconic models like the 12/10/32A and imported rare Premium 2 drives from Japan have to wonder if Plextor lost some of the magic along the way. If you are not familiar with those ancient Wide SCSI predecessors, then the Plextor name doesn't hold anything meaningful to you. 

Plextor's SSDs do have a reputation for low failure rates, but only if you follow the storage industry closely. Every Plextor SSD goes through a robust screening process that includes extended burn-in time that detects SSDs that are, or could be, defective. Plextor carries that same process over to the value models. The process is expensive and leads to higher prices, though. That makes it difficult for Plextor to deliver a true value-focused product with a low price.

Specifications

The M8V series comes to market in three capacities ranging from 128GB to 512GB. The official name for the SATA products is M8VC. Plextor will release an M.2 2280 form factor under the M8VG SKU, but both fall under the M8V family. 

Other than the obvious form factor changes, the two products are functionally identical. Plextor uses the SMI SM2258 controller, which is the same controller Micron uses in the Crucial MX500 and other recently released products. Plextor consumes a lot of Toshiba flash, so it doesn't surprise us that it is one of the first third-party companies manufacturing products with the new 64-layer 3D NAND.

The M8V offers up to 560/520 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput with the largest model. As the table shows, write speeds decline with the smaller models. The random performance is lower than we normally see with tier 2 products. Random read/write performance tops out at 82,000/81,000 IOPS for the 512GB model, but both metrics decline with the smaller models.

Features

We've reached a point where there is very little innovation with new SATA SSDs. Yes, Plextor offers features such as PlexNytro, but that's just a marketing term for the SLC cache that comes with every modern SSD. The SM2258 controller has special features as well, such as low-density parity check (LDPC) error correction, but you can also find that on nearly every new SSD.

The controller is a commodity part designed to deliver entry-level to mainstream performance at a low price point. The SM2258 is a four-channel controller that supports up to 2TB of NAND capacity and 2GB of DRAM.

The M8V wields Toshiba's BiCS3 flash in conjunction with the SM2258 controller. It's rare to see an SMI controller paired with Toshiba flash. Intel and Crucial/Micron use SMI controllers for a handful of SSDs so most of the development work, it seems, is dedicated to IMFT 3D flash.

Pricing, Warranty, And Endurance

The Plextor M8V comes to market at $64, $90, and $150. Most companies opt to skip the 128GB class this round, and instead focus on introducing new larger models. Plextor kept the 128GB class and omitted a 1TB drive. Crucial and WD/SanDisk have products at low price points and the latest Samsung SATA SSD sets the cap for a reasonably priced product. The 256GB M8V falls in the middle, but the 512GB model we're testing matches the 860 EVO at $150. We would call this position optimistic at best, but there are other factors to consider.

The M8V carries a three-year warranty with 70 TBW of endurance for every 128GB of flash. That's more endurance than the MX500 and Blue 3D, but it comes up short compared to the 860 EVO and its five-year warranty.

Software

Plextor has a robust software package that includes many unique features. Most of the software only works with the company's SATA products and not the PCIe and NVMe models.

PlexVault

Plextor designed its PlexVault software to provide a secure storage space that gives you complete control of access privileges. Even if you are using a computer with others, you can still hide your private data safely and securely on the computer inside the PlexVault if you have a Plextor SSD.

PlexCompressor

SSD capacity is always a key point of consideration. Plextor's PlexCompressor utilizes custom smart compression technology that gives you more storage capacity without impacting your experience or system performance.

Packaging

The M8V brings a new look from previous products. The front of the box has a stylish background in contrasting colors. We found performance and warranty information for each capacity on the back, as well as general information about the series.

A Closer Look

The M8V has the same brushed aluminum case the company has used for several years.

Internals

Plextor followed other companies and used a smaller circuit board to reduce costs. The SMI SM2258 controller has been on the market for over a year, so it's nothing new. This is the first time we've seen Toshiba's new 64-layer flash in a TSOP package (the electrical leads on the outside edge). Older Toshiba TSOP packages used a single plane to address the flash inside instead of two planes with a BGA package. That may be why the M8V has less random performance than other new products with the latest generation 64-layer NAND.

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512GB Class Performance

Comparison Products

The Plextor M8V follows several other SSDs with 64-layer flash, like the Crucial MX500, Samsung 860 EVO, Western Digital Blue 3D, and SanDisk Ultra 3D. We don't have the Blue 3D, but we do have the SanDisk Ultra 3D, which is the same SSD with a different label.

We also include Crucial's entry-level BX300 and Intel's 545s. The Corsair Neutron XTi and Toshiba VX500 also join the ride, but their high price makes them largely irrelevant for value-minded shoppers.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

All the products in this group reach the same sequential read performance under heavy load. The drives hit the limit of the SATA bus, but there is some variation at lighter queue depths. We can largely ignore those variations because the slight differences will go unnoticed when you use real-world applications. Even transferring data from the drive will net comparable results. That's the long way to say that these products all read sequential data well.

Sequential Write Performance

We see a little more variation during sequential write workloads. We found the Plextor M8V on the low end of the scale in our QD2 test. That isn't surprising because Plextor's specifications say that this model doesn't reach the limit of the SATA interface (550 MB/s).

Random Read Performance

The Plextor M8V lands in the middle of the random read chart. This model is the slowest drive with new 64-layer flash. The faster SSDs use new 64-layer flash, but from different manufacturers. We've already tested products with Toshiba's new flash that are faster than the M8V, so we know the flash is capable of more performance. The difference here is the TSOP package that reduces performance but also allows Plextor to cut prices. 

Random Write Performance

Middle-of-the-pack performance is the story in the random write test. This test is largely lip service because the SLC buffer is fast enough to absorb your momentary random writes with ease. The M8V's two mid-pack performances almost ensure a poor result in the mixed random workload test.

70% Mixed Sequential Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

The M8V doesn't impress us with its mixed sequential performance. The SanDisk Ultra 3D with similar (but not identical) flash also struggles switching back and forth between reads and writes. BiCS flash paired with the NVMe interface normally does well in this test. The fastest SSD used a Toshiba controller. Toshiba sells the flash, but it apparently doesn't give away all of the secrets to making it into a fast SSD.

70% Mixed Random Workload

We knew the Plextor M8V wouldn't be able to compete with the other new products in the mixed random test, but we didn't know the results would look like this. This is the equivalent of a rocket taking off from the launch pad and then falling over in a glorious ball of fire.

Sequential Steady-State

The Corsair Neutron XTI is the only high-performance model designed for workstation workloads. We can easily see that in the performance results. The mainstream SSDs all lump together under steady-state conditions. The M8V is not a good choice for write-intensive workstation workloads.

Random Steady-State

We use the steady-state random write test to determine worst-case performance and measure consistency, which is important for RAID arrays. Very few value SSDs deliver exceptional results in either of these disciplines. The Plextor M8V performs better than the previous generation SSDs with planar TLC flash, but the 500GB Samsung 860 EVO provides twice the performance for the same price.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

The M8V doesn't outperform any of the other drives in any of the application workloads, but it doesn't suffer from poor performance either. Under these conditions, all of the SSDs in the chart deliver similar results that would make them indistinguishable when you open an application or run a light workload.

Application Storage Bandwidth

The M8V falls to the top of the second performance tier of consumer SSDs. The M8V doesn't muster enough throughput to overtake the popular new 860 EVO or MX500 SSDs.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

The M8V didn't have any issues recovering to a higher level of performance after a short idle time. This is a weak point for the MX500, but not the equally priced 860 EVO.

Total Service Time

The M8V has a weak point: latency skyrockets during heavy workloads. The only time most casual users will experience this condition is after installing the operating system and software after a fresh build. You could also experience low performance when your drive is close to full because the drive won't have enough space for the background processes to operate efficiently.

Disk Busy Time

The disk busy time test shows that the increased latency under heavy workloads comes from the M8V and not outside factors. Most users will encounter recovery conditions after fairly light workloads. The M8V delivers satisfactory performance here, but not exceptional performance like we see with the 500GB 860 EVO.

BAPCo SYSmark 2014 SE Responsiveness Test

SYSmark 2014 SE uses typical office software from Microsoft, Adobe, and others, to maneuver through a day's worth of work in the office. The workload isn't extreme and has sufficient idle time to represent getting coffee, going to lunch, or surfing the web.

The Plextor M8V scores better than the less expensive 500GB MX500, but it trails the 500GB 860 EVO again.

BAPCo MobileMark 2012.5 Notebook Battery Life

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

The 512GB M8V delivers roughly the same notebook battery life as a drive that comes in a notebook from the factory. Plextor's parent company LiteOn sells a lot of drives through OEM systems, and many make it into notebooks.

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Final Thoughts

In many ways, the Plextor M8V is like an OEM drive. It delivers decent performance and is marginally overpriced. System integrators often don't give you a choice of what components come in your system, but you do have a choice in the upgrade market.

Our biggest issue with the 512GB M8V is pricing. The $150 price tag competes directly with the Samsung 860 EVO that is a much better product in every way: we can go right down the list with performance, latency, notebook battery life, and endurance. Plextor has some unique points with the additional software suite, but some users will find it beneficial, and others will never even install it.

The value portion of the V has to come back around for the M8V to be attractive. It seems that Plextor forgot that when it gave this model the same price as the new Samsung SSD. Plextor could have targeted Crucial's MX500 and came away with a certain level of success. The M8V is slightly faster than the MX500 in some cases, but slower in others. Most users will not be able to tell the difference during typical desktop workloads, but they will notice the price difference during checkout. Pricing is dynamic, and Plextor could make a change. The company released the M9Pe at a discounted rate at first and later increased the prices for each capacity at a time when other companies were lowering prices of their high-performance NVMe SSDs.

The software suite, which includes PlexTools, PlexCompressor, and PlexVault, is the true standout feature. The latter two are unique to Plextor's SATA SSDs and a real benefit to users. PlexCompressor will compress the files you haven't read recently, and that frees up space on the flash. Over time it will increase the performance of your drive by not allowing it to degrade as rapidly.

Software or not, Plextor’s biggest issue is its inability to bring these value-focused products to market at realistic price points. The M8V is just the latest in a lengthy line of value-named SSDs that seem to forget their place in the market.

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Plextor released new consumer SATA SSDs built on 3D NAND flash. The M8V series drives are available in 2.5” and M.2 form factors with capacities of 128, 256, and 512GB.

Plextor began its foray into 3D NAND earlier this year with the release of its M9Pe series of SSDs. Those drives featured Toshiba 64-layer BiCS TLC NAND flash chips, the two-year-old Marvell 88SS1093 controller, and a PCI-E interface with NVMe support. For the M8V series, Plextor kept the Toshiba 3D NAND, but swapped the controller to a newer, but non-NVMe, Silicon Motion SM2258. This is a consumer-targeted SATA SSD, after all.

Sequential write speeds start at 400MB/s for the 128GB version and climb to 520MB/s for the 512GB version. Sequential read speed is listed as 560MB/s for all sizes. Random IOPs vary similarly, going from 60K/70k to 82k/81k (read/write) for 128GB and 512GB sizes, respectively. These numbers put it slightly behind a Micron 3D NAND-equipped competitor, the Crucial MX500, but usually only testing will show the real performance difference.

All capacities are covered by a three-year warranty. Write endurance is 70, 140, and 280TB for 128, 256, and 512GB sizes, respectively. This is significantly higher than the Crucial, but slightly lower than the 320TB endurance on the 512GB version of the M9Pe, which, as mentioned earlier, uses the same flash memory.

The 2.5” version of the M8V is called the M8VC, while the M.2 version is called the M8VG. We don’t have any availability or pricing data on either model yet.

LAS VEGAS, NV -- Marvell's next generation high-speed NVMe controller came out of the test lab for a showing at CES 2018. As of now we can't discuss the model number or code name but we can leak some details. The new controller will eventually replace the NVMe 1.1 Eldora (88SS1093) used in some popular SSDs shipping today, like the Plextor M9Pe.

The controller will be part of Marvell's next generation controller product family addressing consumer, cloud data center, and enterprise SSDs. In the consumer space, manufacturers can built add-in card or M.2 form factors. The new product family will have controllers that can run in an enterprise-focused dual port PCIe 3.0 x2 configuration, most likely in a U.2 form factor with two lanes each going to separate nodes (computers in the same server chassis).

We first heard about the controller while talking with various companies about QLC NAND, four bits per cell. Every controller manufacturer is feverishly working to get hardware ready for the low endurance NAND that requires increased error correction technology. Marvell’s NANDEdge ECC technology is expected to be a key enabler of future QLC SSD solutions.

The demo on display already produces impressive performance. We saw results over 670,000 IOPS and 3,500 MB/s in the demo with 3D TLC flash. We don't have any details on the time-to-market for this hardware but expect to learn more in June when we visit Taiwan for Computex.

Specifications & Pricing

Plextor will release its new flagship M9Pe NVMe SSD in early 2018 to get ahead of the coming wave of SSDs powered by 64-layer NAND. These are the fastest SSDs Plextor has ever released, but they are also the first SSDs to come with a splash of RGB.

It will undoubtedly be a very competitive year for NVMe SSDs. We'll see more new products introduced than ever before with higher capacities, newer controllers, and lower price points. The frenetic pace of development, particularly on the flash controller side, is actually more interesting than when TLC swept in to become the low-cost MLC alternative. We've already spotted Samsung's new Polaris SSD controller, multiple controllers from Toshiba, four new models from Silicon Motion, and two from Phison.

But Plextor is taking a different path. The Marvell 88SS1093 controller, which debuted in 2015, returns with 3D NAND compatibility. As the eldest statesmen in the group, the Marvell 88SS1093 is at a disadvantage. The controller tends to run warm and can get hot even during moderate workloads. For this series, Plextor paired the controller with new 64-layer TLC BiCS NAND. The new wave of 64-layer flash offers increased performance, but it also requires advanced error correction technology that consumes more power. Combining faster performance and more robust error correction can cause an SSD controller to ramp up temperatures even faster. 

A hot SSD controller can lead to thermal throttling, which is when an SSD enters a lower-performance state to prevent overheating. We tested Plextor's M8Pe in 2016 and the M8Se in 2017. During our testing, we found that the Marvell controller needed a cooler to prevent thermal throttling. The M8PeG, an M.2 SSD with a small heatsink, fought back throttling long enough that the condition didn’t interfere with most of our testing. The same SSD without a heatsink began throttling very early in our testing.

Plextor bought the heatsinks back with the same three-tier product strategy, but the designs are a little sleeker this round. The Y model, which has an M.2 SSD in an add-in card with a large heatsink, gains RGB lighting. You can't control the light show, but it changes colors based on drive activity.

Unlike the M8Se TLC SSD that came to market in mid-2017, the new M9Pe comes with a more competitive price tag. It's still early in the year and we haven't seen pricing for the other NVMe drives slated for release. For now, the M9Pe’s pricing looks good compared to what's already available.

Specifications

The M9Pe comes to market in three capacity points and Plextor has three separate models for each. The first axis of segmentation is straightforward: 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB. The different versions for each capacity are a bit more complicated.

The M9PeY model is an M.2 2280 SSD slotted into an add-in card. It's also the first RGB SSD. You need a PCIe x4 slot (or larger) to accommodate the card. The M9PeY is the most expensive option because it includes a large heatsink that covers the full length of the card.

The M9PeG is an M.2 2280 SSD with a slim heatsink that spreads the heat from the controller to a larger surface area. We've found this to be an effective way to increase the length of time and the amount of data transferred before the drive begins to throttle. Plextor was the first company to release a retail M.2 SSD with a heatsink.

The M9PeGN is a standard M.2 2280 SSD without a heatsink. The "GN" drive is compatible with NVMe-capable notebooks and other devices that may not have room for a heatsink on the drive.

Aside from the RGB lighting, Toshiba's BiCS Flash is the exciting new component that separates the M9Pe from previous models. Plextor chose the latest 64-layer 3D TLC because it is denser than 2D (planar) NAND, but it actually has a relaxed lithography compared to 15nm planar NAND. The BiCS NAND allows the controller to program twice the amount of data in a single sequence, which boosts performance. BiCS stores 256Gbit (32GB) per die, but there's a 512Gbit (64GB) version coming in the future. Plextor should be able to use the larger die to produce 2TB SSDs.

The MP9e wields Marvell's 80SS1093 "Eldora" eight-channel NVMe controller. This is the third Plextor SSD to use the Eldora controller (it was on both M8xe drives). The Eldora is Marvell's first-gen tri-core controller that supports the NVMe 1.1 protocol. It's built on the 28nm process and supports up to 1TB of addressable capacity. Marvell added the L1.2 low power state and NANDEdge Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) error correction.

Plextor doesn't change the performance rating based on form factors, but each capacity does have unique performance specs. The company claims up to 3,200 MB/s sequential reads for the two largest models, but that drops to 3,000 MB/s for the 256GB. There is a much larger sequential write drop off. The spacious 1TB drive can write up to 2,100 MB/s, but the 256GB model can only write data at 1,000 MB/s.

There are even wider gaps in random performance between the 256GB and the 1TB models. The 1TB model delivers up to 400,000 random read IOPS, but that drops to 340,000 IOPS for the 512GB and 180,000 IOPS for the 256GB model. Random write performance begins at 300,000 IOPS for the 1TB model and drops to 280,000 and 160,000 for the 512GB and 256GB capacities, respectively.

Features & RGB Lighting

Like other SSD manufacturers, Plextor uses custom names for proprietary technology that every company develops in various forms. For instance, "Plex Nytro" is Plextor's trade name for its SLC cache technology. This write feature boosts write performance and has become standard for every TLC-based SSD on the market.

The M9PeY model steps up the game with RGB LEDs along the outside edge of the add-in card. The heatsink features a cutout with a diffused clear panel that allows the light to shine through. It seems like every new motherboard has RGB and it has started to manifest in other components like system memory, video cards, and soon, sound cards. We hoped for programmable software to control the lighting so that we could match other RGB LEDs in our system, but the lighting is automatic. RGB lighting is controversial; some love it, and others hate it. This is Plextor's description of the lighting:

Exclusively on the Add-In-Card version M9PeY, its RGB design shows red light once powered on and interchanges to different colors while on standby mode. It displays an awesome full spectrum of colors during read/write processes. It definitely delivers an incredibly splendid visual effect.

