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Review: Plextor Reviewed by: Antonis Sapanidis Provided by: Plextor Model: M6e Black 125GB SSD Firmware version: 1.05
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Times are moving forward very fast and to
me it doesn’t seem that long ago when I got my Plextor 48x24x48x CD-R/RW,
however things have moved on from that era, and thankfully so did Plextor. Over
the last couple of years Plextor has been focussing on SSDs, and I can say that
they have had some very competitive drives.
The M6e is one drive that doesn’t need any
introduction, we have already seen this, and we know what it can do, however
Plextor decided that they needed something that will make the drive even more
attractive to gamers, enthusiasts, and to all those that don’t want to look at
a green PCB. So here we have the Plextor M6e Black to review, a drive that
simply looks astonishing but at the same time has a lot of added value through software.
So I will thank Plextor for sending me the
M6e Black 128GB drive to review and, before I move forward with this review, I
would like to give you the option to visit the official Plextor site to find
out more about Plextor and their products. All you have to do is simply click here.
Now let’s take a look at the package, its
contents, and the drive.
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD
Let’s start by taking a look at the package
and the contents of the Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD. We'll start with the
package.
Here is the front of the Plextor M6e PCI
Express SSD, we can clearly see all the main features of the drive, plus the
size of the drive and the five year warranty that it comes with.
and
the back of the box.
Here is a close look at the package and its
contents. As we can see there is a quick installation manual, a VIP card that
has information about registering your drive, and also where to find support
worldwide. There is also a CD but I am 100% that most people will go and
download the latest version from the Plextor site. Finally we find the drive
and one screw, which is everything that you need.
A
look at the Plextor M6e black. I don’t think that there is any need to say that
it simply looks awesome.
Now
let’s take a more detailed look at the drive, here are a few pictures of the
drive.
The front side, and here is the only place
that we can see the green PCB of the M.2 drive. But other than that you will
never see it.
On the reverse side of the drive, we can
see the + and ground info for the HDD led activity indicator, and two stickers.
As we can see one sticker has all the info
about the drive, firmware, manufacturing date, and power requirements, and the
other is the usual warranty sticker.
Here is a look at the heat sink of the
Plextor M6e Black. I'm very happy to see that it make contact with the NAND,
but I would have liked it better if the drive was positioned the other way
around so that it could also keep the Marvel controller cool.
Here is the rear of the M.2 drive that is
inside the Plextor M6e Black, on which we can see the Toshiba NAND and the
Marvel controller.
On
the side that makes contact with the heat sink we can see another set of
Toshiba NAND, the RAM.
Specifications of the Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD
In the pictures below we get a more
detailed view of the performance of the Plextor M6e Black SSD series.
In the above picture we can see that the
drive is available in three capacities, 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB. Also we can
see the main specifications of the drive, in our case for the 128GB drive, but
you can see all the info for the other two drives here.
CrystalDiskInfo
In
the above screenshot we see all the available info for the Plextor M6e Black SSD.
Let’s head to the next page where we
take a closer look on the software that come with the Plextor M6e Black
First let's start by taking a closer look at
the various technologies and features of the Plextor M6e Black plus a more
detailed view of the software that the Plextor has to offer for the M6e Black.
Plextool
There are two things that got my attention,
firstly PlexTurbo and then PlexTool. PlexTool is the software that you want to
install on your system, which provides you with a lot of useful information about
the drive and some extra features such as Secure Erase and Firmware Update.
Below we can see some pictures of the software in action.
The first screen will give you all the
information that you need, about the drive, info about the PCIe Speed, a coloured
indicator about the temperature of the SSD, whether TRIM is enabled, and also
on the top you have the usage information, but that’s something that you can
see in Windows.
As we can see we can't secure erase the
drive, since this function isn’t supported on PCIe drives. This issomething
that was a little disappointing since the drive was connected as a spare and
did not have the OS. I hope that with a future update in the software this will
be fixed.
The drive came with the 1.05 firmware, and
at the moment there weren't any updates for the M6e Black.
A quick diagnostic test that you can do,
and as we can see everything appears to work perfectly, but we will have the
opportunity to test and verify those numbers very soon.
Closing this presentation with the last tab
of the Plextool, we have the S.M.A.R.T. information. Overall this is very nice
software that offers everything that you need to monitor your drive, and as
expected is very well presented which we've come to expect from Plextor.
