Plextor M6S & M6M (256GB) Review

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• Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link

  Yes, there will be a review of the M6e. There has been some issues with testing and hence it's taking this long but it'll be my first priority as soon as we are able to overcome the issues.

• n3cw4rr10r - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

  The prices for SSDs are still high imo. I am surprised they are still holding @ approx $1/gb in most cases.

• philipma1957 - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

  samsung evo is far below $1 a gb and crucial M550's are far below $1 a gb

• ssj3gohan - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

  Finally actual proper idle power consumption results! It only took you a bit more than 5 years!
  
  HIPM and DIPM have been supported on all desktop systems - all desktop OSes as well as all hardware platforms - since the Athlon 64 X2 and first generation Core 2 (i945 chipset) times. I have been measuring SSD power consumption since they first came out - and yes, ever since the first SSDs, most of them supported the full gamut of power management - and have always been baffled that no review site on the internet has ever published accurate idle power consumption data. You are - aside from a few blogs I have come across - the first one. Congratulations!
  
  Now, it's true that the first instances of especially DIPM were frought with latency issues and for a long time DIPM was turned off by default on Linux kernels (although Windows always forces it on in anything but the 'performance' power profile since Vista). Also, and this is probably the biggest issue, lots of BIOSes do not properly report SATA LPM or have it off by default. As it is usually fairly well hidden away it is not something many people think to turn on.
  
  SATA ALPM is not at all a mobile feature. It has never been. Since support was baked in it has always been available to both laptop and desktop users. And with SSDs spending >>99% in idle, it represents easy and harmless power savings both in the SSD as well as the SATA I/O on the motherboard.

• zodiacsoulmate - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

  wow nice info!

• chubbypanda - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link

  That's right. I always wondered why SSD reviewers at AnandTech claim it's mobile only. It's available at least on Denlow platform for sure.
  
  By the way, HIPM/DIPM feature itself is easy to control in Windows with simple registry update:
  https://communities.intel.com/message/225489

• Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link

  "Also, and this is probably the biggest issue, lots of BIOSes do not properly report SATA LPM or have it off by default."
  
  That is the issue I had previously. The motherboard in my old testbed doesn't have the option to enable link power management and hence I couldn't perform those tests.

• Ethos Evoss - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

  Don't understand your tests ...
  It is all bollocks.. so few months back M5M was best and now it is on bottom ? that is all BULLCRAP

• DanNeely - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

  The M5M was reviewed a year ago. It's performance was underwhelming compared to sata drives then; but at the time getting an mSata drive at retail was much easier said than done; and at the time it was still a reasonable buy for its money. Since then much better mSata drives have came out and Plextor is trying to charge a premium device price while providing performance much worse than that of competing products that are significantly cheaper.
  
  http://anandtech.com/show/6722/plextor-m5m-256gb-m...

• Ethos Evoss - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

  Then M6M is NOT big step from M5M .. I have 2x M5M 256GB and they flies
  I am not replacing then .. not worth ..