Pricing, Warranty & Endurance

The M9Pe series is more price-competitive than the M8Pe and M8Se were. The series undercuts the Samsung 960 EVO across the board, and the M.2 models go toe-to-toe with low-cost NVMe products. The bare M.2 2280 M9PeGN starts at just $109.89 and jumps to $208.79 for the 512GB model. It sells at MyDigitalSSD BPX 480GB prices, which is a good place to be in early 2018. For $222 you can add a thin but effective heatsink, and for $256 you can upgrade to an add-in card with a very large heatsink that reduces throttling during normal desktop workloads. You can also remove the drive from the add-in card if you want to use it in an M.2 slot or notebook.

The series ships with a limited five-year warranty. The MP9e has a generous endurance rating that scales based on capacity. The 1TB model has the most endurance at 640 TBW.

UPDATE 1/29/18 - The MSRP of M9Pe series Plextor provided is only effective by the end of January.

Packaging

Plextor kicks off the 9-Series with a fresh look that includes an eye made from a jet engine. The M9PeY package is essentially a larger version of the M9PeGN. The back side of the package lists performance specifications, features, and warranty information.

A Closer Look

These are images of the M9PeY and its M.2 SSD. Plextor's M.2 "GN" model is identical to the bare M.2 2280 drive in the images, sans a Plextor sticker that covers the controller, DRAM, and NAND. The M.2 "G" model appears nearly identical to the M8SeG released last June.

The Half-Height Half-Length (HHHL) add-in card looks great. It uses the same heatsink as the M8Se, but a red bubble replaces the blue one on the old design. Plextor says the new heatsink is 30% more efficient than the M8Pe's solid aluminum version that came with a smooth surface. The fins are cut into the surface. The design reduces weight but also increase the surface area to boost cooling efficiency.

There are two LED areas on the outside edge. The Plextor logo lights up with a blueish-tint white color, but the long strip changes colors depending on the status of the drive. Plextor did a good job with the lighting, but there isn't a way to turn the lights off.

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1TB Class Performance Testing

Comparison Products

Plextor has released three NVMe families that span thirty-three SKUs when you factor in all capacities and form factors. We'll focus on the M9Pe in the HHHL form factor (Y) and the bare M.2 2280 (GN). We also include the HHHL versions of the M8Pe with MLC NAND and the M8Se model with TLC.

We rounded up Intel's 750 and 600p NVMe SSDs for the test pool. We also selected Samsung's 960 series and Toshiba's OEM SSD that also uses 64-layer BiCS Flash. These BiCS-powered SSDs allow us to compare Toshiba's NVMe controller to the Marvell 88SS1093 in the new Plextor M9Pe.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

The Plextor M9Pe SSDs deliver solid mainstream sequential read performance. Plextor's latest is faster during the 128K read workload than the M8Se, but the MLC-based M8Pe is still slightly better at a queue depth (QD) of 2. The M9Pe trails the Samsung 960 EVO.

Sequential Write Performance

The new Plextor 1TB models are faster than the 960 EVO in our new write burst test. The M9Pe is also much faster than the two previous Plextor NVMe drives, but it can only cache a limited amount of data before dropping to native TLC speeds.

The M9Pe has a very small pSLC (pseudo-SLC) buffer compared to many of the newer products we've tested. For instance, Silicon Motion's SM2263XT 512GB SSD has a 70GB cache. The M9Pe's buffer appears to be 10GB or less.

Once the buffer is saturated the M9Pe drops to ~750 MB/s of native TLC sequential write throughput. That much throughput is fast enough to keep you happy, but it is far from the 2,100 MB/s listed in the specifications.

Random Read Performance

We've finally reached a point when most NVMe SSDs can read random data faster than 10,000 IOPS at QD1. The M9Pe 1TB SSDs approach 13,000 IOPS, but the 960 Pro tops 14,000 IOPS. 

Random Write Performance

Toshiba's new BiCS Flash is a big improvement over planar 15nm TLC. The random write test reveals improved consistency compared to the M8Se. The M8Se's smaller SLC buffer and lower sustained write speed manifest as waves in the line chart. We didn't expect this result in our new burst test, but it shows how much better 64-layer NAND technology is than older planar TLC.

70% Mixed Sequential Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

Toshiba's 64-layer TLC NAND is fascinating. The technology enables two data writes on the same programming pass. That technique enables the highest sequential mixed workload results we've measured with a NAND-based SSD. The new Plextor SSDs don't achieve the same results as Toshiba's XG5 with the same flash, but they do blow past Samsung's 960 Pro. 

70% Mixed Random Workload

The M9Pe's mixed random performance is also very impressive. Solid performance in mixed workloads leads to a responsive user experience that you will feel when you move between applications.

Sequential Steady-State

The Toshiba XG5 with TLC NAND and the 960 EVO with 3D TLC V-NAND improve during the write-intensive portion of the test (right side of the chart). All of the other TLC-based drives follow a declining slope into the abyss of sequential steady-state. This trend tells us the new Plextor M9Pe is consumer-focused and not a serious option for the heavy write environment of a workstation.

Random Steady-State

The new drives are consistent and provide unwavering performance during the random steady-state test. The MP9e's average performance is also impressive at more than 20,000 IOPS. The high level of consistency would provide great performance in a consumer-class RAID 0 array.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

The older Marvell 88SS1093 eight-channel controller performs well with the new 64-layer flash. The M9Pe SSDs complete the Photoshop Heavy tasks, which are the most demanding of the suite, much faster than the other drives. The drives fall back in the hierarchy during the lighter tests.

Application Storage Bandwidth

Overall performance is good, but you can still purchase affordable MLC-based SSDs like the M8Pe. Resellers will cut MLC SSD pricing to move existing inventory as the new TLC SSDs come to market.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

We don't see a large performance delta between heavy and light workloads with the M9Pe. The M8Pe behaved the same as the M9Pe when we tested it in mid-2016. The Marvell controller only has three cores that are easy to overload during heavy use. That causes throttling, which reduces the controller's ability to clean the flash cells and run other background activity.

Total Service Time

NVMe SSDs are beginning to stratify into different performance tiers. The M9Pe falls between the competing premium and entry-level models.

Disk Busy Time

The disk busy time test measures how long the drives actually work to complete the workload. The drive drops down into a lower power state when it finishes the tasks, which usually results in longer notebook battery life and less power consumption.

BAPCo SYSmark 2014 SE Responsiveness Test

The responsiveness test quantifies the user experience by measuring how long it takes to begin and finish tasks inside Windows. It includes applications most of us use every day, like Microsoft Word. The new M9Pe without a heatsink is on the heels of the two Samsung 960 products. The drive also outperforms the aging M8Pe.

The 28nm Marvell controller is the oldest in the group, and that shows in the power consumption results.

BAPCo MobileMark 2012.5 Notebook Battery Life

The extra power consumption also shows up in our notebook battery life test. Here we use a Lenovo Y700-17 with specialized software that records performance with the system buses in a low power state. The software runs common office applications until it depletes the battery.

We only use the GN models for the notebook tests because the add-in cards are not compatible with our laptop. The M8Pe provides almost an hour more battery life than the newer M9Pe model.

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512GB Class Performance Testing

Comparison Products

The Plextor M9Pe faces an even tougher challenge in the 512GB class. There are only a few 1TB products with the Phison E7 and SMI SM2260 controllers, but that group more than doubles in this class. Many companies also became more aggressive in this capacity class with competitive pricing in the latter half of 2017. The Plextor M8Pe 512GB at $268 isn't bad, but it's very close to the $299 Samsung 960 Pro.

Speaking of the market leader, we've finally tested the 960 Pro 512GB and included it in the charts. It joins the M8Pe add-in card and Corsair NX500 400GB in the upper pricing tier. The MyDigitalSSD BPX and Intel 600p make up the lower end of the pricing scale. The Toshiba RD400 with 15nm planar TLC straddles the middle with mainstream performance at a premium price.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

The 960 Pro takes an easy lead. The two new Plextor drives reach peak performance at QD8 and are the closest to the 960 Pro, but we see similar performance from several other drives at lower queue depths.

Sequential Write Performance

The heatsink didn't help the M9Pe during our sequential write test. The drives idle for twenty seconds between each pass of our new synthetic burst test but that still wasn't enough time for the M9Pe to recover.

Again, we see a very small SLC cache, or as Plextor calls it: PlexNitro. The native TLC sequential write speed hovers around 500 MB/s. The 256GB M9Pe has 16 die spread across two packages, while the 1TB drive employs 32 die in four packages. It's difficult to tell on the line chart, but the 512GB should have half the SLC cache capacity of the larger model. Sequential write throughput drops to a lower level of performance after you saturate the SLC cache. The 512GB at 500MB/s of throughput is still faster than premium SATA products, but it's much slower than the 1TB's 750MB/s.

Random Read Performance

The mid-size M9Pe SSDs lose 800 IOPS compared to the 1TB model, but they are still competitive at low queue depths. Aside from the 960 Pro and Intel 600p, most of the drives offer similar performance in this test. Only 800 IOPS separates the mid-range at QD1. 

Random Write Performance

We often breeze by random write performance due to the strength of modern SLC programming. We use this test to look for weak performance that may cause issues during the mixed random workloads. The M9Pe's SLC cache may be small, but it's large enough to tackle consumer-class random write workloads.

70% Mixed Sequential Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

The new Toshiba BiCS Flash is impressive in the new Plextor NVMe SSDs, but the RD400 and 960 Pro take the top spot. Considering their TLC NAND, the M9Pe drives are impressive at QD2.

70% Mixed Random Workload

The competition is thick here. All but two of the products cluster together at low queue depths, so typical application performance on a desktop should net users roughly the same results. We'll turn our attention to applications after we examine heavy-use conditions.

Sequential Steady-State

Sequential steady-state performance is even lower in this capacity class. The M9Pe joins the Intel 600p during the write-heavy portion of the test (right-hand side of the line chart). The M9Pe's read performance is slightly better than the 600p but neither drive should be considered a serious workstation contender. 

Random Steady-State

The M9Pe provides a consistent 15,000 IOPS, or ~5,000 less than the M8Pe, during the steady-state test. If prices decline, which we expect in early 2018, you may want to use two M9Pe 512GB drives in RAID 0. The M9Pe's consistent performance makes that a viable option.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

Many of these drives perform nearly the same with common applications, so pricing and strengths in other areas become the differentiators. MLC NAND still delivers the highest consistency if you work with a lot of large files and move them around frequently, but TLC drives can close the gap with large SLC caches. High random performance is still the best attribute to look for, though.

Application Storage Bandwidth

Just like in the 1TB class, the new M9Pe SSDs will contend with the older M8Pe drives that are still on the market. They are faster and more consistent. The results tell us the M8Pe, released back in 2016, is the better NVMe SSD. Plextor doesn't have the option of producing that model, though, because the flash is end of life.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

The PCMark 8 Extended Storage Tests show us how the random steady-state results and SLC cache tests relate to real-world use. The two M9Pe SSDs deliver consistent performance between the heavy and recovery stages. A larger SLC buffer and more processing power could boost performance during the recovery portion of the test.

Total Service Time

The M9Pe doesn't recover even after the five minutes of idle time between each phase of the test. If you write a lot of data to the new Plextor drives it will take a long time for the background garbage collection to restore performance.

The laggardly recovery time could be a concern when you first build a new PC or copy a large amount of data to the drive. For most of us, the early setup process is the most intensive time the drive will ever experience. That's because you install the operating system, drivers, and a slew of applications in the span of a few hours.

Disk Busy Time

The two M9Pe drives work harder and longer than most of the others in this group. Even the 600p can get its latency under control during the recovery stages, but that doesn't happen with the Plextor SSDs.

BAPCo SYSmark 2014 SE Responsiveness Test

These two tests are also the last of our lab sequence. First, we run the drives run through a cleaning cycle to erase the previous abuse. Then we clone the image we use in a notebook. We copy 60GB of data to the drive and initiate a Windows Disk Optimization pass to help clean the dirty cells. An idle period allows the background activity to complete.

The Plextor M9Pe cleans up well, as they say. It just takes longer with this model. We skipped the cleanup and idle portion of the process to see what would happen. The M9PeGN 512GB scored just under 900 in the responsiveness test. The result wasn't as bad as some of the DRAM-less SSDs we've put through the test, but it's a very low result for an NVMe drive. Power consumption also shot up because the drive had to work harder and longer to complete the application tasks.

BAPCo MobileMark 2012.5 Notebook Battery Life

A small high-speed cache, a first-gen NVMe controller, and the extra time it takes the SSD to complete tasks are not a winning combination for a notebook SSD. The M9PeGN 512GB delivered just 289 minutes of battery life in our Lenovo Y700-17. That is 14 minutes less than the 1TB drive that should chew through more power because it has twice the number of power-consuming NAND die. The M9Pe's small cache has a big impact on more than just the performance you see on the screen.

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Conclusion

The Plextor M9Pe series comes to market as we’re crawling out of the worst NAND shortage in history. The flash shortage spurred the SSD price increases. As supply returns, it’s the same component that will bring us the first SSD oversupply in nearly six years.

We expect to see the same explosive growth in 2018, but there are differences. Intel’s Optane SSD holds an uncontested position at the top of the performance segment. Professional users that can’t settle for TLC have an option, but that removes a sliver of the SSD market.

The SSD market doesn't shrink because a portion of the market is cut off, though—lower pricing will push flash the other direction. The notebook market has already embraced flash, but adoption is still lower than expected. If we didn’t have the NAND shortage, SSDs would already ship in low-cost notebooks at brick and mortar retailers. The OEM and business-class desktops are the next frontier. Those markets ship in higher volume than professional workstations.

In our review of the Samsung PM981 OEM NVMe SSD, we could see the future of high-end NAND-based SSDs in 2018. The new Plextor M9Pe is competitive in that future. This chart includes every 64-layer TLC NVMe drive we have. The SSDs cede the top performance tier to Optane and most offer similar performance. This is like the 2012 consumer SATA SSD market all over again, just with a different protocol on the front end.

The Plextor M9Pe will become better as we get deeper into 2018. Not only will the existing MLC products fall off the map, but Plextor will also improve the drive. Plextor has a good track record of firmware improvements; the company updated the M8Pe firmware five times already. The M8Se is less than six months old and already has two new revisions. Each revision improves performance. Some products didn't review well in the past but became very good products later (like the M6 Pro after six firmware revisions).

We like Plextor's three-prong strategy with the M series because we can purchase exactly what we need. Even though we didn't test it, the M.2 M9PeG with a heatsink is our favorite option. It doesn't populate a PCIe slot and should provide enough cooling capacity for normal workloads. The Marvell Eldora controller runs warm, but all you need is a small cooler to delay throttling for several minutes. With these transfer speeds, a few minutes is all you need to transfer a lot of data.

The M9 Series falls short on the software side. Plextor's SATA products have an amazing software suite, but it doesn't carry over to the NVMe products. Value-add pieces like Plextor's software help sell drives in a congested market. Unfortunately, the M-Series products are locked out and can't take advantage of the software.

We still prefer the M8Pe with MLC flash, but the M9Pe provides a good user experience for less money. Plextor will work on the firmware as the company navigates the new 64-layer flash. Hopefully, they can correct some of the latency and background activity issues with a future update.

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In a post yesterday, we stated the SSD performance wars would heat up again in 2018. Today we have more proof of that. Plextor leaked some early performance data for the upcoming M9Pe. The new series is set for release in early 2018; it looks like someone jumped the gun, and Plextor USA was excited to get the word out. 

It's been almost a year since the company first released details about the M9Pe, but our most recent public images come from Computex 2017. At a large press event filled with everything from professional gamers to famous Asian bloggers to yours truly, the event kicked off the countdown for the new NVMe SSD series from this legendary company.

We'll have more details soon enough, but you can see from the above that the performance is higher than Samsung's 960 EVO and gets right up to the door of the 960 Pro. This will be a highly competitive area for 2018. Several products are grouped around the same performance. End users will pick the winners in this battle, but pricing will play a pivotal role in the selection process.

Plextor is vying to come out on top with the M9Pe series, delivering two form factors, HHHL Add-in Card and M.2 2280. Like the M8Pe and M8Se NVMe from the previous two years, this series will again include two versions of the M.2 2280, one with and one without a heatsink. Shoppers will be able to chose from the three options. Each carries a different price point.

In our recent technical preview article of the upcoming Phison PS5008-E8 NVMe controller, we said retail products featuring the new controller were not far behind. This week we received our first retail sample with the new controller.

MyDigitalSSD was able to sweep the entry-level NVMe market with the BPX using Phison's PS5007-E7 NVMe controller and Toshiba 15nm MLC flash even with strong competition from Intel's SSD 600p and Plextor's M8Pe. The company's NVMe SSD successor comes under the SBX name and uses the Phison PS5008-E8 controller. The smaller controller was designed to break new ground in pricing and power efficiency. This is Phison's first true entry-level NVMe part for retail. The PS5007-E7 is targeted to mainstream users upstream.

The new PCI Express 3.0 x2 (lane) controller uses four channels to the flash. MyDigitalSSD was able to place all of the surface mount components on one side of the printed circuit board to reach the single-sided specification while still staying inside the M.2 2280 form factor.

The drive comes to market in three capacity sizes: 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB. Later in the year MyDigitalSSD will ship a 1TB (1,024GB) model. The delay comes from the extreme price of Toshiba's new BiCS FLASH (3D TLC) in high density packages.

The MyDigitalSSD SBX drives are available now exclusively at MyDigitalDiscount.com. The landing page still shows pre-order status but the individual product pages show updated availability. We expect to see the SBX listed at Amazon soon.

Features & Specifications

Plextor combined two new product categories to create its new low-cost EX1 portable SSD. The portable SSD category isn't new, but the low-cost models came to market in late 2016. Around that time, portable SSDs took on new shapes as the components inside shrank.

Plextor doesn't advertise the underlying technology inside the new EX1 portable SSD. At Computex, we learned the EX1 uses an older Marvell controller with low-density parity check (LDPC) error correction code. This hybrid approach with an older controller updated to newer technology allows Plextor to produce a low-cost portable SSD that's powerful enough to work with the latest NAND flash technologies.

The drive is very slim and fashionable. It comes in either gold or Plextor's Titanium Silver and weighs just 30 grams. The EX1 features the new USB Type-C connector for easy connectivity, and electrically it takes advantage of the 3.1 Generation 2 specification for up to 10GB/s at the host connector. The internal drive uses a SATA 6Gb/s interface, so the Type 2 interface gives you the benefit of an unblocked connection. USB 3.1 Gen 1, like USB 3.0, connects the devices at 5Gb/s.

The Plextor EX1 goes beyond the PC and supports Android's OTG technology with a compatible partition. You will also need to purchase a USB cable that supports your device because Plextor doesn't bundle one with the EX1. Many of us experience issues with limited phone storage because picture and video recording quality are so high, but the EX1 is an easy solution to the problem.