PlexTurbo
Now let’s take a look at the PlexTurbo
software. The installation process is very simple, during which you can
manually select how much of your RAM will be used for caching and the length of
time it will be used. After that you will be asked to reboot your system and
you are ready to use PlexTurbo.
Let’s head to the next page where we
take a look at our testing methods and the review PC.
Test machine
For this review I will be using a computer
with the following configuration:
Hardware:
- Motherboard: ASUS X99-A (Intel X99 chipset)
- Processor: Intel Core i7 5280K @ 4.4GHz
- RAM: RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4x4GB
2400Mhz @ 2660MHz - GFX: GTX 670 2GB
- Sound: Onboard Realtek HD audio
controller - OS SSD: Kingston V300 240GB
- PSU: Seasonic 750W
- Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
- Operating System: Windows 8.1
The Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD was
connected to the second PCIe slot on the ASUS X99-A motherboard. All power
saving features were disabled during all of my synthetic benchmarks.
Test applications
To test the performance of the Plextor M6e
Black 128GB SSD, I will be using the following test applications in this
review.
- HD Tune
Pro - ATTO
- Iometer
- AS SSD
Benchmark - CrystalDiskMark
- Anvil’s
Storage Utilities - PCMark
Test procedures
I will start off our testing procedures
explanation by stating that I did not run many synthetic benchmarks on the Plextor
M6e Black SSD. You may ask why I have run so few synthetic benchmarks.
SSD technology has moved so fast in the
last couple of years, that basic synthetic benchmarks alone are now of very
limited use, as they don't really tell us much about performance and how the
drive will behave in the real world. I have therefore decided to show some
basic benchmarks for the Plextor M6e Black SSD, and will complement this with
advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show how
the Plextor M6e Black SSD performs in the real world.
The reality of SSD performance
While I can easily show you which SSD is
technically the faster, when you use one of these modern SSDs as an operating
system drive it becomes very difficult to tell them apart as far as performance
is concerned.
A typical use of a small capacity SSD at
the moment is to have your operating system and applications installed onto the
SSD. The performance difference compared to a traditional HDD is enormous,
however when you start to compare SSD to SSD the difference becomes almost
impossible to detect.
Let’s look at why this is the case.
Drive A can boot to the desktop in 8.11
seconds, and drive B can boot to the desktop in 8.12 seconds, the difference in
time is milliseconds, and can one really tell the difference?
The fact is, all modern SSDs are only
ticking over when they are only running the OS and launching applications, it’s
only when you get to some of the larger capacity SSDs, with enough free space
to be able to hold the actual data that you’re going to be working with, be
that video, audio or pictures, for example, that you actually get a tangible
difference in performance. This is where the SSDs with the better sequential
performance start to pull well ahead of the SSDs which have lower sequential
read/write performance.
Small file random IOPS vs sequential performance
IOPS
This is a fairly complex subject, but I
will do my best to explain things in a manner that is easy to understand.
The term IOPS is the amount of input or
output transactions that can take place in a one second interval, so for
example, if an SSD is quoted as being able to cope with 20,000 4K random write
IOPS, then the SSD should be able to cope with 20,000 input transactions in a
period of one second. If the same SSD is said to be able to produce 20,000 4K
random read IOPS, then the same SSD should be able to produce 20,000 4K random
read output transactions in a one second interval.
Ok, now we have some figures to work with,
the next question is how many IOPS are actually required?
This will depend on your usage pattern. If
you are a typical desktop user who browses the internet, does some word
processing or perhaps some audio or video editing, and perhaps plays a few
games, then in actual fact, you don’t need to have massive 4K random read/write
performance. The actual amount of 4K random performance that is required for a
fast and smooth running system for a desktop user with a usage pattern similar
to the above will be well under 1,000 4K IOPS.
On the other hand, if the SSD is being used
for running a large and complex database server, then 4K random performance is
the absolute measurement of how fast that server will run, as this type of application
does most of its input and output transactions in the 4K domain.
So why would I need an SSD with 80,000 4K
IOPS for a desktop?
In fact you don’t need this type of
performance for a desktop, but an SSD which is capable of coping with 80,000 4K
IOPS will be faster than an SSD which can only cope with 20,000 4K IOPS.
OK, I just said if under 1,000 4K IOPS are
actually required for typical desktop usage, why is an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
faster than an SSD with only 20,000 4K IOPS, confused?
You may ask, if I only require 1,000 4K
IOPS surely the rest is wasted?
