Plextor M6S & M6M (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 10, 2014 6:00 AM ESTPower Consumption
In the ADATA SP920 review, I mentioned that I finally was collecting slumber power numbers for all the drives I have tested, but I hadn't tested enough drives to meet the strict deadline for the SP920 review. I now have the numbers to share. I'm only including the most relevant drives here but you can find all the results in out Bench.
Note that these results differ from the ones Anand has published earlier due to the fact that we are using totally different testbeds. Anand is using a modified laptop and only measures the current on the 3.3V rail, whereas I'm using our 2014 SSD testbed, which is a desktop system. I was surprised that the system even supported HIPM+DIPM as traditionally those are mobile-only features, but with aggressive link power management enabled in the BIOS, I was able to get them to work on a desktop as well. Unfortunately my multimeter only supports current measurement at the accuracy of one milliamp, so the results go in multiples of five (0.001A*5V is 5mW, so that's the smallest increment).
The M6S and M6M do pretty well here. Out of the drives that support low power states, the M6S and M6M are mediocre, but having the support is more important than the actual numbers. Whether the drive consumes 80mW or 40mW at idle won't make a huge difference to the battery life but 80mW vs 800mW certainly does. Both drives also support DevSleep and Plextor claims power consumption as low as 2mW but unfortunately we don't have the tools to test that yet (it is in the works, though).
Power consumption under load is also very good. The days of super power hungry SSDs are fortunately over and most drives stay easily below 4W, but keeping below 3W in all cases is still quite rare.
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nick2crete - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
Christian ,the Crucial M550 has the Marvell 9189 controller ,so what are the differences from 9187,9188 and 9189
Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
9189 is an updated version of the 9187 with full DevSleep and LPDDR support.9188 is a light version of the 9187 with four channels instead of eight.
nick2crete - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
Thank you !maybe you should correct it in the review ,because as it is written is meant that the M550 has the 9187 or you meant the M500 probably ..
HisDivineOrder - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
The main reason to release a derivative product is because "the other guys" are releasing new products and you don't want to seem behind.AKA AMD re-releasing the 7xxx series as R9 parts with new branding and new "newness." nVidia, Intel, they all do it. In fact, Intel's about to do it again.
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watersb - Monday, April 14, 2014 - link
Fantastic overview of NAND drive internals. Bundle this up as an Amazon Single for $1.99 and take my money.AbRASiON - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - link
Would I be right in assuming when the author writes "manufacturers are preparing for the PCI-e era" regarding SSD storage, we're looking at that NGFF or whatever it is, next gen mSATA port? I mean surely they don't expect us to blow a PCI-e port on storage? (I would if it was worth it, most wouldn't)Antronman - Monday, April 21, 2014 - link
PCIe storage already exists at the consumer level...Extremely expensive, 1.4TB Read 700MB Write PCIe SSDs.
420GB, 1500USD.
Ultraspark - Thursday, April 24, 2014 - link
On Amazon Plextor m5p 128gb cost about 117$, and not 200$. I wonder how did you found such price. Or on newegg prices are updated once per 2 year, or this is an cheap review "paid" by someone to put Plextor in a bad light. It is well known that the controller+memory tandem is a half job. The firmware do the other half of job. You'll never feel in real life few tens of Mbps or few thousands of IOPS. The main goal of plextor is reliability! Just remember the Sandforce devices with shitty firmware who die like no one else. The MxS series is a preparation for MxP series. Remember the new revision of M5S. It is almost M5P with very small difference, without a chance to feel that difference in real life. Just different firmware and case. So, let's be honest dear reviwer: a good car is just a half job. If you want to win you need a good driver. The same is with plextor. This is 1st firmware. It is just to work. The future firmwares will do the magic, like on M5 Series. And When you search for price, be honest to search for lowest, not for highest. Please correct from 200$ to 117$Ultraspark - Thursday, April 24, 2014 - link
Or change the supplier. I never buy from newegg.