Specifications

We do know the drive ships in three capacities that range from 128GB to 512GB. Plextor claims the EX1 series is capable of up to 550/500 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput. The company didn't list performance specifications by capacity, so we expect both to deliver nearly identical results. We only have the 128GB model to test.

The drive is not as small as the Samsung Portable SSD T5, but it is very slim and weighs just 30 grams. The drive has a long slender design that is slightly wider than the M.2 2280 SSD specification. Plextor didn't release many details about the controller or flash.

Pricing & Warranty

The Plextor EX1 128GB we're testing has an MSRP of just $69.99. The 256GB model retails for $109.99 and the 512GB model, the largest in the series, costs $189.99. The drives carry a commendable five-year warranty. Many portable SSDs, including the newly released Samsung Portable SSD T5, only carry a three-year warranty.

Software

Plextor includes a key for the downloadable Fnet SecureDrive EX2 software. The software allows you to create a password and make separate partitions for secure and insecure data.

The management software loads on the insecure partition, so you don't have to download the application from the Plextor website every time you connect it to a new computer. This is a nice value-add feature. We've tested other products that ship with software encryption, but the number has dwindled as companies move to lower prices rather than better value.

A Closer Look

Plextor sent the gold EX1. The design is a throwback to the M6 Pro's Champagne color. This was a very popular color in Asia, particularly in Japan, for many years. Older home audio components with the brushed aluminum champagne color are highly sought after.

Inside the package, we found a carrying pack, USB 3.0 Type-A to Type-C cable, warranty paperwork, and a code for installing the Fnet encryption software.

The drive itself is a long slender design that is both functional and attractive. It's thin enough to fit in your pocket without discomfort and light enough for you to forget it's there.

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Benchmarks & Conclusion

Comparison Products

The number of low-cost portable SSDs has grown significantly over the last several months. I never planned on writing this many portable SSD reviews, but it seems like two or more show up at my door every month. We recently began sorting the comparison products by cost as well as capacity. Plextor sent over the 128GB EX1, the smallest SSD in the product family. This is the first 128GB model we've tested, so it's the only one in our charts.

The Adata SE730 is the closest product to the Plextor EX1 we've covered. The SE730 follows a similar design theory. Both drives are small for extreme portability. The other drives in our group are larger, and in one case, significantly larger. The portable Adata SD700 and SanDisk Extreme 510 feature a square design.

The LaCie Rugged RAID is the only HDD-based system in the comparison group. This drive uses two Seagate hard drives in RAID 0 to deliver similar sequential performance to the flash-based drives, but its real advantage is the beefy 4TB of capacity.

Block Size Testing

There are many ways to test storage devices, but this is the starting point. The charts show baseline performance at each block size under fresh-out-of-box conditions. The performance will never be higher than shown here.

For portable SSDs, we focus primarily on 128KB blocks. Windows will break larger files apart into 128KB blocks during a file transfer. That causes the queue depth (QD) to increase proportionally depending on the size of the file. Files that are smaller than 128KB will transfer in their native sizes. 4KB and 128KB are the most common block sizes used for synthetic performance tests.

Plextor claims the EX1 can reach up to 550/500 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput. That may be possible with the larger capacity models, but our 128GB drive only hit 400 MB/s read and 250 MB/s write. It may be possible to coax more performance out of the drive with different software or under different conditions, but our test has been historically accurate.

Full LBA Span Performance

The Plextor EX1 suffers from low performance while reading and writing large pieces of data. We rarely see these products lose this much performance during a read workload. This indicates some type of background activity running on the drive, but there shouldn't be any. Transfer performance decreases when an SSD's controller dedicates clock cycles to other tasks, and most SSD controllers come with two to four cores to reduce the bottleneck. Samsung's 960 series even uses five cores and dedicates them to different tasks. Most of our testing is automated, so every product receives the same amount of idle time between each test. The Plextor EX1 requires more idle time to work through the background assignments.

The 128KB sequential write test exposes planar TLC NAND's weakness. Plextor relied on the SLC buffer to achieve high write performance, but the buffer can only hold a small amount of data. The EX1 128GB we're testing has a native TLC speed of just under 150 MB/s. The higher capacity models would perform better, with each capacity increase delivering a little more write performance than the smaller drives.

File Transfers

We don't run many application tests on external or portable storage products because the typical workload is sequential in nature. Even though it is possible, you shouldn't run an operating system on these drives. The typical use case is very basic. Most of us simply read and write large pieces of data for archiving or transferring data from one location to another.

We often see performance measured in throughput, but time-based results are easier to interpret because the sense of time is universal. We tested transfer performance with an Avatar (2D + 3D Edition) Blu-ray ISO. For the Game test, we used rFactor to transfer data from the post-installation directory (C:/Program Files) to the portable drives. The Directory Test is a 15.2GB block of data I modeled for another project several years ago. It comes from a daily-use notebook and contains a mix of images, software installations, ISO files, and multimedia that yields a nice real-world workload.

The Plextor EX1 128GB rips through the rFactor game directory with ease. The sample data is small enough for most of it to fall into the SLC buffer before folding into the TLC area. Plextor calls the SLC cache PlexNitro, but every company has its own catchy name for the technology. 

The two other tests use a larger data set. The Plextor EX1 128GB suffers from low performance compared to some of the other portable SSDs. The EX1 isn't the worst option available, but it's not the best, either. The performance meets our expectations for an SSD with a $69.99 (MSRP) price tag.

Conclusion

The portable SSD market came out of nowhere with a number of innovative solutions attempting to solve first world problems. The NAND shortage may have taken hold, but these devices keep coming. We will see more products like the EX1 through the end of 2017 as companies try to sell the last remaining bits of planar flash.

The Plextor EX1 is a tough sell. This isn't the first portable SSD we've tested that has performance problems. Some companies have already shifted over to 3D NAND for portable SSDs. Adata has been very aggressive and has several models shipping with newer and faster 3D technology. The performance delta is substantial, so we have two separate performance tiers in the portable SSD market.  

The low-cost products shipping with low-endurance planar NAND suffer from inconsistent performance. The Plextor EX1 falls into that category. On the other end of the scale, products like the Adata SD700 use 3D NAND to deliver higher and more consistent performance. You get what you pay for, though. They also carry a bigger price tag.

There is still a market for products like the Plextor EX1. The low price and robust design are difficult to overlook. We could beat this drive with a hammer, at least for a few blows, and it would still work. You can't say the same for any portable HDD because they are sensitive to vibration and drops. The fact that they work at all in challenging environments is a modern miracle. Flash, on the other hand, is difficult to break with an aluminum case surrounding the internal drive.

The Plextor EX1 is available if you need it for casual use, but we wouldn't recommend this product for any serious professional work. It will get the job done and take a beating, but you might resort to the latter while waiting on your data transfer to finish.

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Features & Specifications

3D NAND is the hot topic, but there is still room for planar NAND even as the latest in 3D technology ramps up. Most think that increased 3D NAND production signals the end for 2D products, but that isn't the case. Planar NAND is still cheaper to manufacture, and it's better suited for low capacity products due to its smaller die density. In time, 3D NAND will power most mainstream to enterprise systems, but some lower-cost entry-level SSDs will still use planar technology for at least the next year.

SATA has a few years left in it, too. While enthusiasts scour the web for the best price on the few remaining NVMe drives with MLC NAND, the rest of the world is just happy to find a good price for a SATA SSD. There are still a few high-performance SATA products on the market, but prices are steep. The NAND shortage has increased the cost of the most vital component, though, so the price gap between entry-level and mainstream products is shrinking.

Specifications

Plextor brings the new S3C series to market in three full-capacity models that range from 128GB to 512GB. This series ships in the 2.5-inch form factor, but Plextor's S3G M.2 2280 is a SATA model that shares similar specifications and components.

The S3C 2.5-inch drives achieve up to 550/520 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput. The 265GB model loses 10 MB/s of sequential write performance compared to the high-capacity model, and the 128GB steps down another 10 MB/s. All three drives come to market with different random performance specifications. The 128GB achieves 72,000/57,000 random read/write IOPS, but performance increases to 90,000/71,000 for the 256GB and 92,000/79,000 IOPS for the 512GB.

This series gives us our first look at both the SMI SM2254 controller and the new Sk Hynix 14nm planar TLC NAND. We know very little about the components. The controller supports Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) error correction code and the S3C also uses an SLC buffer to increase performance during bursty write workloads.

The S3 designation is part of Plextor's new product naming scheme for SATA SSDs. The new lineup begins with the newly released S1 and includes the S2 and S3 we're testing today. Plextor has yet to release a product with 3D NAND, but it announced the M9Pe would come to market in 2018 with Toshiba's 3D BiCS NAND.

Pricing, Warranty & Endurance

We haven't seen the new S3C or S3G products listed for sale yet, but Plextor sent us the MSRP for both products. The 128GB SC3 drives start at just $51.99, and pricing scales up to $93.99 for the 256GB model and $186.99 for the 512GB. The company doesn't plan to release a 512GB-equivalent in the M.2 form factor, but the S6G 256GB M.2 model retails for $96.99.

All S3 products come with a three-year warranty and an endurance limitation. This is where the series shows it's value-focused positioning. The 128GB drives only come with warranty support for up to 50TB of data writes. That increases to 70TB for both the 256GB and 512GB models. In contrast, the new Western Digital Blue 3D 500GB includes a 200TB rating at a similar price point.

Software

The S3 products work with Plextor's impressive software suite that goes well beyond the traditional "SSD Toolbox" software features. Plextor uses a monitoring software called PlexTools to view status updates, secure erase, and TRIM the drives. There are also three additional pieces of software.

• PlexVault

Plextor's PlexVault software provides you with a secure hidden partition and complete control of access privileges. Even if you share a computer with others, you can still store your private data via PlexVault.

• PlexCompressor

SSD storage capacity is always important. Plextor's PlexCompressor uses custom smart-compression technology that gives you more storage capacity without impacting the user experience and system performance.

• PlexTurbo

PlexTurbo is an intelligent SSD RAM caching solution that leverages system RAM to accelerate SSD storage performance. It boosts the service life of the SSD while vastly accelerating access performance (32GB recommend DRAM capacity).

Packaging

Plextor ships the SC3 with a new look for its SATA products. The new package is similar across the "S" product range. The back side of the package lists the speeds and feeds as well as warranty information. There is very little descriptive information on the package about the drive's other features. We are glad to see performance data listed because many companies have removed the vital information necessary to compare products in a retail store.

A Closer Look

The overall drive design is similar to several Plextor SATA SSDs dating back several years. The brushed aluminum finish is a classic that doesn't need a makeover to look great.

Internal Components

Inside the package, we found the new SMI SM2254 controller paired with a single DRAM package and four Sk Hynix 14nm NAND packages. The drive uses a very small circuit board, and a small thermal pad between the controller and the case helps cool the internal components.

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256GB Class SSD Performance

Comparison Products

We grabbed a group of similar 256GB-class drives to compare to the new Plextor S3C. We went through a dry spell in this capacity but received a few new products over the last couple of months. The 3D revolution brings larger die sizes in tow, so this capacity is the new entry-level for many product families. By 2018, we will rarely receive 256GB drives for testing as the industry moves to 512GB models for the mainstream.

The Corsair Force LE 200 240GB and HP S700 250GB are both DRAMless models. The Force LE 200 uses a Phison S11 controller, and the S700 uses the SMI SM2258XT. The Mushkin Triactor 240GB, Samsung 850 EVO 250GB, and SanDisk Ultra II 240GB use a DRAM buffer. These are established products that have shipped for several months to several years.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

You won't find a significant difference between most modern SSDs when they read sequential data. Our tests show that most of these products deliver 500 MB/s or more at very low queue depths.

Sequential Write Performance

You will see much more variation during the sequential write tests. Companies use different algorithms to write this type of data to TLC flash. The preferred method is to use flash that is fast enough to keep the data rate high, like the 3D NAND in Samsung's 850 EVO. Some SSDs, like SanDisk's Ultra II, use slower flash and a folding technique that stores incoming data on an intermediary SLC buffer. Our favorite is direct-to-die writes. This technique circumvents the SLC buffer when it is full to ensure consistent performance.

Sequential Write Cache Effect

The Plextor S3C 256GB appears to use a form of direct-to-die writes after the SLC buffer fills. The problem is the flash's write speed is very slow compared to many of the other products. The Sk Hynix 14nm TLC in this configuration can write at 170 MB/s using 128KB sequential blocks. The speed is high enough that you will not feel like the drive slows down your network transfers, but it's less than ideal for installing software from a local drive.

Random Read Performance

Random read performance at very low queue depths has a direct relation to the overall user experience. At first glance, the performance seems reasonable given the Plextor S3C 256GB's $100 price point. The problem is Samsung's 850 EVO 250GB also retails for roughly $100.

Random Write Performance

The S3C matches the HP S700 250GB DRAMless SSD in random writes at queue depth (QD) 1 and 2. The HP continues to scale well for a DRAMless drive, but the S3C hits a wall around 40,000 IOPS and refuses to scale further as we increase the workload.

80% Mixed Sequential Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

Entry-level and mainstream SSDs often suffer from low mixed workload performance. The charts are full of these products, except the 850 EVO. It has ascended into the upper class even though it sells in the same price range as the other products.

80% Mixed Random Workload

The 80% read mixed random test gives us a better look at the product hierarchy. The two DRAMless SSDs quickly fall to the bottom of the performance charts, while the mainstream drives cluster together in the middle.

Sequential Steady-State

Given the new direction the consumer SSD has taken, we can no longer say that TLC products are not designed for heavy sustained workloads. We are about to turn that corner in the near future, but the Plextor S3C isn't in that room. We did see a slight uptick in the 100% write portion of the test, but the S3C only matches the SanDisk Ultra II 240GB.

Random Steady-State

The random write steady-state test shows us performance as the cache fills and flushes. The result is inconsistent performance, but unlike the HP S700, it does allow the S3C to stay off the performance floor.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

Application performance only varies by a second or less for most tests. As you ramp up the workload, like in the heavy Photoshop test, the drives separate a bit more. For many, the time difference is small enough to consider the drives equal. The seconds add up if you run these applications several times a day, though. Loading a game level every half hour and saving a couple of seconds doesn't seem like much. Loading an image in Photoshop every few minutes and saving six seconds in each instance may be a bit different.

Application Storage Bandwidth

The Plextor S3C lands between the Mushkin Triactor and HP S700. The drive is still quite a bit off of the performance benchmark set by the Samsung 850 EVO 250GB, and that will keep many of our readers from considering this product.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

Coming off of a heavy workload, the Plextor S3C 256GB keeps pace with the Samsung 850 EVO. This is a test that historically hasn't favored Plextor SSDs. Several Plextor SSDs have had issues with this test, but those products all used Marvell controllers with Lite-On developed firmware.

Total Service Time

The Plextor/SMI combination seems to have fixed the recovery latency issues, at least for this product. With the S3C near full capacity, the performance is very similar to the 850 EVO SSD.

Disk Busy Time

The S3C separates itself from the DRAMless SSDs during the disk busy time test. The line chart measures the amount of time it takes to complete several tasks. This is sometimes called "time to completion," and it's an important test for storage because the SSD can return to a low power state quickly after it completes the task.

Responsiveness Test

The Responsiveness Test comes from BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 SE software suite. It uses real software and realistic workloads to measure response time and latency. This is one of the best tests we've run for comparing the user experience. The test also measures system-level power consumption. We use a Lenovo Y700-17 with an Intel 6700HQ processor for the two BAPCo software suites.

Notebook Battery Life

The Plextor S3C 256GB achieved 331 minutes in our Lenovo Y700-17 gaming notebook running MobileMark 2012.5. The test runs through a typical office workload using real-world software like Microsoft's Office and Adobe's suites, along with Winzip and other popular productivity applications.

Notebooks restrict the CPU, DRAM, and DMI buses to save power when they are running on battery. Thisaffects the system performance as a whole, but it also hurts storage performance. Some drives perform well under the restricted power conditions, but others lose more performance than expected. The Plextor S3D 256GB falls into the latter category. System performance drops off sharply when the system is on battery power.

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Conclusion

On the surface, the Plextor S3C doesn't look like a competitive consumer SSD. The price is higher than we like, but if we strip away that issue, it could be a strong entry-level product. SSD prices normally fall over time, but we went through a period where normal was not the soup of the day. We're still in a holding pattern with flash prices, but at least they've stabilized. Prices should decline when NAND supply begins to recover. When they do, the S3C could be in a strong position to battle the DRAMless invasion of low-performance products that are taking over the entry-level market.

The Plextor S3C's strongest feature isn't actually the drive, but the accessory package. It's been quite a few years since the extras that ship with SSDs were more than a footnote, but that's not the case with Plextor SATA products. We like the software so much we wish it worked with Plextor's NVMe products. Sadly, those are not supported.

PlexTurbo relieves many of the performance issues we found with the S3C, but you need an ample amount of DRAM for it to be effective. Plextor recommends 32GB, and that's around four times the amount we expect to see in a mainstream system. Like NAND, DRAM also has supply issues that have driven the prices higher than normal. We don't test with DRAM acceleration because it artificially increases the synthetic performance results beyond what we see during real-world use.

PlexVault simply builds a hidden layer in the file system that can be toggled on and off with a user-selectable hotkey. PlexCompressor is the standout feature that some users will find useful for a few reasons. This software will automatically compress files you haven't accessed recently, reducing the amount of space they consume on the drive. This frees up space, and as we've proven in the past, that eases the performance roll off due to data accumulation on the flash.

As a standalone SSD, the S3C doesn't bring much new to the SSD game even though it does bring two new components into the light. Plextor just priced this one outside of the target audience. The low endurance and performance say entry-level aftermarket SSD, but the price is too close to the products that deliver the performance users want.

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Features & Specifications

Corsair's Neutron NX500 is the most refined consumer SSD to use the high-performance Phison PS5007-E7 NVMe controller. The new drive leverages the latest firmware, MLC flash technology, and a well-developed passive cooler to deliver the best performance we've seen from a Phison controller. The SSD is also the first 1TB Phison E7 drive to sell in the US and Europe. Corsair will not stop at 1TB, though. The company will have a massive 2TB option available in August to satisfy the needs of professional users and gamers alike.

Corsair already tapped the Phison E7 controller earlier this year for the very good Force MP500 M.2 SSD. The mainstream SSD shipped in 240GB and 480GB capacities, but at the time, putting a heat sink on an M.2 SSD was still rare (other than Plextor's M8PeGN). Some SSDs can throttle when you push them to read and write data for more than a few minutes at a time, but M.2 drives lack the PCB real estate for a robust cooling solution.