While you may never need 80,000 4K IOPS,
IOPS is all about latency. The reason that an SSD can cope with as much as 80,000
4K IOPS is because latency in this domain is very low. With 4K files, even if
you require to process 500 of them at the same time, you are not talking about
a huge amount of data, it has far more to do with how long it takes the SSD to
process a single file, and the amount of time required to process a single 4K
is all about how long it takes for the SSD to access or store that data before
it can move on to the next transaction.
In other words an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
performance will handle those 500 files faster than the SSD with 20,000 IOPS.
So how will a desktop user even notice this
faster speed if so little 4K random IOPS and data are actually used?
Multitasking is a good example. The more
tasks you run at the same time, you more you will notice the speed difference.
Sequential performance
I have always maintained that sequential
performance was every bit as important as small random file performance for a
desktop SSD. Some highly regarded people on other sites found this statement
quite funny a couple of years ago when I made it, but my, how times have
changed in the world of SSD reviewing.
To me this was always so obvious for a
desktop user. For example, let’s say you want to launch an application or game.
Both have some fairly large files to load, and also a great many small files,
but the point is, even the smaller files are sequential in nature. Now let’s
say you’re into audio or video editing. Video files tend to be huge, and the
files are written or read sequentially. Isn’t this how many users are using
their PCs these days?
Summary
So how does this shape up in the real
world? Which is better, massive 4K IOPS or massive sequential performance?
In an ideal world you want both, as an SSD
with massive random 4K IOPS and sequential performance will always be faster
than an SSD that has high sequential performance and moderate 4K random IOPS
performance, and the same applies to an SSD that has massive 4K random
performance and moderate sequential performance. The SSD which has high
performance in both patterns will always be the faster SSD.
However, you can still have an SSD that is
very fast for desktop use that has moderate random 4K performance and massive
sequential performance, the same can be said about a drive having massive
random 4K performance and moderate sequential performance, as it is about
getting the balance right if you have to compromise on one or the other.
Drive preparation for running the tests
All the SSDs used in this article were in a
clean and fresh state when the testing period started. From then on, each drive
had to rely on its own NAND cleaning effectiveness for the remainder of the
tests.
- Both our spinning HDD drives were
defragged before the start of each test.
- All SSD and HDD used in this article had
their partitions aligned to the Windows 7 x64 defaults.
Where I use graphs in this article to
display results, I will use the following colours to make it easier, for our
readers to see which drive we are reviewing.
Plextor M6e
Black 128GB SSD
Comparison SDD
Now let's head to the next page, where I
look at some basic benchmarks...
Reading Benchmarks
HD Tune
HD Tune – Sequential reading test
I present the graph below for comparison
with other recently tested drives.
It was expected that the Plextor M6e Black
SSD would give the best result in this test, and it doesn't disappoint, giving
a very impressive result of 599.2MB/Sec.
ATTO disk benchmark
ATTO has become a standard tool for
measuring the data throughput of HDDs and SSDs. It measures the reading and
writing performance, using different file sizes and block sizes.
There's no problem here for the Plextor M6e
Black reaching its maximum read and write speed.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
CrystalDiskMark is quite a handy
benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause a
problem on a system drive.
Once again the Plextor M6e Black was able
to achieve a maximum read speed of 735.5MB/Sec and a write speed of
333.3MB/Sec. An excellent result for the drive.
The two graphs below will give a more
detailed view of how the Plextor M6e Black compares with other SSDs that I have
retested.
Here I present the graph for the read speed
tests. You can compare the Plextor M6e Black SSD with other drives that I have
tested.
I will continue by presenting the graph for
the write speed tests for the Plextor M6e Black. You can compare the Plextor
M6e Black SSD with other tested drives.
Plextor’s M6e Black is an outstanding
drive, sequential and 4K read speeds are simply excellent, the limitation comes
with the 128GB drive which is only capable of reaching 333.3MB/Sec.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD benchmark is a benchmarking tool
specifically designed to test SSDs. The application tests sequential reading
and writing performance, 4K random reading and writing performance.
AS SSD benchmark also tests 4K threaded
performance. This is very exciting, as this test is the first available test
that I am aware of, that simulates how a PC operating system actually works. A
modern PC and OS, such as Windows Vista/7 does not just run a single thread at
a time, it runs many threads. The AS SSD benchmark "4K 64Thrd" tests
run 64 threads simultaneously throughout the test. If this result is good, then
you can be pretty sure the drive will perform extremely well as a system drive.
