The Plextor M8Pe (512GB) SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on December 14, 2016 9:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here.
On the Light test, the Plextor M8Pe is faster than Intel's PCIe SSDs but slower than OCZ and Samsung. The M8Pe is about 2.6 times faster overall than the best SATA SSDs when the test is run on an empty drive, and about 80% faster when the test is run on a full drive.
There's very little variation in average service times among the PCIe SSDs (except for the Intel SSD 600p). The Plextor M8Pe is essentially tied with the Intel SSD 750 and OCZ RD400, and only slightly behind Samsung's PCIe SSDs.
When the test is run on an empty drive, the M8Pe is as good as any drive at keeping the number of high-latency outliers low. The M8Pe is more strongly affected than Samsung's drives when the test is run on a full drive.
The Light test is easy enough that the Intel 600P doesn't get bogged down, so the M8Pe is the least power-efficient of the M.2 PCIe SSDs.
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Magichands8 - Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - link
This is amazing! Tiny 128GB SSDs for $0.64/GB! And look at that 1TB for $0.51/GB! We even get to use a crappy Microsoft bundled driver for these! Who knows, in 2017 we may even get to see consumer SSDs reach $0.80, $0.90 or even $1+ per GB... Time doesn't stand still and neither does the endless march of progress. Brace yourselves guys, the future's going to be an amazing place.ironwing - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
What is a the reason that PCIe SSDs consume more power than SATA SSDs? Is it simply the higher speeds? The review covered the sleep state issues with the PCIe drives but when the drives are in a similar state, the SATA drives appear to be much more power efficient.Billy Tallis - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
I think the biggest problem is that the NVMe power saving states I'm testing don't include reducing the PCIe link speed or width. Keeping a PCIe 3.0 x4 link lit up takes a significant amount of power. The SATA drives by contrast are being told to put the SATA link in a low power state and take that as the signal to engage internal power saving mechanisms.bbhaag - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
Thanks for the great review Billy. I've been holding off on buying the Plextor for my new build hoping that Anandtech would put up a review and you guys delivered. Looks like they are solid drives at a mediocre price point. I knew I should have bought the 512 version when the egg had it for 179...sigh...oh well I can wait.DigitalFreak - Thursday, December 15, 2016 - link
$50 price difference for a heatsink? Really?Bruce427 - Friday, December 16, 2016 - link
I think that price includes a PCIe card as well.Bruce427 - Friday, December 16, 2016 - link
At first glance at published specks, it appears that the New Corsair MP500 NVMe drive may outperform the PlextorM8Pe for about the same price.Bruce427 - Friday, December 16, 2016 - link
Sorry, spell check got me. That should have been "specs."Bruce427 - Friday, December 16, 2016 - link
"specs"Billy Tallis - Friday, December 16, 2016 - link
The Corsair MP500 uses the Phison E7 controller. Next week I should have a review up of the Patriot Hellfire that is essentially the same drive. It's slower than the M8Pe on almost every test.