Add-in cards, on the other hand, are around the size of a mid-tier video card and provide much more surface area than the M.2 form factor. That means more room for passive and active cooling solutions. Coolers provide additional thermal headroom so the controller can stay active for longer periods of time without reducing clock speeds to throttle performance. In fact, it's possible for SSD controllers on add-in cards to draw more power to achieve higher clock speeds, but we've yet to see that in a retail product.

The four-core Phison PS5007-E7 features eight channels that communicate with the NAND. The controller thermal throttles at 90C, but some users have reported higher temperatures with extreme synthetic workloads. To be fair, Phison designed the controller to withstand these temperatures and uses several throttling steps to maintain high performance while reducing temperatures. The best way to keep this controller happy is to keep the system cool.

In our testing, we've found it doesn't take a massive cooler to ensure high performance. In our review of the Plextor M8Se, we found the M.2 model with a sliver-thin aluminum heat sink was sufficient enough to provide increased performance compared to the same drive without a heat sink. Not all controllers react the same way, but in our experience with SSD heat sinks, we found that a little really does go a long way.

Corsair's Neutron NX500 doesn't use a little bit of cooling to go a long way. The drive uses a lot of cooling to go all the way. You will not experience a thermal throttling incident if your system has a fan in it, somewhere, that circulates air. Corsair provided the chart above that outlines the NX500's temperature while it transfers data for 2,000 seconds. The controller never surpassed 50C.

There is more to the Neutron NX500 than just the cooler, though. The NX500 800GB wields 1024GB (1TB) of raw NAND under the cover, but the usable capacity is lower. The extra NAND provides an aggressive dose of overprovisioning to ensure high performance during demanding workloads. To date, the Galax HOF PCI-E 1TB is the only consumer-facing E7 SSD with 1TB of flash to come to market, and it was sold in Asia in very limited quantity. Even in Asia, it's considered a unicorn.

There hasn't been an E7 with more than 1TB of capacity. We haven't even tested one in our lab even though we run some special reference designs through our test suite to measure the performance of proposed products. With that in mind, the Corsair Neutron NX500 1.6TB will be a very special product. You will have to wait at least a month to see the largest NX500 because Corsair doesn't have it ready for this review. We'll likely see it on display at the Flash Memory Summit.

Specifications

The Corsair Neutron NX500 will eventually have three capacity points. We've already discussed the 1.6TB and the 800GB, but the company will also introduce a more affordable 400GB drive. All the drives have raw capacities of 2TB, 1TB, and 512GB, but they also employ aggressive overprovisioning. Corsair uses the same amount of overprovisioning as enterprise drives designed for sustained heavy random workloads. The reserved flash is not user accessible, but it gives the controller more free space to handle background activity.

The four-core Phison E7 controller has the processing power to handle foreground and background activity without hurting the user experience. Unfortunately, the dual-core controllers we find on many mainstream and entry-level SSD products aren't as efficient. Overprovisioning also increases endurance. The free space is like having an extra piece of paper to work out math problems so you don’t clutter the exam with chicken scratches. The primary storage space says fresh and clean because most of the dirty work happens in the overprovisioning.

We only have specifications for the 400GB and 800GB SSDs that Corsair will ship at launch. In general, the two drives share identical performance specifications. The SSDs feature up to 3,000/2,400 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput. Random performance weighs in at 300,000/270,000 read/write IOPS.

We suspect the Corsair Neutron NX500 will be one of the last products released with Toshiba 15nm MLC. We've already tested the Toshiba XG5 with the new 64-layer 3D BiCS NAND. In the review, we noted there would be one last noteworthy product with 15nm planar MLC. If you aren't excited about moving to an all-TLC world, the NX500 might be your last-chance SSD.

Features

The PS5007-E7 is Phison’s first NVMe controller designed for high-performance applications. Here's the quick rundown;

Extreme Reliability

Multiple features are built into the PS5007-E7 to ensure stability and reliability.

• SmartECC – Reconstructs defective/faulty pages when regular ECC fails
• SmartRefresh – Monitors block ECC health status and refreshes blocks periodically to improve data retention
• SmartFlush – Minimizes time data spends in cache to ensure data retention in the event of power loss

Extreme Control

The Neutron NX500 SSD with Phison PS5007-E7 controller works with CORSAIR SSD Toolbox.

• Drive Monitoring – Monitor the health of your Force Series
• Secure Wipe – For security purposes, completely clear the drive of any recoverable data
• Firmware update – Install updated firmware as needed

We've tested products with the Phison E7 controller several times already. The NX500 is a little different than the other drives, though. This is the first E7 we've tested with the new 4.5 firmware. We just got our hands on 4.0 for another drive and found that Phison optimized the firmware for high performance. The new 4.5 firmware may be even better.

Pricing, Warranty & Endurance

Corsair hasn't announced the NX500 1.6TB's pricing, but we know the NX500 800GB retails for $649.99 and the 400GB model is $319.99.

The Neutron NX500 series comes with a limited five-year warranty. The generous write endurance specification limits the warranty. The NX500 400GB can absorb 698TB, and the 800GB model can survive 1,396TB and remain under warranty coverage. The warranty expires if you exceed the limits, but the drive doesn't just fall over and wave a white flag. The extended endurance comes from the heavy dose of overprovisioning. I'd say you get more endurance than you will ever use. The NX500 is one of, if not the last, consumer SSD with MLC NAND, so you might hold onto this drive for a bit longer than other products.

Accessories

The Neutron NX500 ships with a half-height bracket and a paper manual. The Corsair SSD Toolbox also supports the NX500 and allows you to monitor the drive's status as well as perform management tasks, like secure erase and TRIM.

Product Packaging

The Neutron NX500 is Corsair's first add-in card form factor SSD, so we haven't seen this type of package from the company before. The package is more like a video card box than one designed for an SSD. Corsair listed all the NX500 specifications and details. The company didn't overlook the inner package, either. The package has a nice graphic that tells buyers this is a premium product and not a commodity SSD tossed in a box.

A Closer Look

The Neutron NX500 is not a race-to-the-bottom product. This is Corsair's flagship model, and you can tell the company put some time and effort into the design. We found the reference E7 add-in card under the massive heatsink, but everything on the surface is custom. Corsair constructed the heat sink with two parts. A large aluminum cooler absorbs the heat from the E7 controller and a plastic covering wrapped in carbon fiber-look vinyl provides the aesthetic appeal. It's a nice look that will blend well with the Corsair carbon fiber computer case, should it actually come to market.

The only other E7-powered 1TB drive we've tested also has a shroud that covers the heat sink. The plastic on that drive degrades the cooling to the point that the heatsink becomes insulation. Corsair didn't make the same mistake with the NX500. There is enough exposed metal for the cooler to be effective.

Internals

The NX500 uses the Phison PS5007-E7 add-in card reference design. We've tested a number of these over the last two years, starting with the Zotac SONIX and a pair of special prototype engineering samples that served as the base design for this SSD.

Corsair used the fabled E7 with a full package surrounding the flip-chip controller. This is the first time we've had the packaged controller in the lab, and only the second time we've seen it. The additional surface area is easier to cool with a heat sink and adds a layer of protection. You can easily damage exposed chips, especially those as small as the E7 controller. I say that from experience after crushing at least a dozen Pentium III and Athlon XP cores over the years.

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1TB NVMe SSD Performance Testing

Comparison Products

We stuffed the comparison charts with just about every consumer 1TB NVMe SSD available. The Galax HOF PCI-E 1TB with the Phison E7 controller is the rarest of the group, but it's also the coolest-looking drive. Even when you can find it, the +$1000 USD price tag is a deterrent. It also makes the Corsair NX500 800GB look like a value. The Galax drive shipped with older firmware, and the Corsair SSD ships with the latest version.

Intel, Plextor, and Samsung all have two NVMe SSDs in the test group. The SSD 750 1.2TB, M8Pe 1TB, and 960 Pro models use MLC flash. The downstream 600p 1TB, M8Se 1TB, and 960 EVO 1TB leverage TLC NAND.

We wanted to include the Intel SSD 750 800GB but ran out of room in the charts. The 800GB version of Intel's flagship consumer SSD performs much like the 1.2TB model.

Toshiba/OCZ contributes the RD400. We used the add-in card for these tests instead of the bare RD400A M.2 drive. The add-in card version uses a thick thermal pad between the M.2 drive and the adapter to aid cooling. It helps a little, but we still ran into thermal throttling issues during the sequential write test.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

The Corsair Neutron NX500 800GB hits 2,500 MB/s at queue depth (QD) 8 in our single-worker sequential read test. It surpasses 1,200 MB/s at QD2. Overall, it lands right in the middle of our group of 1TB NVMe SSDs.

Sequential Write Performance

The NX500 performs very well during the sequential write test. The drive trails the two Samsung 960 Series products through most of the tests but delivers nearly 1,500 MB/s at QD2.

Random Read Performance

The Neutron is the first Phison E7-based NVMe SSD to surpass 10,000 random read IOPS at QD1. The SSD scales well at low queue depths and experiences a large jump between QD2 and QD4. This is where we want to see aggressive performance with an enthusiast-class SSD. A custom NVMe driver could increase performance, but Phison has yet to release an optimized driver that wrings extra performance from the hardware.

Random Write Performance

Random write performance is the universal weakness of all Phison-based SSDs. The NX500 with new firmware has regressed compared to the Galax HOF PCI-E with older firmware. The random write performance is still very high for a consumer product, but the drive falls to the lower end of the list.

80% Mixed Sequential Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

The new firmware paired with the upgraded heatsink allows the NX500 to perform much better than the Galax SSD during the sequential workload. The NX500 scales well to QD32. The drive plateaus at that point, but it still holds steady at 1,500 MB/s.

80% Mixed Random Workload

The NX500's low random write performance drags down performance during the 80% read test. We hoped the extra overprovisioning would still increase performance where it counts, but the drive has a deep hole to climb out of with such a large random write deficit.

Sequential Steady-State

The NX500 starts out strong on the left side of the sequential steady-state chart during the heavy read workload, but it trails the other drives as we increase the write percentage. Instead of providing a slow uptick beyond 50% reads and writes, performance continues to degrade until we get to 100% steady-state writes.

Random Steady-State

The Corsair Neutron NX500's additional overprovisioning prevents the drive from reaching a deep steady state during our one-hour QD32 random write test. After examining the results, we didn't see a need to run a longer test. On the second chart, which measures the last 100 seconds of the test, we see the drive drop sporadically to very low levels. That's not a favorable result, but it's not the worst we've ever tested.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

Admittedly, all the drives in this group appear to be similar with daily-use applications. That's the way SSDs work with light-use software. The biggest difference comes in the Photoshop Heavy test. We measured a five-second difference in the six-minute test.

We see a sizable difference between SATA and NVMe during most of the tests, but it's difficult to tell them apart during the subtests.

Application Storage Bandwidth

Over time, though, a few seconds here and there add up. In this chart, we combine the results and present the average performance as a throughput score. The Corsair NX500 800GB compares best against the Intel SSD 750 1.2TB and the Samsung 960 EVO 1TB. The Samsung costs significantly less, and the Intel costs significantly more. The Samsung can fit in a notebook, though, because it comes in a tiny M.2 form factor.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

I honestly expected the Corsair Neutron NX500 to deliver similar results to the Intel SSD 750 and Samsung 960 Pro during the more difficult workloads. The additional overprovisioning should allow the drive to move up a tier or two, but that wasn't the case. The drive is much more consistent than the Galax HOF PCI-E with the same controller, but it's not in the same league as the 960 Pro and SSD 750.

Total Service Time

There are not any latency issues that we can see, and that's a good thing. The Corsair NX500 places third during heavy workloads with only a moderate amount of time to recover. The NX500 is knocking on the door, but it's not completely where it should be.

Disk Busy Time

The low-cost 1TB SSDs are cheap for a reason. TLC NAND, both planar and 3D, often suffers in latency or completion time measurements. These products are excellent for normal desktop tasks, but you shouldn't take a kitchen knife to a renaissance festival sword fight. The Samsung 960 EVO 1TB is the sole exception. Even the upcoming Toshiba XG5 with BiCS FLASH (3D TLC) shows signs of weakness during very heavy workloads.

The NX500 800GB is a solid drive with fairly consistent performance, but it has intense competition from some existing MLC competitors.

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512GB NVMe SSD Performance Testing

Comparison Products

There's more competition in the 512GB-class NVMe segment. The flash shortage has a varying impact on NAND packages with different densities. High-density packages are the hardest hit. That leaves many companies without a 1TB option due to the limited space available in the M.2 2280 form factor.

Corsair sells the E7-powered Force Series MP500 480GB in an M.2 2280 form factor. It was one of the fastest available in this configuration. The MyDigitalSSD BPX uses similar hardware, but it sells at a much lower price, so we used the BPX 480GB to represent the Phison E7 M.2 2280 SSDs.

The Samsung 950 Pro and Intel SSD 750 400GB ship with MLC flash and are considered premium SSDs. We never received the 960 Pro 512GB. On the TLC side, we have the Samsung 960 EVO 500GB and Intel's 600p 512GB. The Plextor M8Pe 512GB and OCZ RD400 512GB round out the list. Both utilize Toshiba 15nm MLC flash just like the Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

The Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB delivers very high performance at high queue depths, but it has a difficult time keeping pace with the Samsung 960 Series products at low queue depths. The NX500 outperforms the Samsung 960 EVO, but only after QD16. It requires a heavy workload to extract maximum throughput.

Sequential Write Performance

The NX500 400GB also delivers high sequential write performance, but again, it doesn't take flight until you reach higher queue depths. The drive can sustain the higher speeds due to its extreme overprovisioning and MLC flash. The 960 EVO loses performance as we ramp up the queue depth in our automated test.

Random Read Performance

The NX500 400GB is the first Phison E7 SSD we've tested that surpassed 11,000 random read IOPS at QD1. The 400GB SSD arrived with firmware 4.3, and the 800GB came with firmware 4.5. The older firmware seems to be a little faster. The NX500 400GB's incremental increase only takes a nibble out of the 960 EVO 500GB's 16,000 IOPS at QD1.

Random Write Performance

Intel's enterprise-derived SSD 750 still blows past the consumer NVMe SSDs in random writes at all queue depths. We expected the NX500's increased overprovisioning to boost random write performance, but that wasn't the case -- random write performance is still the E7's weak point. The NX500's new firmware scores well below the BPX's older firmware. I doubt Corsair and Phison intended for this combination of hardware and firmware to leave the NX500 with the lowest random write performance at low queue depths.

Random write performance is important for small file updates, but it isn't as important as random read performance for most desktop-level consumer workloads. For the most part, the NVMe protocol has increased random write performance so much that it is less of a factor in consumer workloads. The NX500 may not be the best of the group, but it's still fast enough to make your SATA SSD feel slow.

80% Mixed Sequential Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

We added bar charts to the mixed workload tests to make it easier to quantify low queue depth performance. Despite having excellent sequential read and write performance, the NX500 starts off slow in our 80% mix. It recovers at high queue depths. Heavy workloads can increase the queue depth, but the extra headroom largely goes unused during normal workloads.

80% Mixed Random Workload

The NX500 400GB fares much better during the mixed random test. We found the drive to be right in the mix with the fastest products. It outperforms the other products from QD4 to QD8.

Sequential Steady-State

The NX500's sequential steady state performance is impressive in both the 80% and 70% categories. The drive falls slightly in the middle of the chart with more write-intensive tasks. Unlike many of the TLC-based SSDs, it recovers as we increase the write mixture (right side of the chart).

Random Steady-State

We didn't manage to get the NX500 400GB into a true steady state. Unlike the NX500 800GB we tested on the previous page, the 400GB model doesn't drop to the same extremely low level of performance. The NX500's performance is still very inconsistent, but given the flash shortage and the move to TLC for all consumer SSDs, the NX400 may be one of the last decent candidates for use in a RAID 0 array.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

The Corsair NX500 isn't the first Phison-based SSD to perform better during heavy workstation-class workloads than daily-use desktop applications. Corsair released several Phison S10 SATA SSDs with the same issue. It seems to have carried over to the E7.

Application Storage Bandwidth

That leaves us at a fork in the road, and only you can determine the path. On the one hand, if you mainly use a computer for light workloads, the NX500 isn't the best option available. The drive is faster than any SATA SSD, but we can say the same about every product in our test pool. The NX500 is faster than a few of the other products in these applications, but it also carries a price premium.

The NX500 400GB tends to perform better during intense workloads. Some tasks, like heavy video production, reach high queue depths because the user combines several source materials. Even more complex workloads, like fluid dynamics, would also increase the workload. With these types of applications, the NX500 moves away from being a so-so NVMe SSD to a real workhorse. It just falls into its element with heavy workloads while other the drives are designed for typical consumer workloads.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

We expected the Corsair Neutron NX500 400GB to outperform the other products in heavy workloads because of its hefty overprovisioning. With such a large reserve, the drive should shoot past all of the other products, but that's not the case. These tests don't ramp up the queue depth as much as some workstation workloads, but we do drive the products into a heavily-used state. Compared to the BPX SSD, the NX500 enjoys significantly better performance than the drive without overprovisioning. Unfortunately, it's a heavy capacity price to pay for users that never place anything near this amount of stress on the storage system.

Total Service Time

The NX500 hangs with the best consumer NVMe SSDs during the service time test. That's a positive for the user experience, which is tied directly to latency. There isn't a large improvement in this area over the lower-priced BPX 480GB.

Disk Busy Time

The disk busy time chart follows nearly the same trend as the service time test. We are not too concerned with power consumption for desktop PCs. The user experience takes precedent for products that are not compatible with notebooks.

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Conclusion

Pricing, which dictates market positioning, is important. We've seen several Phison E7 SSDs come to market over the last year and a half, but only a few have been successful against the industry giants like Samsung and Intel. The E7 is a very powerful four-core controller that wields eight channels to address an ample number of NAND die. Still, positioning is important. The MyDigitalSSD BPX is the most successful E7 we've tested, and its biggest draw is the good mixture of price and performance. We've yet to find another company use the same formula to replicate its success.

Instead, we've seen companies utilize the E7 controller to go the other direction with elaborate value-add components that increase cost. We've been handed one part after another with a price increase each step of the way. The E7 is an excellent entry-level and mainstream controller, but it has lagged the 960 series time and time again.

