HungryGeeks

Plextor M6E Black Edition PCIE SSD Review – Hungry Geeks

Franklin Garcia

Part of the advantages of having an extra PCIe is that it enables you more room for upgrades. This usually empty slots beg for something to be jammed between them, be it in the form of other third-party modules such as LAN and audio cards. Sometimes, we go further and dig deep into our pockets, buying a luxury component (that makes things fast!) on a whim, something like Plextor’s M6E Black Edition PCIe 2.0 SSD.

Introduction

Having tried several Plextor SSDs, we’ve had a general idea of how it is with their storage devices: they’re affordable yet effective at the same time. But there is always one willing to change the direction and play the high-speed card. What we have for review is Plextor’s tantalizing black and red PCIe SSD capable of storing 512GB, and it goes with the unassuming name of M6E Black Edition.

Physical Features

It’s black and red, taking the fact that most high-end motherboards sport the color combination.

It occupies only one slot, but do be warned that having it near your VGA will have an impact in its temperature reading.

Performance

Bench Buddy
CPU Intel Core i5 4670K
VGA ASUS GTX780Ti DirectCU II
Memory 16GB
SSD Plextor M6E Black Edition
Motherboard ROG Maximus VII Gene

For our benchmarks, we used four popular programs that are widely known for checking write/read speeds.

Crystal DiskMark

CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software.It measure sequential reads/writes speed,measure random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) reads/writes speed,select test data (Random, 0Fill, 1Fill),provide theme support and Multi-Language support.

Our tests resulted in the Plextor M6E Black Edition blowing all the standard SATA SSDs out of the water with its sheer speed. Significant gain can be observed in the 512K and Sequential testing. On the otherhand, it lags in the 4K QD32 and 4K department which is quite strange given that this is a PCIe SSD. The latter two tests are simulated to be similar with real-life functions of a storage device, creating

HD Tune Pro

HD Tune Pro is a hard disk / SSD utility with many functions. It can be used to measure the drive’s performance, scan for errors, check the health status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more.

Read

Write

           Plextor M6E 512GB SSD
MB/s Min Ave Max
Write 422.9 438.1 453.1
Read 274.7 549.2 553.4

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes.

The ATTO, utilizes the file formatting of the drive as opposed to the HDTune Pro.

Anvil Storage Utilities

Similar to other component benchmarks, Anvil utilizes a point system to designate the performance of storage drives, more specifically, SSDs.

We will append a comparison chart in our next review as we are still in the process of gathering more input data.

Under Plextool v1.1.6

Plextool is Plextor’s in-house application that measures and evaluates the status of certain Plextor storage devices. It can also be used in other non-Plextor components but at a limited capacity.

Verdict

Though undeniably fast, Plextor’s M6E Black Edition is a component of extravagance. The extra speed is a fact, but the additional cost may be too high of a wall for some.

In terms of its contributions in video games, the Plextor M6E shows an insignificant improvement over its SATA-based counterparts. Though in other applications that require high-speed transfer or loading, one cannot deny that this one can bring home the bacon.

Overall, if there’s a speed devil inside you and you want your files pushed faster than a standard SSD, then best go for this card. It makes great use of that lonely PCIe x2 slot that you have and it undeniably looks great when partnered with a similarly schemed motherboard.

We’ll update this article once we have the price and the availability.

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