Introduction
Solid state drives have been with us for many years and today, it occupies every other PC with its proven performance. SSDs features an improved transfer rate and faster boot time ensuring the worthiness of technology. Following the years, SSDs have grown and improved at their highest maturity level. The Plextor SSD replicate and peak at 600 MB/s that fulfills most of the gamers needs. Now, question pops up, would that 600 MB/s be any less in gaming? No, definitely not. However, upgrading in technology was imminent which brought 1300 Mb/s to 24500 Mb/s via NVMe development. NVMe based SSDs have been in the market for several years now. Plextor’s M8PeGN series is one of the finest in competition, which, I believe, has something significant to offer.
While 3D NAND offers exponential storage and longer durability in SATA III SSDs, the speed was limited and never improved to 600 MB/s no matter how expensive the drive. In order to remove this bottleneck, the only effective solution was the PCIe Lane utilization. This is where NVMe M.2 SSDs comes to business. Besides the controller, NVMe M.2 SSD consumes PCIe lane formula to produce massive speed, which also have an effect on the price and that is the reason why NVMe and SATA III SSDs have a noticeable price gap. NVMe (nonvolatile memory Express) uses PCIe lane to perform which results in 5x better performance than HDD and about 3x better than SATA III SSD.
It’s no wonder NVMe has removed the speed bottleneck by making use of PCIe lanes. Basically, NVMe works perfect on Gen3 x4 interface. The fact is, PCI-express Gen 3 has been the fastest PCIe lane to date. Therefore, when NVMe PCIe M.2 unit feeds from Gen 3 PCIe lanes, the actual performance shoots up and quadruple the performance; the sequential read boasts a whopping 2500 Mb/s, regardless of the capacity/storage, as opposed to SATA III SSD’s 600 Mb/s. The above performance numbers for M.2 SSD is from the best model available in the market. At this time, the price difference has been gradually coming closer which allowing users to experience the blazing fast speed on M.2 SSD at reasonable prices.
Plextor, a Subsidiary company of Lite-On Digital Technology, has been offering one of the fastest NVMe M.2 SSDs in the market. Recently, Plextor has announced M8PeGN series NVMe PCI M.2 SSD. The sample I got has a capacity of 256GB with model – PX-256M8PeGN — using Marvell 88SS1093 controller and offers 2000 sequential read and 900 sequential write on paper.
Specification:
The Package and the Content:
The SSD was shipped in a plastic tray type packaging, although I was expecting something premium in box. The top side has a sticker that contains informational material related to SSD. The lower portion of sticker has the series, model and capacity printed. The middle area has the speed details in tabulated form.
Looking at the back, an SSD is nicely placed in the middle.
Inside the box, I got an SSD, mini tray for the SSD, and plastic bag contains a screw. Normal or minimal packaging basically reduces the extra cost incurred on the appearance of box.
Looking at NVMe SSD, it’s a naked green PCB having small blocks on it and besides, the huge white sticker on the left. The sticker contains the logo at top left corner, next to it, an inventory related content, a barcode and safety certifications at the lower portion.
The left end has the golden rail exhibiting the M.2 connectivity connection. This side goes inside the M.2 connection on the motherboard.
The extreme right has the cut circle shape in the middle allows to hold down on the motherboard using a screw, of course it has included in the accessories.
The backside has nothing prominent, but the engraved black tracing and the some labels.
the Plextor NVMe isntalled on the motherobard using Ultra M.2 connectivity. The other side is being fixed with a screw.
The Test Bench
The test setup used in the SSD
- ASRock Z170 Professional Gaming
- Intel Core i5 6600K
- Patriot Viper 16GB 2666MHz Memory
- Noctua NH-U14S (Sponsored by Noctua)
- Sapphire R9 290 TriX 4GB
- Enermax Revolution X’T II 650W PSU (Sponsored by Enermax)
Synthetics Testing Programs:
- AS SSD 1.9v
- Crystal DiskMark 5.5v
- HD Tune Pro 5.50v
As for comparison, I have compared sample SSD with XPG Gammix S10 NVMe (Sponsored by Adata) and Samsung 750 EVO SATA III SSD.
Results
It’s very surprising that S10 was only manages 1350 MB/s sequential read, while Plextor SSD (this sample) has replicated a whopping 2170.71 MB/s sequential read. Additionally, maintaining the access time at 0.023 in read and 0.027 in write, is quite impressive.
In Crystal DiskMark, Plextor SSD outperforms the XPG S10 SSD with more than 500 Mb/s difference in sequential read, while leading the write section by 34 MB/s margin. Overall, Plextor has done a fantastic job.
Conclusion:
Plextor M8PeGN 256GB NVMe SSD has showed some promising results. The SSD runs on a Gen3 x4 interface to replicated highest possible speed, supports TOSHIBA 15nm Toggle MLC and Marvell 88SS1093 controller to make sure the adequate performance deliver out of the box.
Synthetic benchmarks, well, the Plextor M8PeGN 256GB NVMe SSD has merely replicated the performance that company has advertised on their website and honestly, with some few jerks in write, the SSD has surprised me with its excellent sequential performance. In Crystal DiskMark, Plextor M8PeGN produced a whopping 2316 MB/s sequential read and thrashed an XPG Gammix S10 by 500 MB/s difference on top. This is truly phenomenal output out of the box, I must conceal. On the other hand, the real world copying hasn’t been lived up to the expectation, but still much better than the SATA III SSD.
During Synthetic read and write testing, the thermals maxed out at 73C being worrying condition until I found, this drive never even throttled at given temperatures; a good sign. Such thermal productivity is inevitable as it lacks a heatsink. I believe, with a heatsink body, this drive would deliver much better results. Overall, the performance replication has been fantastic for this NVMe drive.
Value & Availability
Offering an excellent sequential read performance and an optimal write stack, Plextor M8PeGN series 256GB NVMe drive is available on Amazon at around $139 US dollar. Considering the numbers in above charts, the SSD delivered more than expected being impressive. However, I also noticed that Samsung Pro M.2, a premium brand in the market, is selling similar capacity SSD at $119 therefore, to get more attention of the consumer, a slight reduction in price would greatly increase the value in the competition.