The NX500 400GB adds more bling and more curb appeal, but it carries a 50% price premium over the BPX 480GB. Worse, it has 80GB less usable capacity and a marginal performance increase during real-world workloads. The drive isn't a good value, and it's also not as fast as a Samsung 960 EVO, 950 Pro, or even an Intel SSD 750 400GB. The 512GB-class is highly contested, and there are several products that are as good or better than the NX500. The problem is many are also cheaper.

Moving up the capacity ranks amplifies the NX500's biggest weakness. In a world of 960GB, 1000GB, and 1024GB SSDs, you lose a lot of capacity moving down to 800GB. Compared to some models, like the full-capacity 960 Pro, you lose nearly the capacity of a 256GB SSD! The 960 Pro also retails for $579.99 -- that's $70 less than the NX500 800GB. It's not difficult to see where the NX500 comes up short.

We don't know about the pricing for the high-capacity model that will come to market in August. The Corsair NX500 1.6TB has only one competitor at the time of writing, but new 64-layer flash technology will change the 2TB SSD landscape entirely. We should start to see many of those products around the same time frame in August. The Samsung 960 Pro 2TB sells for $1,199 at B&H and $1,299 at Newegg. If Corsair doubles the price of the NX500 800GB, the 1.6TB model will have a tough time at $1,300.

The Neutron NX500 is a good SSD, and it has a place in the market. I just don't think the high price and extreme overprovisioning boosts performance in desktop applications enough to offset the lost capacity. The NX500 is over the top, but there is already a superior product that you can turn to if you decide to invest this much cash in an SSD. The better product simply costs less and delivers more.

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In terms of volume, Lite-On is one of the largest SSD manufacturers. However, the brand isn't as well known in the United States or Europe as its Plextor subsidiary. Most Lite-On SSDs come in OEM systems where performance  take a back seat to validation and pricing. In Asia, the brand has a strong following and is known for products that offer very high reliability at low prices. Across the Pacific, Lite-On is more like our Crucial; conservative, affordable, and dependable.

This week we spotted the the Lite-On T10 NVMe SSD at Newegg. It sells through the First From Asia third-party retailer service. The drives ship to buyers from Asia, but don't expect the same excellent support from Newegg for these transactions. Last year we purchased ten CPU coolers from the service, but they never arrived. After normal support channels had dropped the ball, it took a LinkedIn message to a Newegg executive to get a refund nearly two months later. The Lite-On T10 ships from a different reseller, so hopefully buyers won't have the same problem.

Lite-On sells the T10 with the heatsink inside the package and not installed. We found three assorted colors available in Asia: blue, red, and white. You'll need to peel back the 3M-branded thermal tape and install the cooler the DIY way. This does, however, give notebook users the ability to run the drive in a system that doesn't have enough room for the aluminum cooler.

The seller says you'll receive either the red or the blue heatsink, but it doesn't give you a choice. We found that both the red and blue heatsinks are older designs superseded by a new white heatsink cooler with a unique design. The retailer also lists this as a SATA SSD with Toshiba 3D MLC. Toshiba produced 3D MLC NAND, but the Phison PS5007-E7 controller does not support it. The E7 isn't a SATA controller -- the SATA interface doesn't even support the T10's performance specifications.

The Lite-On T10 boasts impressive performance numbers for its low price point. Newegg only lists the two lowest capacities of 120GB for $95 and 240GB for $140. It also features MLC NAND flash, a dying breed that most shoppers should put on the endangered species list with extinction imminent.

The real story here is that Lite-On has moved away from Marvell controllers entirely. The company released a few products last year with SMI controllers in entry-level products sold under the Plextor name, but historically Lite-On has primarily been a Marvell company.

As far as we call tell, the company has never joined forces with Phison to release a product. Give the lackluster performance of the Marvell powered M8Se mainstream NVMe SSD, a lower-cost but better performing Phison-based product could be on the horizon.

The M9Pe is the only future Plextor NVMe product we are aware of. It will come to market with a Marvell controller backed by Toshiba's 3D BiCS FLASH in 3-bit per cell form (TLC). We don't expect to see the M9Pe launch until 2018.

The Phison PS5007-E7 has been on the market for two years. It powers the MyDigtialSSD BPX NVMe SSD that we like so much for its low price point and strong NVMe performance that outshines every SATA 6Gbps SSD on the market.

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Features & Specifications

The Plextor M8Se first appeared at Computex 2016. Plextor announced the M8Pe high-performance drive at the event, but it also introduced the mainstream NVMe M8Se that downshifts to TLC NAND. At Computex 2017, Plextor released the M8Se in three configurations. That gives you a number of options for different applications.

The new Plextor M8Se is almost identical to the M8Pe we tested last year. Plextor designed a new cooler for the Add-In Card (AIC) and M.2 models with a heatsink, but the biggest change comes in the form of lower-cost TLC NAND. Normally TLC would reduce the cost of an SSD, but that may not be the case in the current climate. Plextor has already finished the M8Pe production run, but NAND was cheaper when Plextor built the M8Pe SSDs. The company warned us that the M8Se with TLC NAND might cost more than the existing M8Pe models with MLC, at least while the M8Pe models last.

Specifications

The fabs will push 3D TLC NAND moving forward, and all but Sk Hynix will have 64 layers. Toshiba is focusing on manufacturing next generation 3D BiCS NAND, but we suspect 15nm planar production will continue until mid to late 2018. Plextor must have an ample supply of Toshiba 15nm planar (2D) TLC on hand, and that's a win in the performance category.

The two high-capacity models deliver up to 2,450/1,000 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput. Random performance is also very high at 210,000/175,000 read/write IOPS. That's faster than the Adata SX8000 NVMe SSD, which features similar endurance specifications but uses Micron's first-generation 3D MLC NAND.

Like the M8Pe, Plextor released the M8Se in three models that vary based on the form factor and heatsink. The M8SeY uses a PCIe half-height half-length AIC form factor. A standard M.2 SSD resides under the heatsink. You can remove it and use it in a notebook just like the normal M.2 model. Plextor claims that the AIC's heat sink is 30% more efficient than the M8Pe's.

The M8SeG is another M.2 2280 drive, but it comes with a small and efficient heatsink. On paper, notebooks don't support the M8SeG simply because it doesn't comply with the strict M.2 specification. We didn't have any issues using the drive in a few of the notebooks we have on hand. You can simply remove the heat sink, which Plextor affixed with spongy thermal tape, if the SSD doesn't fit.

The Plextor M8Se uses a Marvell 88SS1093 NVMe 1.1b controller with a three-core Cortex-R5 processor. The company also uses third-generation LDPC error correction technology. The eight-channel controller supports planar MLC and TLC NAND. It also supports next-generation 3D TLC NAND, but only up to 533 MT/s.

Pricing, Warranty & Endurance

There are three models and four capacities, so we end up with twelve separate SKUs. The M8Se starts out at just $77 for the non-heat sink 128GB model. That climbs to $463 for the 1TB M8SeY add-in card. The M8SeG (M.2 heat sink) 512GB appears to be the sweet spot at $247. The only problem is the Plextor M8PeG with a similar configuration and MLC NAND. It only costs $229.99. Newegg has an exclusive for the M8Se series in the US, at least at first, so your Prime account won't help you this round.

The previous-generation M8Pe drives come with a five-year warranty, but the new M8Se drives only have a three-year warranty. The warranty is limited by the total data you write to the flash. This isn't the same as the amount of data you write to the drive (write amplification muddies the waters), but it's close. The endurance is relatively good compared to other new products.

Plextor M8PeY

We have the highest and lowest priced models in the lab. The Y-model is at the top of the M8Se pyramid. This AIC drive uses a massive heatsink that, according to Plextor, is 30% more efficient than the previous version. An M8SeGN base drive is inside the card, and you can remove it if you are willing to void your warranty (or are careful with the warranty sticker).

We also have the M.2 2280 1TB drive. The 1TB model is the only M8Se to use both sides of the PCB for components. This will mean more to some users than others. A small number of notebooks will only accept single-sided M.2 2280 SSDs.

M8SeGN

The M8SeGN doesn't use a heat sink at all. The three low-capacity drives are single sided, but the 1TB model uses both sides for components. Our testing will show if the 15nm planar NAND generates enough heat to require a heatsink.

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1TB NVMe SSD Performance

Comparison Products

The market gained a few new 1TB NVMe SSDs since our last review, but this capacity point still suffers from the Great NAND Shortage of 2016. Thankfully, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel thanks to new flash technology. For this review, we gathered the most popular 1TB models available (except the elusive 960 Pro 1TB).

Most of these products still use MLC NAND flash. The MLC group consists of the Intel SSD 750 1.2TB, OCZ RD400 and RD400A in M.2-only, and the Plextor M8Pe.

There are four products with TLC flash. The Samsung 960 EVO 1TB is one of the most popular NVMe SSDs on the market. It's flanked by the Intel 600p, which is also very popular due to its low cost and overall value compared to SATA offerings. We have two Plextor M8Se models in our test pool. The M8Sey is an add-in card with a full heat sink, and the M8SeGN is an M.2 drive without a heat sink. We did not receive an M8SeG M.2 SSD with the thin aluminum heat sink.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

We ramp up the sequential read workload by increasing the queue depth (QD). It's possible to reach higher throughput with the addition of more workers, but we use a single worker because most software still accesses the storage system the same way it has for the last twenty years. We will add more workers when more software emerges that can fully utilize the NVMe protocol.

We didn't expect the Plextor M8Se drives to fall to the bottom of our sequential read test. We also didn't expect the bare drive to outperform the add-in card, which has a heat sink to eliminate thermal throttling.

Sequential Write Performance

Unlike the OCZ RD400, neither M8Se exhibited the tell-tale signs of thermal throttling during our sequential write test. The M8Se's sequential write performance is quite low and even trails the Intel 600p 1TB through most of the test. The low write performance may be why we haven't seen other companies bring the Marvell 88SS1093 controller to market with Toshiba 15nm TLC even though the controller has been available for some time.

Random Read Performance

The M8Se NVMe SSDs outperform the Intel 600p 1TB in our random read tests, but performance is still much lower than we expected. The M8Pe with MLC NAND didn't launch with the performance you see in our testing. We retested the drive with its sixth firmware revision since the initial launch. The M8Se doesn't have an update yet, but given Plextor's frequent updates on other high-performance models, we expect to see at least one update before the company retires the product.

Random Write Performance

The low random write performance reveals the M8Se could use a firmware update to address some performance concerns. The heat sink on the M8SeY AIC doesn't offer too much help with the performance, either. We did observe a slight difference with this series in our four-corner tests, but it's not enough to pay extra for the heat sink.

80 Percent Mixed Sequential Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

The low random write performance pulls down mixed sequential performance. The M8Pe with MLC flash delivered a higher result across the queue depth range, but it also scored less than we expected. The tri-core processor appears to become overwhelmed with a mix of incoming and outgoing data.

80 Percent Mixed Random Workload

We see similar results with the mixed random workload. The M8Se drives still deliver better performance than competing SATA SSDs.

Sequential Steady-State

The mixed workload performance falls even lower during the steady state test. These are the lowest measurements we've seen with an NVMe-based product. This should concern users that store a lot of data on the SSD instead of shuffling cold data to a secondary volume. We haven't measured performance this low in a long time -- even with DRAMless SATA drives.

Random Steady-State

For what it's worth, the M8Se SSDs deliver consistent random steady state performance. We still wouldn't recommend this series for a RAID array because the price tag is already higher than many products with MLC flash.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

The M8Se drives fall to the bottom of the charts in many of these tests, but we finally begin to see some measurable differences between the heatsink and "bare" models.

Application Storage Bandwidth

The performance is the real story here, though, as the M8Se struggles to keep pace with the MLC-based M8Pe. For Plextor to be successful with this series, it either has to outperform the competition or cost significantly less than the Samsung 960 EVO. The M8Se MSRP is lower than the 960 EVO with for all but the AIC model, but there is only a slight difference in 1TB pricing.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, pleaseclick here.

Both the heatsink-equipped and bare M8Se drives delivered very inconsistent performance during extended workloads. You wouldn't want this to happen with professional software, and most users wouldn't want this to happen during daily use.

Total Service Time

Latency causes large spikes during the SSDs' internal cleanup operations. There just isn't enough processing power to simultaneously clean the flash cells and read/write data at the same time. TLC is slow at native speeds, which doesn't help reduce the background process time.

Disk Busy Time

The disk busy time test shows just how insane the latency outliers actually are. Some test runs take twice as long to finish compared to other products. That can increase even more on occasion. We found a long dose of idle time doesn't seem to fix the issue.

Responsiveness Test

The Responsiveness Test from SYSmark 2014 SE runs on our Lenovo Y700-17 notebooks. Of course, notebooks don't support add-in card form factors. Accordingly, we only ran the M8SeGB without a heat sink for these tests. The M8Se series delivers a slightly better user experience compared to the Intel 600p, but there are plenty of NVMe SSDs that are better and cheaper.

Notebook Battery Life

The M8SeGN is a power sucking monster that can consume more than an extra hour worth of battery power compared to the Samsung SM961 and Plextor M8Pe. It seems Plextor didn't spend much time optimizing this product before releasing it to the public.

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512GB NVMe SSD Performance

Comparison Products

The 512GB-class allows us to get down to business. More products ship in this capacity so we can see how the Marvell 88SS1093 and TLC combination fares compared to other products with planar and 3D NAND.

There are a few standout products in this capacity. Samsung never released a larger drive from the 950 Pro series. It has the best read latency of the modern consumer NVMe SSDs, but we think the MyDigitalSSD BPX 480GB is the best bang for the buck on the market. Like the 950 Pro, MyDigitalSSD didn't bring it to market in a larger capacity. Both drives feature MLC NAND. The Plextor M8Pe, Patriot Hellfire M.2 (another Phison E7-based drive), and OCZ RD400 round out the MLC SSD entrants.

The Intel 600p 512GB with an SMI SM2260 controller is the only other TLC-based product in the test pool. It uses Intel's first-generation 3D TLC NAND.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

On paper, the Plextor M8Se 512GB has the same performance as the 1TB model, but many of the other products have lower specifications than their larger counterparts. We may find the 512GB is more competitive, but the first test result doesn't give us much hope.

The sequential read performance is nearly identical to the Intel 600p 512GB we tested a few months back. The 600p delivers a little more bandwidth at QD2. Gamers should keep that in mind.

Sequential Write Performance

The Intel 600p also delivers a little more sequential write throughput than the two M8Se SSDs. Again, the M8Se trails the other drives even though it carries a price premium.

Random Read Performance

True to the specification sheet, the M8Se 512GB provides higher performance than the 1TB model. Both capacities knock on the 10,000 IOPS door at QD1. That's more than nearly all SATA SSDs, but unfortunately, the Plextor didn’t price the M8Se like a modern SATA SSD.

Random Write Performance

Planar TLC NAND is long in the tooth, and 3D NAND is on the horizon. Toshiba and Micron have struggled to keep pace with Samsung's V-NAND technology. The consumer market is moving to TLC NAND for consumer SSDs, and we expect the M8Se to be the last big-name release with planar NAND. The random write performance chart reveals why the aging technology has come under fire. Managing three bits per cell reduces random write performance.

80 Percent Mixed Sequential Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

The low write performance, along with the underpowered controller, results in low mixed workload performance. This is exactly what we observed in the 1TB product class.

80 Percent Mixed Random Workload

The mixed random performance results show a slightly better outlook for the M8Se, but the performance is still down compared to the M8Pe, RD400, and Samsung 950 Pro.

Sequential Steady-State

The M8Se has the weakest steady-state performance we've seen in a long time. We were shocked after the first three tries with this test. We realized the results were accurate after the fourth ten-hour test. The M8Se could recover after some additional firmware optimization that changes the priority of background activity. We expect to see some changes for the TLC-based drive in the future.

Random Steady-State

Given the other issues, we're still perplexed by the M8Se's poor random steady-state consistency. Striking the delicate balance between foreground and background duties is difficult due to the limited number of processor clock cycles. The drive could be impressive if Plextor increased the sequential throughput with a firmware update.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

The Plextor M8Se 512GB variants are a step up from the Intel 600p, but they don't quite match the performance of MLC-based products. On the one hand, this series would make an excellent low-cost alternative to the 600p that we would pay a little more for. On the other hand, the M8Se is expensive for what it is, and the performance doesn't justify the high asking price.

Application Storage Bandwidth

The heatsink-less M8Se comes to market with a $240 price tag. That's a full $20 more than the Samsung 960 EVO 500GB. The drive is also $40 more than the popular value-centric MyDigitalSSD BPX 480GB. Plextor dove into the river head first, but it didn't check the current beforehand.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

The inconsistent application performance we observed in the larger capacities carries over to the M8Se 512GB. Both drives exhibit the same wavy performance trend. That makes it unlikely that it's the result of thermal throttling. I would say this is the strangest abnormality we've recorded in this test. It's almost a certainty that we see issues with background activity management. Oddly, inconsistency is the only consistent attribute.

Total Service Time

The inconsistency makes it difficult to analyze, score, or even take the test result seriously. It may be easier to just look past the 512GB M8Se given the high price and consistency issues.

Disk Busy Time

The inconsistent performance reemerges in the disk busy time test. That confirms the latency inconsistency is persistent during heavier workloads, so it's not just a brief system hang.

Responsiveness Test

The M8Se delivers a better user experience than most SATA SSDs. We measure system responsiveness with real-world software running on a Lenovo Y700-17 gaming notebook that supports both SATA and NVMe SSDs. The BAPco SYSmark series has been with us for over a decade, but we use the latest 2014 SE version.

Notebook Battery Life

The M8SeGN 512GB delivers the same 295 minutes of battery life in our Lenovo Y700-17 as the 1TB version. We gain a better understanding of where this product sits in the ecosystem because there are more devices in this capacity class. There are better choices available for notebook use when you run rely heavily on battery power, but you could easily choose a cheaper alternative that doesn't perform as well as the M8Se.

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MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

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Conclusion

We really have to question whether the Plextor M8Se is worth your hard-earned dollars. The high-performance M8Pe with MLC flash is clearly a better product, and it has a lower price point. On a cost basis, the M8Se is not competitive with competing NVMe SSDs. Maybe Plextor just wanted to burn though some legacy planar TLC. If that's the case, why not turn the M8Se into a loss leader and use it to gain retail market share and continue with the trend of balanced products?

It's disheartening because Plextor had a string of poor product choices in the past. The company moved past that and started making really good SSDs again, but the M8Se is a regression to the funk years. When you look at the test results, pay particular attention to the M8Pe with MLC flash. Considering its price, it's a clear NVMe leader depending on the version you choose.

There is another option that we must consider, but it's a long shot. Maybe Plextor expects TLC prices to continue to climb. That would make the M8Se competitive later in the year. I don't subscribe to that theory. Flash prices have leveled off over the last few months, and new 3D products are coming to market as I write this (both Toshiba and Intel arrived while typing this page). None of the analysts have mentioned a price increase projection for the next six months, but most analysts focus where the money is -- in the enterprise market.

The M8Se would be worthy of consideration if Plextor priced it as an entry-level product with the Intel 600p and MyDigitalSSD BPX. The three capacities we care about, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB, are all priced a bit high at launch. That removes the series from the running. If you find yourself attracted to this series for some other reason, we suggest saving a few dollars and getting the M8SeGN without a heat sink. The Toshiba 15nm TLC NAND doesn't generate enough heat to take advantage of the additional cooling. We can only hope that Plextor makes a quick pricing adjustment and then reels in the release schedule for the new M9Pe with Toshiba's BiCS NAND. Plextor will not be a serious contender for gaming machines during the back to school season if we have to wait until next June for the M9Se.

There is another aspect missing from the M8Se that we've become fond of. Plextor developed several exciting software packages for the SATA drives over the last two years. None of those add-on software features are available for the M8Pe or the M8Se. We don't know why Plextor abandoned the software for its flagship NVMe SSDs, but we would like to see it return.

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MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

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Plextor skipped the Computex show floor madness this year and instead put on a star-studded, single-afternoon kickoff party for the M8Se NVMe SSD series. "Stars" may be stretching it a bit, but it was all in good fun with everyone enjoying themselves. The real star of the show was the upcoming Plextor M8Se NVMe SSD that will hit store shelves in the coming weeks. Plextor also gave media a sneak peak at the M9Se that features (you guessed it) RGB LEDs and Toshiba 64-layer TLC NAND behind a Marvell Eldora NVMe controller.

We participated in the 5-v-5 Overwatch exhibition match that featured a journalist, pro gamer, and three Asian models/pro bloggers per team. It's safe to say this old man still has it. I scored 51% of the points while leading our team to victory in three out of three matches. I wouldn't mention this at all except for the fact that I haven't played a first person shooter in three years, and my kids will have to read about it somewhere. I was also the least photographed "celebrity" at the event.

At Computex 2016, Plextor displayed the M8Se series, the first NVMe TLC SSD from the company. The series shipped to media just prior to Computex 2017, and we expect retail availability soon. Early tests show strong performance from the Marvell Eldora 8-channel controller paired with Toshiba 15nm TLC planar NAND. The event was the official kick-off party, but the M8Se may have been overshadowed by the drive the company plans to release next year.

As in the previous two years, Plextor also displayed the product we will celebrate at the next Computex. We received our first glimpse of the M9Se NVMe SSD that's scheduled for review in mid-2018. The M9Pe is similar to the M8Se but will utilize Toshiba 64-Layer BiCS FLASH and a year's worth of firmware optimizations on the Marvell Eldora controller. The drive also sports the latest in RGB lighting for that custom blinky-blink, swirl, chroma effect that all of the kids dig these days. Plextor didn't give us too many details about the drive or the LED control software. We expect to hear more at Flash Memory Summit later this year.

Specifications & Features

UPDATE: This review was updated to include the 512GB capacity of this drive series.

Plextor went crazy with the new M8Pe NVMe series; it offers three different models of the same SSD to give you several form factor and cooling options. Each model ships in four different capacities. We just received the new M8Pe firmware for our three 1TB samples and will isolate each product with performance benchmarks to help you decide which is best in each class.

Plextor uses the same underlying technology for all three models. Plextor is the first enthusiast-focused company to use the Marvell Eldora controller in a consumer application. The controller has impressed us at trade shows, and we've seen it pushing as much as 3,500 MB/s in a well-cooled and overclocked configuration. Plextor offers up a heaping plate of performance, but it didn't push the performance envelope to the limit even though its add-in card form factor offers the best cooling solution for any factory M.2-based SSD we've ever tested.

Plextor also offers two M.2 2280 options. The first uses a sliver of a heatsink to reduce thermal throttling, but it may fit in some notebooks. The third and final option ships without a heatsink, which is guaranteed to work in your notebook--with one possible exception. One capacity, the double-sided 1TB drive, features components on both sides of the printed circuit board. Double-sided M.2 2280 SSDs fit in many notebooks, but there are rare exceptions. We can't speak about how the notebook market will tackle this issue in the future, but the height difference between single-sided and double-sided M.2 sockets is a little over 1 millimeter. It wouldn't make a lot of sense for notebook makers to disqualify a large number of exciting, high-capacity products just to shave a millimeter from the Z-height.  

In typical Plextor fashion, the M8Pe features some shenanigans. The company dedicated its resources to build its impressive Plextool software suite over the last several years, and you can’t find many of its features on Samsung's Magician, Intel's SSD Toolbox or OCZ's SSD Guru. Plextool and the accompanying software packages are truly unique. Users can hide active folders with hotkeys, use a complex but automatic compression algorithm and enable an SLC cache tier, among many other features. Sadly, none of that works with the M8Pe. If I ever wanted to use a frown face in a review, this would be the time.

Software aside, the Plextor M8Pe is a strong NVMe SSD contender for enthusiast users. The MLC flash ensures a long device lifespan and the SSD offers Plextor’s best performance yet.

Technical Specification

Plextor selected the Marvell 88SS1093 Eldora 8-channel NVMe controller with third-generation NANDEdge low-density parity check (LDPC) error correction and management technology. Marvell built the tri-core controller on a 28nm CMOS process to reduce heat generation and power consumption during heavy workloads.

There are three distinct models in the M8Pe series. The M8Pe(Y) uses an M.2 2280 SSD encased in an add-in card adapter with a hefty heatsink that keeps the controller and one side of the board cool. The M8Pe(G) is an M.2 2280 SSD with a thin aluminum heatsink coupled to one side of the printed circuit board with double-sided tape that acts as a thermal transfer material. Lastly, the M8PeGN is the bare M.2 2280 SSD without a heatsink.

We didn't have a problem running the M8Pe(G) in our Lenovo Y700-17 notebook with the heatsink installed. We caution that the drive may not fit in all notebooks. Also, if you do separate the SSD from the heatsink, it will not stick together again. We removed the heatsink after testing and destroyed the thermal transfer material. It is possible to find new thermal transfer material, but you will need to find a pad that has a strong double-sided adhesive to secure the heatsink.

There are four capacities in this series that range from 128GB to 1TB. All of the models use a single-sided design except for the large 1TB model.

The M8Pe is a high-performance product that delivers up to 2,500 MB/s sequential read and up to 1,400 MB/s sequential write. Plextor didn't rely on the “normal” NVMe tricks that some vendors use to achieve these numbers, such as using complex and unrealistic multi-threaded workloads. End users can reproduce the results with simple one-click test tools. This article focuses on the largest model. We are waiting for a firmware update to test the 512GB model.

Plextor doesn't hide thermal throttle conditions from users. The M8Pe is the company's first NVMe SSD, and it uses one of the first retail-destined Marvell NVMe controllers. Marvell’s previous NVMe controllers were all purpose-built system integrator models. Point being, retail NVMe is new territory for both companies. Plextor is forthcoming and shows both read and write thermal throttle conditions and performance on the product page, and includes metrics both with and without the M8Pe(Y) heatsink.

Users can read sequential data nonstop for 70 seconds at 2,400 MB/s before encountering a throttle condition. This equates to a 168GB data transfer. You can also write sequential data nonstop for 40 seconds at 1,300 MB/s, or 52 gigabytes. My theory is that the largest single file transfer most users will move at one time is a Blu-Ray ISO, which is 40 to 50 gigabytes of data. The M8Pe’s pre-throttle performance exceeds that threshold, but only by a small margin during sequential data writes. Plextor designed the M8Pe series for gamers, so over the life of the products, you may migrate your Steam folder, which is often much larger than a movie. You may experience thermal throttle conditions during that type of rare extended workload, but we don't worry about outliers that you may experience only once a year.

Pricing & Accessories

All three M8Pe models ship with a mounting screw. The add-in card ships with a standard computer case screw with coarse threads for the PCIe slot, and it also ships with a half-height bracket. The two M.2 models ship with a fine thread screw for M.2 standoff posts.

The company offers several very good software tools for SSDs, including a DRAM cache feature, isolated/hidden folder and even an automatic compression algorithm, but the M8Pe series does not support any of Plextor's software at this time--Plextool included. This may change over time, but Plextor didn't elaborate on its plans for the future. We hope these tools receive updates to work with the new flagship series.

We found every model and capacity at Newegg, other than the M8Pe(Y) 256GB. Amazon lists the 256GB drive with the add-in card heatsink as well as the other models. There wasn't a price difference between Amazon and Newegg at the time of writing.

Warranty & Endurance

The Plextor M8Pe series ships with a limited five-year warranty. The limited distinction stems from the drive's TBW endurance rating, which scales with capacity and represents a rough guideline of how much data you can write to the SSD while remaining within the warranty. The 128GB model supports up to 192TB of data writes, which increases to 384TB for the 256GB and 768TB for the 512GB and 1TB models.

Product Packaging

The P8Me(Y) add-in card ships in a bigger package to accommodate the large heatsink. Plextor used a foam liner to secure the SSD. The half-height bracket and computer case PCIe screw are in a separate chamber. There is an additional foam piece (not pictured) that fills in the gap on top. 

The two true M.2 2280 form factor parts ship in a simple, and much smaller, box. You will notice on the bottom left side corner that Plextor chose to be conservative and list the M8Pe(G) with the heatsink as not notebook compatible. Unofficially, I would say this is open to interpretation. The drive will fit in some, but not all, notebooks. Later in the review, we will explore the difference in performance difference between a bare M8Pe and one with an M.2 heatsink. 

A Closer Look

Plextor went overboard with the M8Pe(Y) heatsink, but we love total overkill. The block is a solid piece of machined sand cast aluminum with some form of paint or powder coating. This is the same process used to manufacture Ferrari and Ducati R series engine blocks. There is more than meets the “Y” with this add-in card adapter. Plextor filled the card with surface mount LEDs, and the triangle LEDs stay lit when your computer powers on. The outside edge LEDs pulse with disk activity. It is fascinating to see in a desktop system with a clear panel. Plextor also added a secondary power source via a SATA power connector. We ran a few tests with and without the supplemental power and didn't find a performance benefit. The cable running to the card did take away from the clean case look, but it isn't a requirement.

The Plextor M8Pe(G) ships with the thin aluminum heatsink installed from the factory. The M8PeGN ships without a heatsink. It surprised me how well the small cooler performed in our testing. I think you will also be surprised. The dense thermal transfer material may account for the majority of the cooling advantages. Either way, it is always beneficial to ensure proper airflow in your computer case. Many of the modern components are very small, can generate a lot of heat, and run better with active cooling.

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1TB Benchmark Results

Comparison Products

We have all three Plextor M8Pe 1TB SSDs in this review. A stellar class of high-performance NVMe SSDs accompanies them in our test pool.

At this time, the Samsung 960 Pro is the king of the hill. We only have this drive in the 2TB capacity, but hope to test the 1TB and 512GB as Samsung brings them to market. The OEM SM961 and the 960 EVO are also from the South Korean camp. We will pay particular attention to how well the M8Pe 1TB compares to the 960 EVO 1TB because both share similar pricing. The Intel SSD 750 1.2TB and OCZ RD400 1TB premium SSDs are also in the charts.

The current NAND shortage has made it difficult to secure high die count NAND packages, so there is a shortage of high-capacity NVMe SSDs. The Intel 600p, which just started shipping, is the only entry-level 1TB NVMe SSD in our test pool.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

In our first test, we observe the effects of thermal throttling on the Plextor M8PeGN (no heatsink). The two M8Pe models with heatsinks don't throttle during the long test. The Plextor SSDs’ sequential write performance at queue depth 1 starts in the lower performance tier, which essentially consists of everything not made by Samsung.

The Plextor M8Pe SSDs scale well as additional workload intensity comes in via increased queue depth. By QD4, the M8Pe SSDs have reached their peak performance around 2,300 MB/s.

Sequential Write Performance

The M8PeGN without a heatsink exhibits some signs of thermal throttling again due to the extended test cycle. All of the synthetic tests execute from a scripted batch file. There are very few pause commands during the suite, and we press the drives for over an hour. The test idles the device under test (DUT) at various stages to limit steady-state conditions and throttling.

The OCZ RD400 also shows signs of thermal throttling during extended sequential write workloads. The two Plextor M8Pe products with a heatsink fare much better. I didn't expect the M.2 heatsink to work as well as it does. The combination of the dense thermal pad and the sliver of anodized aluminum work in conjunction to absorb the heat from the controller. We are not surprised to see the add-in card performing so well in its fight against throttling. It uses one of the largest heat sinks of any SSD to ship in the retail space; it’s even larger than the aftermarket add-in cards.

Performance wise, the M8Pe SSDs trail most of the other 1TB NVMe SSDs on the market during the sequential write workload with 128KB blocks.

Random Read Performance

The Plextor M8Pe SSDs fall right into the middle of the pack during the random 4KB read test at QD1. The 960 EVO is the M8Pe's biggest competitor based on price, and it sits at the top of this chart due to Samsung's Intelligent TurboWrite feature. The 960 EVO's SLC buffer only serves as a solution for burst data, but most consumer workloads are bursty in nature.

Random Write Performance

The random write test proved to be especially difficult for the M8Pe. All three drives trailed the rest of the NVMe pack in this test from low to high queue depths.

80% Mixed Sequential Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

Mixing sequential data reads and writes doesn't faze the Plextor M8Pe NVMe SSDs. The performance beyond QD4 is fairly consistent. Plextor's drives deliver nearly identical performance to Samsung's SM961, which comes packing the Polaris controller and 48-layer MLC V-NAND.

80% Mixed Random Workload

Only two 1TB NVMe SSDs stand out in the random mixed data test under light load; the OCZ RD400 and the Samsung 960 Pro. The other drives all cluster together at low queue depths.

Sequential Steady-State

Many of Plextor’s SSDs use TrueSpeed technology, which is the company's branded name for a suite of garbage collection, disk cleanup, and other background activities. Every company has many options on how to tackle these tasks. Some strategies work better than others, and one way may work really well in one scenario, but not so well in another.

Plextor's TrueSpeed algorithm doesn't work well in steady-state conditions. During the 100% write phase, the M8Pe SSDs perform like TLC-based products, like the Samsung 960 EVO. Under heavy read workloads, such as 70- and 80-percent mixtures, the large heatsink on the add-in card really helps to boost performance. In both workloads, we see the add-in card at the upper end of the chart, but without heavy cooling, the M8Pe falls to the bottom of the chart. Sequential workloads tend to tease out high power consumption values, which increases heat output, so the depressed values for the Plextor SSDs with a less robust cooling solution aren't entirely unexpected.

Random Steady-State

The two M8Pe 1TB models with a heatsink run the length of the random 4KB steady-state chart in lockstep. We were surprised to see the 960 EVO with TLC flash delivering slightly higher average performance, though. Most of the drives on the chart deliver consistent performance. The M8Pe models sporadically leap up the IOPS band as the controller reclaims some space and then cleans the cells for a quick burst of increased performance.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

We used to say that programming (the firmware) was the key to excellent performance. That advantage began to wane when Samsung developed superior NAND technology and then kept the flash for its own branded products. For several generations, Plextor developed strong firmware and had many products that fought for the top performance crown. During the same time, Marvell also shipped controllers that were more competitive. Both companies went through a string of under-performing products, but now they are both on the rise again.

Application Storage Bandwidth

We can't decouple Plextor's firmware from Marvell's new Eldora controller. Plextor is the first SSD manufacturer to bring this controller to market in a retail product. The chart makes it clear that Plextor is back on track. We can also say that the Marvell Eldora controller doesn't stand out as anything special, and neither is the off-the-shelf Toshiba 15nm Toggle MLC NAND. With the puzzle pieces assembled, I'm leaning toward the M8Pe performance coming from the Plextor-optimized firmware.

There are some downsides to over-optimizing for consumer desktop use, though.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

Plextor designed the M8Pe series for gamers, which is a very specialized market. Until recently, consumer NVMe SSDs were workstation-focused and trickled down quickly into enthusiast and power user categories. Gamers are generally considered the next step down the user hierarchy. The M8Pe series is really the first consumer NVMe SSD that targets and optimizes for people that spend too much time playing video games.

We see the downside of that tuning in this series of charts. The background activity delays flash cleanup operations until the SSD needs additional free blocks. Samsung products usually have the most aggressive flash cleanup algorithms. Plextor is at the other end of the scale, and every other company falls in the middle. The M8Pe will take longer to recover after heavy workstation-like workloads.

Under lighter workload conditions, like gaming, you don't want the background activity kicking in unnecessarily. When the drive performs those operations, it adds latency if a data request comes in.

Total Service Time

The delayed cleanup operations make the M8Pe appear to have poor performance during this test. The test uses a heavy workload and then allows a set amount of time for recovery. Since the M8Pe pushes the TRIM command back until a longer idle, or discards it altogether, the Plextor drives appear in these charts with dirty flash.

Disk Busy Time

When most of the flash is dirty, the write operations take longer. The drive must perform a read, modify, and write operation to manipulate the existing data and add new data to the flash media.

Notebook Battery Life

The Plextor M8Pe(Y) add-in card will not run in a notebook. If you remove the SSD from the adapter, you have an M8PeGN. Because of that, only two Plextor M8Pe drives appear in the notebook performance charts. The M.2 2280 drive with a heatsink fit perfectly in our Lenovo Y700-17; they almost look like they were made for each other. Seriously, if either company patented or trademarked the red Y design, then the other company would need to defend an infringement lawsuit.

The Plextor model with the heatsink delivers slightly longer notebook battery life and enjoys a slight bump in performance. Both Plextor M8Pe SSDs reach the top of our performance chart. This round of test occurs with the system using reduced PCIe, CPU, and system memory bus speeds, so the Plextor results are impressive. The amount of time you can run the Lenovo Y700-17 on battery with the M8Pe is average for NVMe products.

NEW: 512GB Benchmark Results

Comparison Products

Our Plextor M8Pe 512GB arrived at the same time as the 1TB model, but we didn't have updated firmware for this model. Since its arrival, Plextor updated the M8Pe series firmware twice. We used the 1.03 update with the 1TB model but tested the 512GB with 1.04 (the latest version at the time of writing).

The 512GB-class has more products available than the 1TB and larger market. We blame the current NAND flash shortage for the lack of comparable models in higher capacities. The NAND shortage hit M.2 products the hardest. These products have limited space for NAND packages, so they require higher die stacks. The packages with more NAND die are in short supply. That is why we've seen limited availability of high capacity M.2 SSDs and wild price swings over the last several months.

The 512GB M.2 products are only slightly more stable than other capacities. We don't see the same wild price changes, but many users have turned to smaller capacities because the larger products are sold out, which in turn places more pressure on the supply side.

In the 512GB-class, Plextor contends with a few standout products. The entry-level Intel 600p 512GB is cheap. The price is so good that it is less than many premium SATA SSDs in the same capacity. The MyDigitalSSD BPX 480GB retails for slightly more, but it delivers an excellent price-to-performance ratio. The Samsung 960 EVO 500GB is a fan favorite and is finally available, but the TLC-based NVMe drive loses its performance advantage over previous EVO series products.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

In this series of tests, we only tested the M8Pe(G) model in the M.2 form factor with the thin aluminum heatsink. The Plextor NVMe SSD delivers 1,500 MB/s sequential read performance at QD1 and increases to just over 1,700 at QD2. The drive reaches its maximum read performance of roughly 2,300 MB/s at QD4. Only two other products on the chart deliver higher sequential read bandwidth at low queue depths.

Sequential Write Performance

The M8Pe 512GB delivers just over 1,000 MB/s sequential read across the queue depth range with a single worker. If your data is coming from a high-speed source, like another NVMe SSD, you can expect nearly 1,100 MB/s of performance. Most data will come from a SATA SSD or other comparably slow device, like an external drive or the network. The M8Pe gives you enough write throughput to receive the file without being the bottleneck as long as the data originates from a common storage device. Several of the other 512GB-capacity NVMe M.2 SSDs are slightly faster, though.

Random Read Performance

Random read performance at low queue depths is one of our most important four-corner tests because it relates directly to the user experience. Operating systems read more data than they write, and most of the files are small random bits. The best SATA SSDs can achieve 10,000 random read IOPS before the latency of the AHCI protocol limits performance. NVMe opens a wider throughput door for the flash by removing the communication latency between the host and the drive.

The Plextor M8Pe 512GB delivers just over 12,000 4KB random read IOPS at QD1. The drive scales well to QD32, but it hits a wall at 186,000 IOPS. The Samsung 960 EVO and 950 Pro both deliver more performance at QD1, but all three of the products are very close at low queue depths.

Random Write Performance

Random write performance is also important because your computer constantly monitors and logs activity. If your system hangs at random times for a brief moment, the cause it almost certainly a delayed data write. At one time, SSD manufacturers placed heavy emphasis on random write performance, but over time SSDs became fast enough to move the importance of this metric behind random read performance in the 4-corner tests.

The Plextor M8Pe 512GB falls right in the middle of the drives on the chart with nearly 50,000 random write IOPS at QD1. It is fast enough to keep your system running at high speed without any noticeable pauses or delays during stringent daily use. 

80% Sequential Mixed Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

At first glance, the M8Pe 512GB provides average sequential mixed performance--a true middle of the road line. At QD2, the performance is much better at over 800 MB/s. That is enough to make it one of the fastest three SSDs in our test.

80% Random Mixed Workload

Mixing random data reads and writes is a stressful task for SSDs, but the Plextor M8Pe performs very well in this workload. Later in the review, we'll see how this carries over to real-world application performance.

Sequential Steady-State

Plextor's wear-leveling and garbage collection algorithms hurt sequential steady state performance during 100% write workloads. The 1TB model had a slight elevation on the write heavy side of the test, but the 512GB suffers a steady decline. Plextor has always used an odd algorithm for background tasks that is unique compared to other manufacturers. Plextor designed its proprietary True Speed algorithms for consumer-level workloads rather than the steady-state workloads we use in this test to measure worst-case performance.

Random Steady-State

The random steady-state test reveals the M8Pe 512GB's consistent performance profile. There is a high spike during our measurements, but we didn't record a drastic performance loss. The M8Pe places second in the test with 23,000 IOPS, so we could recommend this SSD for use in a consumer RAID 0 array. The M8Pe may be the best M.2 drive on the market for a consumer array.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

The Plextor M8Pe(G) 512GB performs well in all of the tests, but it never outperforms Samsung's 950 Pro 512GB. It delivers consistent performance that ranks among the top drives in each test, and it never falters in any single application.

Application Storage Bandwidth

The M8Pe's consistency stands out when we average the results and present them as an easily digestible throughput value. The test shines a much better light on the M8Pe 512GB--it is like a workhorse that just pulls the plow at a steady pace. At the end of the day, the work is complete without any fuss or memorable moments.

That's not to say you will find unimpressive performance with the M8Pe right out of the box. Most of us just get accustomed to the high performance and don't notice it until we are working on a different computer (like someone else's computer). You realize just how good these high-performance drives really are when you move away from an SSD.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

Plextor designed the M8Pe series for gamers, and it should stay in that role. If you push the drive too hard with workstation-level workloads, it takes quite a bit of time to recover. We can trace the delayed recovery time back to Plextor's background activity algorithms. Every company handles background tasks differently, and there really isn't a wrong way as long as the drive can live a long life.

Latency will always increase while an SSD shuffles data around the cells. The trick is to strike a balance between how much latency the background process introduces and how long it takes to execute. Some companies, like Samsung, will perform the background tasks as fast and as soon as possible. Others will wait for a long idle period to perform the tasks quickly, while some limit the processing cycle overhead and extend the background activity over a longer period of time.

Plextor seems to limit the activity to ensure uninterrupted responsiveness, but as a result, the SSD takes more time to complete the task. The extended operation bleeds over from one test to another in our recovery test, so we don't see really good performance after a heavy workload. The M8Pe requires more time to recover.

Total Service Time

The service time test reveals how Plextor tries to normalize performance during and after a heavy workload. The M8Pe would perform much better if the recovery tests had ten minutes of idle time between each run.

Disk Busy Time

The disk busy time test reveals the normalized performance. We can tell the drive extends the background activity because of the high performance in the degrade 1 test. The drive doesn't kick on background activity until after the first test is complete. From that point on, the M8Pe doesn't get enough time in this test to finish the background shuffling and rise back up into a high-performance state.

Notebook Battery Life

The M8Pe uses Microsoft's NVMe driver and it does a good-enough job of limiting performance in low power states. We would like to see Plextor release an aftermarket driver to take full advantage of the Marvell controller and custom NVMe commands that can increase performance under battery power.

Custom NVMe drivers don't deliver the best performance for everyone. Samsung's new NVMe 2.0 driver reduced notebook battery life and increased performance. Over time, we may see companies release a high-performance driver for desktops and a separate driver for notebooks. Ideally, a notebook driver will drop the drive into a low power state faster and also limit power consumption during light workloads.

Final Analysis & Verdict

Plextor brought the MX8Pe series to market during an interesting time. Samsung dominated the NVMe segment with the 950 series and just released its second-generation 960 series products. Intel had a performance-competitive product with the enterprise-derived SSD 750, but its price was too high for most users. It retailed for nearly $1 per gigabyte for most of 2016. Smaller companies like Zotac and MyDigitalSSD jumped in the ring, and we expect more to come. Increased competition is good for us end users because it will lead to lower prices. 

Plextor targets the gaming market with the M8Pe series, but most users shop based on price rather than some type of misaligned category designed to classify and group users together. There are several premium priced products in the 1TB capacity, but only a few break the existing pricing structure to deliver a product with more value. At this time, there are two products that meet these parameters, but only one is actually shipping. The Samsung 960 EVO 1TB will retail for $470.99, but it doesn’t have a firm release date. The Plextor M8Pe sells for $414.99 to $429.99, and it is available now.

Plextor managed to undercut Samsung's pricing this round with MLC flash. The 960 EVO uses TLC flash, but Samsung’s 3D V-NAND delivers MLC-like performance during many consumer workloads. The application tests show the M8Pe outperforming the 960 EVO under light use conditions. That accounts for a majority of typical user workloads. In the end, the Plextor M8Pe is a better product for many users, it’s already shipping, and it costs less.

The real question is which Plextor M8Pe model is right for you. If you have a spare PCIe slot then the M8Pe(Y) add-in card is an exceptional value. You can take the M.2 drive out if you need the drive for a notebook, either now or later on. The value aspect is that you get one of the best M.2 heatsink coolers we've seen so far and the price is only $15 more. The Angelbird Wings PX1 cooler we've used for a year now in some specialized test retails for nearly $75. NVMe and M.2 are not the future; they are the present, and they aren’t a flash in the pan. You will be able to use the cooler for many years to come.

You may already be PCIe-limited if you use more than one video card. That puts the NVMe SSD in an M.2 slot under the video card in most motherboards. We would recommend the M8Pe(G) M.2 model with a heatsink in this situation. If you plan to take the M8Pe straight to a notebook, then we would also recommend the heatsink model, but it may not fit. The benefit of having the heatsink far outweighs the three-minute hassle of removing the heatsink if you need to take it off. I'm sure there is at least one notebook that would force you to take the heatsink off, but I can't name one at this time. The product is too new, and I don't own every NVMe-capable notebook on the market.

I don't know who should buy the M8PeGN without a heatsink. If you already have an Angelbird Wings PX1 or another M.2 to PCIe adapter with a heatsink, then you could save $15 on the 1TB purchase. Other than that specific situation, the bare drive doesn't make a lot of sense for most users. Even though the M8Pe(G)'s heatsink is barely a sliver of anodized aluminum, it works surprisingly well. When we saw the drive for the first time at CES 2016, we thought it was a gimmick. Now that we've tested it, I have to take the gimmick sentiment back and admit that Plextor worked some voodoo magic with a cooler that is as thick as a few pieces of sandwiched tin foil. The thermal transfer material is thicker than the cooler, but it does an excellent job of wicking heat away from the controller.

We would like to see Plextor add to this series. The company spent two years developing several software tools, but none of them currently works with the M8Pe series. We've tested the software before, and we like it a lot! The software is even better than Samsung's Magician is. Actually, Samsung has even incorporated at least one of the advanced features (hidden folders) into the upcoming version of Magician (which is still vaporware).

The M8Pe’s file transfer performance is slower than some of the other NVMe products available. We would like to see the performance increase. The M8Pe(Y) add-in card with the large heatsink could run a more aggressive firmware. Intel's enterprise SSDs feature user-configurable power limits via a command line interface. Plextor could, and should, give users the option of limiting the maximum power draw. The standards committee designed the M.2 slot for roughly 7 watts. Some purists (and motherboards) may not like a 10-watt switch, but it's not as if overclocking components is a new feature. A 10-watt, 7-watt and 5-watt software switch would be great. At the same time, users with dedicated cooling could increase 100% transfer performance, which is the one area where the M8Pe trails the 960 EVO in some four-corner tests.

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Specifications And Features

Once reserved for enthusiasts and power users, NVMe SSDs have trickled down-market. We haven't seen a flood of low-cost products to take us beyond the limits of SATA, but there are enough available to give us a few choices. The latest low-cost NVMe model comes from Western Digital. The new Black PCIe SSD represents the fastest consumer product from the company, but this isn't the same Black series we've come to love in hard disk drive flavor.

When Western Digital announced the new Black PCIe at CES, the specification sheet spoke volumes about its market placement. The Black is another low-cost NVMe entry designed to motivate mainstream users to upgrade to PCI Express-based storage. Historically, the Black series has been WD's high-performance product dating back to the Raptor, while Blue and Green represent mid- and low-range products. In WD's color-code naming scheme, we would say this is a Blue or even a Green series product. We asked WD about the color scheme for the Green, Blue, and Black models. We're told the Black PCIe will be the high-performance product in the WD lineup, and thus it gets the "Black" designation.

We sat down with SanDisk in its California office just months after Western Digital acquired the company. In our meeting, we learned SanDisk didn't plan on releasing any more consumer SSDs armed with 2-bit per cell (MLC) flash. SanDisk made it clear that 3-bit per cell (TLC) is the future for consumers, even if its competitors don't adopt this progressive approach. If you, like me, expected the Black PCIe to be a fire breathing, Samsung-eating, smoking fast SSD, you will be disappointed.

Technical Specifications

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Now that we know what the WD Black PCIe SSD isn't, let's look at what it actually is. The drive comes to market in two underwhelming capacities of 256GB and 512GB. The drive uses the Marvell 88SS1093 "Eldora" controller, which is the same controller featured on the Plextor M8Pe series. However, the Plextor drive uses 15nm planar MLC, whereas WD chose 15nm TLC NAND.

The TLC NAND leaves the 28nm Marvell controller moving data at 2,050 MB/s sequential read and "up to" 800 MB/s sequential write. By now, most of you know that 15nm planar TLC flash can't sustain 800 MB/s write speeds for more than a few seconds because the SLC buffer, which allows the SSD to boost beyond the TLC constraints, fills up and then transfers data at native TLC speeds. With the 512GB Black PCIe, that means roughly 380 MB/s of sequential write performance.

The Black's random performance isn't much better. WD spec’s the two Black PCIe SSDs at 170,000 random read IOPS and "up to" 134,000 random write IOPS. Western Digital used multi-threaded tests with several workers to measure performance specifications, so our real-world results are much lower. We did break 10,000 random read IOPS at QD1, and the Black marks the first SanDisk consumer drive to reach this milestone. The Extreme Pro came very close, but it couldn't cross the threshold even after a few firmware updates.

Pricing And Accessories

Western Digital priced the new Black PCIe SSD appropriately for its performance. The 256GB drive sells for just $109.99, and that climbs to just $199.99 for the 512GB. You will not receive any accessories in the retail package, but a modified version of SanDisk's Dashboard called WD Dashboard works with the Black PCIe. Sadly, you can't use the same software for both Western Digital and SanDisk products. You have to use the company-specific version that matches your drive.

Warranty And Endurance

The Black PCIe series ships with a 5-year warranty that is limited by write endurance. You lose warranty coverage after you write just 80TB to the 256GB drive, and 160TB to the 512GB model. If the endurance specifications seem low, that's because they are. The Western Digital Green SSD series tops out at 240GB (256GB NAND provisioned down to 240GB usable space) and delivers 80TBW. That's the same as the Black PCIe 256GB. The WD Blue SSD series tops out at 1TB and up to 400TBW. The smaller 500GB Blue SSD cuts endurance in half to 200TBW, but that is still 40 more terabytes of endurance than the new Black PCIe 512GB.

Packaging

Western Digital went with a simplistic retail package. The buzz words are there, starting with Black series, and that leads many users to assume right away that it is a high-performance model. Unfortunately, the package lacks any performance specifications. For many, that is an instant red flag, but WD printed "High-performance" right on the front of the package above the NVMe and PCI Express logos.

Any sense of a premium product purchase dissolves when you take the drive out of the box. A cardboard filler holds a plastic clam shell with the drive inside, but that's the full extent of the package contents. The package lacks any paper documentation and doesn't mention the software downloads. We don't know if Western Digital plans to release a custom NVMe driver, or if you gain access to Acronis or other software. We're very critical of this approach because these SSDs will end up on retail shelves. Many retail buyers are casual users who might not be aware of any value-added software.

A Closer Look

The Black PCIe uses a single-sided M.2 2280 board. A Marvell 88SS1093 Eldora controller sits in the middle with a DRAM emplacement, and two NAND packages flank it on either side. WD nestled all the secondary components used to supply and stabilize power between the primary parts. This leaves the other side devoid of components, so if you have one of the rare notebooks that will not accept double-sided NVMe SSDs, this will fit just fine.

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512GB Performance Testing

Comparison Products

Our usual list of NVMe products makes up the comparison test group. There are so many 512GB-class NVMe products that we can no longer fit all of them in the charts. That's good for consumers as it increases the supply, but at the same time, there is a big demand for low-cost models like the Western Digital Black PCIe.

The Intel 600p resides at the lower end of the price spectrum, and it may be the most popular retail NVMe SSD due to its low price. The MyDigitalSSD BPX costs a little more, but for the extra up-charge, you get SanDisk 15nm MLC NAND and a substantial performance increase. These two products compete directly with the Black PCIe.

The flash shortage has prices rapidly fluctuating as warehouses struggle to balance supply and demand. Most of the newer products have seen price increases since launch, so many retail for more than the original MSRP. Older products like the Intel SSD 750 have seen price cuts in an effort to retain relevance. This is just part of the natural ebb and flow of selling products in a flash market turned upside down.

For the most part, there are two price categories for the products in our tests. The low-cost group starts at just $165.99 (Intel 600p) and grows to $250 (Samsung 960 EVO 500GB). All of the products in this price range, including the Western Digital Black PCIe, utilize 3-bit per cell (TLC) NAND. The MyDigitalSSD BPX 480GB ($179.99) is the only exception, and it's also the overall value leader in the low-cost NVMe space.

The other MLC NAND products make up the upper tier with prices starting in the low $300 range and peaking in the low $400s. When we combine the two categories, we see a very wide price range that starts at $165 and ends in the low $400s. 

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

The NVMe protocol over PCI Express opened the flash performance floodgates. The SATA interface, which the industry designed for spinning disks, no longer limits the storage media. Some of the products provide nearly a 5x increase in sequential read performance compared to SATA. The new WD Black PCIe SSD manages 930 MB/s at QD2 on its way to a reaching peak speed of 1,500 MB/s with a single worker. The Black's sequential read performance is slightly higher than the Intel 600p but less than the MyDigitalSSD BPX.

Sequential Write Performance

The sequential write test reveals the distinct performance bands for the different products. These tiers make it easy to spot the TLC-based products, and the 960 EVO suffers degraded performance at higher queue depths. The Black PCIe offers the lowest sequential write performance, but what we see here isn't what you may see at home.

Sustained Write Performance

We see the same 400 MB/s write speed in this test, but the small SLC cache gives you 800 MB/s. At that speed, the cache is only effective for a moment before the SSD downshifts to native TLC performance. The native TLC write performance with only two packages (with sixteen NAND die each) is better than we expected, but it isn't in the same range as the other NVMe products on the market.

Random Read Performance

The Western Digital Black PCIe broke 10,000 random read IOPS, which is an important milestone for SanDisk -- it's the company's first consumer SSD to accomplish the feat. The drive scales well as the queue depth increases, too. 

Random Write Performance

The Black's low-QD random write performance is also good for a low-cost SSD. If you managed to push the Black PCIe to QD4, the drive would really pick up the pace. Even with heavy multitasking, I don't see many users breaking 100,000 IOPS, but this drive has the capability to chew through that workload with ease thanks to the SLC buffer.

80 Percent Sequential Mixed Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

This test was very interesting. The Plextor M8Pe uses the same Marvell "Eldora" controller as the Black PCIe, with the only difference being MLC vs. TLC NAND. The Plextor drive performs really well in the sequential mixed workload test, but the Black PCIe rides the slow rail and provides the lowest performance. The Intel 600p outshines the Black PCIe, too.

80 Percent Random Mixed Workload

The Black PCIe also encounters difficulty during the mixed random workload. This tendency becomes evident later in the review when we test actual software running on the drive.

Sequential Steady-State

Just because an SSD is NVMe doesn't mean it’s capable of tackling workstation-level tasks at high speeds. The Black PCIe is faster than low-cost TLC SATA SSDs during heavy sequential workloads, but it trails all of the other aftermarket NVMe SSDs.

Random Steady-State

The Black PCIe doesn't look like a viable product for consumer RAID arrays. The 4KB write performance in steady-state is more consistent than some of the other products, but the write speed is lower and less consistent than we like to see.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

The mixed random workload test suggested we would see low performance in real-world applications. Here we see those results inserting themselves into the mix. The Black PCIe performed well in the lightest workloads, but many of the more complicated tasks show the drive at the tail end of the charts.

Application Storage Bandwidth

The Black PCIe is faster than the Intel 600p, and we consider its performance to be superior to Intel's entry-level NVMe product. You should also consider the Black's endurance and other aspects, like the use of planar NAND.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

The WD Black PCIe really only competes with the two other low-cost NVMe solutions. The WD Black PCIe is faster than the low-cost 600p, and that shows in the PCMark 8 Extended Test. The MyDigitalSSD BPX 480GB with MLC NAND is the other contender, and this chart series shows exactly where the Black PCIe stands against that drive.

The BPX isn't available in all markets, and WD's global presence will push the Black PCIe to the forefront of low-cost NVMe products in several regions.

Total Service Time

The service time test reveals how much better the Black PCIe is compared to the Intel 600p. IMFT's flash has some issues that we've seen on both the Intel and Micron side. The 384Gbit die has a density advantage, but it also has latency issues that we've yet to see tamed except in Intel's 18-channel enterprise model and Micron's enterprise drive, which comes with a massive 70% overprovisioning.

Western Digital and partner Toshiba have yet to release a consumer SSD with 3D NAND, but it's shipping in the latest iPhone (and possibly other products). We have to wonder if the Flash Forward 3D NAND has latency issues, or if Apple is just taking everything the factory can produce. Either way, Toshiba's 15nm planar TLC has some advantages over IMFT's 3D TLC.

Disk Busy Time

The disk busy time test also shows a clear distinction between the Intel and WD NVMe SSDs.

SYSmark 2014 SE Responsiveness Test

We still need to write our detailed look at the BAPCo SYSmark 2014 SE test, but this can serve as a quick introduction. The Responsiveness Test uses a weighted score with a Samsung TLC SSD as the reference. The Samsung drive's reference responsiveness score is 1000, and the other products show either better or worse performance. We would have rather had the performance score based on a consumer SATA HDD rather than a SATA SSD, but Lenovo shipped the reference system to BAPCo with the OEM Samsung drive installed.

With a score of just 1002, or only slightly more responsive than the Samsung OEM SATA SSD, the WD Black PCIe is only a slight upgrade over the OEM drive and surprisingly scores lower than some high-performance SATA drives.

MobileMark 2014 v. 1.5 Notebook Battery Life

The Black PCIe uses the Microsoft NVMe driver, so we didn't run into any premature battery draining issues like the Samsung NVMe SSDs. The Black PCIe scored 352 minutes with MobileMark 2014 v. 1.5 in our Lenovo Y700-17. This drive is the best low-cost NVMe solution available for notebook users seeking long notebook battery life.

Conclusion

Western Digital has only released a handful of consumer SSDs, so we have limited historical data. All of WD's SSDs came from its acquisitions of other companies. The Green, Blue, and Black SSDs come from the SanDisk team. None of the three previously released models have been a success story with our readers, but the Black PCIe is the first to break NVMe ground, so WD branded it as a high-performance product.

The Black PCIe is not the high-performance product we expected. Instead of diving in with a drive designed to compete with the Samsung 960 Series, WD went for the low hanging fruit and targeted the Intel 600p and other entry-level NVMe SSDs. The Black PCIe is only a "high-performance" SSD compared to other WD products. WD apparently didn't take the rest of the industry into account during the branding process.

SanDisk and WD are convinced that TLC flash is the future of consumer SSDs. Maybe it's because the analysts keep telling us that, or maybe it's simply wishful thinking. There is certainly a tide pushing the market to TLC, but users have never asked for neutered high-performance products with an extra bit that disables the high-performance gene in the SSD DNA. The TLC mutation, at least without 3D NAND technology to improve performance and endurance, is more of a cancer than a cure. To think otherwise is shortsighted.

With a stubborn unwillingness to utilize MLC flash in consumer products, and an inability to deliver 3D in a cost-effective manner, Western Digital only has marketing spin and pricing to fall back on. In time, the company will deliver BiCS 3D at a competitive price point, but it will be the last of the NAND flash fabs to do it in meaningful quantities. 

Planar TLC NVMe SSDs may have made sense when SanDisk designed and set the Black in motion, but times change quickly. At this stage, without 3D NAND, TLC NVMe SSDs are like flea market knockoffs. They have the right labels (NVMe and PCI Express logo), but just because the arm has an "O," it doesn't mean they are real Oakley’s.

The MyDigitalSSD BPX is the wrench in the gears because it uses MLC flash and actually retails for less than the Black PCIe. In a 600p/Black-only world, the Black looks good, but it still has lower endurance and a higher price than the 600p 3D TLC SSD. It may simply be too soon for products like these--MLC isn't dead just yet.

Notebooks are the one area where the WD Black PCIe outshines all other low-cost NVMe products. The drive delivers superior battery life compared to the low-cost NVMe TLC competition. Business users that require eDrive or TGC encryption are still left in the cold with older SSDs like the Samsung 950 Pro or M.2 SATA products.

There were a number of paths available for Western Digital to make the Black PCIe a much better product, but the path it chose was like a slot car track--follow the leader and don't deviate. WD's Black will sell based on brand and name recognition, but there are other options available.

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Specifications And Features

Plextor introduced a new series of SSDs just in time to start the new year. The S2 series replaced the M7V as the entry-level option and dawns a new era for the company. Plextor normally pairs Marvell controllers with Toshiba NAND, but the company tried a different approach this round. This is the kind of product we normally don't like, but the S2C delivers with an entry-level price and mainstream performance.

2016 will go down in history as the breakout year for TLC NAND. Three bit-per-cell TLC flash is nothing new, but this is the first year the technology dominated our sample pool. We don't expect to see MLC in consumer products anymore except for a few high-performance NVMe products. That leaves TLC to service most of the SATA market for the next few years as NAND manufacturers work on developing 4-bit per cell (QLC) technology.

The shift from 8-channel controllers to low-cost 4-channel controllers emerged as another new SATA trend. The Phison S10 was the last 8-channel SATA controller to come to market, and it has been around for nearly two years. The lower channel count constricts parallelism and performance, but it also reduces design and manufacturing costs.

We can write SATA SSDs off as a commodity market. All high-performance products will come with the NVMe protocol while SATA chugs along on at a steamboat pace with little to no real innovation. Pricing is the other part of the story. We only expect a few more SATA price drops over the next few years. The first will come from IMFT's second generation 3D TLC with 768Gbit die, and then a year or two later when the market nearly abandons SATA in favor of NVMe.

Until then, most SATA-based SSDs will be like the Plextor S2 series we are testing today.

Specifications

The Plextor S2C comes to market in three capacities that range from 128GB to 512GB. The company doesn't plan on a 1TB option at this time, which is a common strategy we've seen develop with several entry-level SSDs in 2016. Plextor, like its parent company LiteOn, ships most of its products with Toshiba flash, but this model uses SK Hynix 16nm planar TLC. Plextor's initial product in this series uses a Silicon Motion, Inc. (SMI) SM2258 4-channel controller with low-density parity check (LDPC) support. LDPC error correction is a key technology because it increases endurance, which is critical for TLC NAND.

We've discussed Sk Hynix's plans to increase bit output and sell more flash to third-party SSD manufacturers. Intel and Adata, to name a few, ship several products with Sk Hynix flash, and now Plextor joins the ranks. We don't see SK Hynix 3D flash very often, but the frequency has increased in 2016, and we expect to see it in more consumer products in 2017.

Plextor claims performance reaches up to 520 MB/s sequential read and 480 MB/s sequential write in the largest capacities. Random performance peaks at 98,000/78,000 read/write IOPS. On paper, the 128GB specifications show slightly less performance in three of the four corner workloads. All of the specifications come with the dreaded "up to" designation, so real world performance should be much less than advertised. Still, the numbers are high enough to land in the mainstream category if our performance measurements match the specifications. 

Pricing And Warranty

We focus on the Plextor S2C 512GB, which is the largest model in the family. We found the drive online for as low as $139.99. The 256GB model sells for just $67.99, and the 128GB variant retails for $44.99. All three capacities ship with a 3-year limited warranty. The S2C 512GB carries a 150TBW endurance rating, which is a general indication of how much data you can write to the SSD and remain within the warranty terms.

Accessories And Software Features

Aside from the SSD and a paper manual that doubles as a warranty statement we didn't find much in the retail package. Most of the Plextor add-on accessories come in the form of software. We really like the Plextor software tools, but some Plextor SSDs aren't compatible with the full suite. The S2C works with the entire software package, unlike the Plextor M8Pe we reviewed recently.

PlexNitro

Plextor designed its exclusive PlexNitro cache acceleration technology specifically for TLC SSDs. Utilizing the PlexNitro Cache as a buffer improves the read and write speeds of TLC SSDs without reducing user capacity with extra overprovisioning. Plextor remains committed to providing the “Full Capacity” SSD products of 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB, instead of the reduced capacity of 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB competitors.

PlexVault

Plextor designed its PlexVault software to provide a secure storage space that gives you complete control of access privileges. Even if you are using a computer with others, you can still hide your private data safely and securely on the computer inside the PlexVault if you have a Plextor SSD.

PlexCompressor

SSDs capacity is always a key point of consideration. Plextor's PlexCompressor utilizes custom, smart compression technology that gives you more storage capacity without impacting your experience or system performance.

PlexTurbo

PlexTurbo is an intelligent caching solution that uses system RAM to accelerate SSD performance. It boosts the service life of the SSD while vastly accelerating access speed. Plextor recommends at least 32GB of system memory to use PlexTurbo.

A Closer Look

The S2 is a new series for Plextor, so we wonder why it didn't brand the SSDs as S1 or S2A, rather than the S2C. Either way, this is a new package design for the company, which released previous generation M series products ranging from M2 to M8. Only time will tell what the company does with the branding for the two series, or if the products launched in 2017 will all come with the new S branding.

Other than the color, Plextor's case design hasn't changed in several years. Plextor still uses a brushed aluminum case that is both functional and attractive. The S2C 512GB has a thermal pad between the case and controller that transfers the unwanted heat byproduct of electrical switching. The thermal pad helps to pass heat from the controller to the metal case.

Internals

The actual SSD printed circuit board is very small, but it accommodates the components well. We've seen the SMI SM2258 controller paired with Sk Hynix planar TLC from other companies, but the combination wasn't as impressive as what you will see with the SC2. SMI allowed Plextor to customize the SC2 firmware, and that made quite a bit of a difference.

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Performance Testing

Comparison Products

The Plextor S2 Series performed a little better than we expected, so we widened our range of products while keeping our focus on low-cost entry-level products.

The 850 EVO is the mainstream SATA standard. It is the high-performance product in our group, and it's also the most expensive. A run on Samsung's V-NAND products left the 850 EVO with a premium price, at least by today's consumer SSD standards. Another consumer SSD from South Korea is hot on the EVO's heels. The Sk Hynix SL308 impressed us with its combination of good performance and low cost. Dollar for dollar, it is one of the best mainstream SSDs available.

The other consumer TLC-based products in our charts are the entry-level slot fillers. The performance of these products never stood out. Some often sell for high prices due to the name of the companies behind the effort--mainly Intel and Crucial. We're waiting on a performance-increasing firmware update for the SU800, so the Adata SP550 made the chart over the new 3D-enabled Ultimate SU800. The SP550 is still available at a competitive price point. The BX200 is Crucial's true entry-level SSD, but its performance isn't too far from the MX300.

The OCZ Trion 150 and Mushkin Triactor often sell at aggressive price points. The Trion 150 has made our monthly Best SSDs column due to its low price and direct-to-die write technology that increases native TLC sequential write performance.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

The low-cost products don't deliver a big wow-factor, and we've seen the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB on the charts for a couple of years now. These are utility SSDs at this point. If you already own an SSD, most of the drives in the chart are not worthy successors. Pay close attention if you are coming from a hard disk drive and need an aftermarket replacement--you are the target customer.

The sequential read test is the easiest of the four-corner tests. Nearly all the products deliver over 500 MB/s and provide consistent performance.

Sequential Write Performance

At first, the Plextor S2C's low sequential write performance perplexed us, but we quickly realized the problem. The Plextor S2 suffers from the same sequential write issues as many products with TLC NAND flash and an SMI controller (such as the Intel 600p). Many of the other SSD controller manufacturers have abandoned folding data from the SLC cache to TLC flash after the cache is full and instead moved to direct-to-die writes. Direct-to-die writes take place at over twice the speed, but it wears the flash faster.

Sustained Sequential Write

The sustained sequential write test with 128KB blocks across the entire LBA range reveals a distinctive pattern. We ran the test again, and the pattern became even more erratic. The portions of the test that measured ~200 MB/s disappeared, and we measured more peaks and valleys ranging between 65 to 190 MB/s.

Random Read Performance

Random read performance separates the Samsung 850 EVO and Sk Hynix SL308 from the rest of the low-cost SATA SSDs. The Plextor S2C 512GB outperforms most of the other products at low queue depths, but it doesn't quite make it into the upper tier as workload intensity increases.

Random Write Performance

The Plextor S2C 512GB made up for the average random read performance with a strong random write showing at low queue depths. The drive ran into a wall at queue depth 4 and stopped scaling. Many of the other products have the same scaling issue, but still offer much higher performance than you will find with a hard disk drive.

80 Percent Sequential Mixed Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

The sequential mixed workload test with the low-cost products looks like exotic wall art. All of these products rely on an SLC cache to improve performance, so any sustained workload with a small dose of write data hurts the user experience.

80 Percent Random Mixed Workload

The random mixed workload test is a little more refined with predictable performance. The 850 EVO stands out from the rest of the products, which all perform about the same with only slight variation. SSDs with SLC cache are inconsistent by nature, and those without direct-to-die writes are even more inconsistent.

Sequential Steady-State

None of these products will work well in professional applications with heavy data write traffic. The low endurance rating will keep professional users from tackling demanding tasks repeatedly.

Random Steady-State

The Plextor S2C 512GB delivers more consistent performance than we expected. The only problem is the low performance rate. The first product in the Plextor S2 series isn't a good candidate for a consumer RAID array hanging off the Intel chipset.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

Applications with bursty workloads that stay within the SLC cache perform well with the Plextor S2C 512GB. Performance drops off quite a bit when the workload moves outside of the SLC cache, so the drive falls behind products with direct-to-die writes. For most of us, the typical workload will fit into the narrow band of SLC cache.

Application Storage Bandwidth

We average the results together and present them as throughput to get a better understanding of the S2C. We can declare the drive is average, so there really isn't a lot to get excited about. It's a low-cost SSD with better-than-disk performance, but it's not as cool as a professional model or new NVMe SSD.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

The light workload test shows the Plextor S2C in the pack of other similar low-cost consumer SSDs. The results also show why the Samsung 850 EVO commands a price premium over the other SSDs in the test.

Total Service Time

The service time results tell a similar story. The Plextor S2C 512GB is just in the mix, but it doesn't show anything outstanding that would lead us to pay more for this product over several others available.

Disk Busy Time

In recent years, Plextor had some issues with latency and disk busy time. Plextor released a firmware update for the M8Pe we tested two months ago to correct the issue, but the company was never able to fix the issue with many of the M6 products. The S2C doesn't have the issue, so it appears Plextor (maybe with the help of SMI) reigned in those issues and got back on track.

Notebook Battery Life

The Plextor S2C 512GB doesn't hold up well when it is on notebook battery power. The drive scores a low time measurement while the system operates under battery power during the MobileMark 2014.5 Office Test. The actual performance is also well off from some of the other drives we include in this test.

Conclusion

Pricing and value-add features are becoming more important as the industry turns once-exciting SSDs into commodity items, but the Plextor S2C lacks a feature that makes it stand out from the other typical low-cost consumer SSDs on the market.

The Plextor S2C doesn't stand out from the crowd on the performance front, and the pricing isn't exceptional, either. The 512GB model we tested retails for $139.99, and many of the comparison products cost less. Some, like the Sk Hynix SL308 and OCZ Trion 150, deliver better performance in more diverse workloads. Plextor does have a hidden feature that we shouldn't overlook, though.

Plextor has an advanced software package that only works on some of its products. The S2C does support the full list, but unfortunately, many users will simply ignore the list. The retail package doesn't cover the extra value-add software features, so you will either need to know about them, or lose out. Many of the software features are available through third-party developers, like the hide-and-seek hotkey that changes the accessibility of user configured folders. DRAM cache is hardly revolutionary, but Plextor did a good job of putting granular control in the hands of the user. That isn't always a good thing, though. The SC2 has a nice free software package, but I don't think I would pay a premium for it.

As an upgrade product, the Plextor S2C isn't an SSDreplacement, but it is a hard disk drive replacement. If you have a desktop or notebook and simply want a low-cost, drop-in performance upgrade, then the S2C is one viable option. The problem comes from other products that are superior in one way or another. If you want the best of everything the 850 EVO is still the default--but it comes at a price premium.

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Plextor jumped the gun at CES 2017 and pre-announced a product we won't see until the second half of the year. The upcoming M8Se series targets the NVMe mainstream and comes hot on the heels of the M8Pe that we loved in our initial review. Plextor will ship the M8Se model with Toshiba 15nm 3-bit-per-cell TLC and sell it at a lower price point than its predecessor.

The new mainstream NVMe SSD uses a new heatsink design for the add-in card that Plextor says will improve cooling by up to 20%. The card also features blue accent lighting (SSDs go faster with a hovering glow from light emitting diodes). Plextor will also sell a heatsink-less M8PeGN model in the M.2 form factor.