After the tests complete, AS SSD benchmark
derives a total score for the drive being tested. This is based on all aspects
of the test results, and gives an indication of how the drive is performing
overall.
Now let’s look at the results for the Plextor
M6e Black SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison drives’
results are presented in the form of a graph.
It's clear that the reason why the Plextor
M6e Black isn’t at the top of this chart is the limit of its write speed,
however the overall result is still very impressive.
Let's head to the next page and run some
tests using PCMark 8.....
PC Mark 8 - HDD Suite
We have built quite a close relationship
with FutureMark software, the authors of the PCMark PC benchmarking software
that we use in our tests. I decided I would use PCMark Vantage as stopgap
measure until the more up-to-date PCMark 8 benchmarking suite became available.
I'm pleased to say that PCMark 8 is now available, and it gives me great
pleasure to introduce you all to the results obtained by this new 'real world'
benchmarking suite.
I will describe the basic way that each
test is carried out, above the graph for each test.
PC Mark 8 HDD suite results
Here
is a screenshot displaying the results for the Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD.
318.96MB/Sec is the best result that I have
seen so far, and the Plextor M6e Black is the best drive that I have tested up
to this moment.
70.3 MB/Sec is the best result that I have had
so far.
Here the Plextor M6e Black is in the middle
of the chart, but only falls behind by a very small margin of 0.1 seconds.
Once again the Plextor M6e Black is in the
middle of the chart and this time with the gap of 0.6 seconds for the best
result that I got.
The Plextor M6e Black is amongst the fastest
drives that I have tested, it only needed 71.6 seconds to finish this test.
Again the Plextor M6e Black is the fastest
drive that I have tested, with only112.8 seconds required to finish this test.
No surprises here, 132.5 seconds for the
Plextor M6e Black.
Once again the Plextor M6e Black is the
fastest drive on test, it only needed 57.7 seconds.
28.1 seconds is a great result for the
Plextor M6e Black PCIe SSD.
Once again the Plextor M6e Black is the
fastest drive by 0.1 seconds.
This is the final result in this set of
tests, and we can again see that the Plextor M6e Black is the fastest drive by
0.1 seconds.
Summary:
I don’t have any illusions that the
limiting factor is the 128GB drive that I tested. I am almost sure that if I
had the 256GB or the 512GB drive to test, the numbers would have been slightly
better. We also have to consider the fact that we can expect a lot more from
newer PCIe drives, however the Plextor M6e Black is an excellent choice with a
lot of speed, and overall is a superb selection.
Let's head to the next page for our
IOMeter test results.....
I/O Performance
There is little point of having an SSD
drive that has blazing sustained reading and writing speeds, if the drive can't
handle reading and writing of small random files. If you intend to use your new
SSD drive to store and run your operating system, then the drive must be able
to cope with the many small random files that Windows will write to the drive
continually. So I feel it is very important to test how many of these random
files that a drive can handle in one second. I believe that anything over 1,000
I/O’s per second would be enough for most users running a consumer grade
mainstream PC, and should provide a smooth running system. But obviously, the
more I/O's that a drive can handle, the faster the drive will feel and leave
more headroom for those huge multitasking sessions that users sometimes engage
in.
The things that I will look at are the
total I/O per second and total MB/s.
Partition alignment and sector boundaries
Windows 7 and Vista will automatically
align a partition to 4k boundaries during partition creation, Windows XP won’t.
It is imperative that an SSDs partition is aligned. Windows XP is also
restricted to sector boundaries, while Windows 7 will use 4k boundaries if it
can. The Plextor M6e Black is 4k boundary aware, and will use these boundaries if
possible. Of course it will also remap LBAs for compatibility with the sector
boundaries so that the drive can be used with Windows XP.
IOMeter allows us to set the sector
boundaries for conducting the tests, and I have therefore set the sector
boundaries at 4K, which means the IOMeter tests are valid for Windows 7 and
Windows Vista users. XP users will not be able to obtain such results.
I will provide a screenshot of the tests on
the review drive for those of you who like to see the actual test result. All
the comparison drive results are represented in the form of graphs.
If any of you would like to see a screenshot
from any IOMeter test on a particular drive, please feel free to request one,
and I’ll post the screenshot in the forum thread.
All the IOMeter tests create a 10GB data
set on the target drive, and each test is run for a duration of 3 minutes.
IOMeter 4K random write test with repeating data.
The first test involves creating continual
4KB random files on the target drive with IOMeter. I use a 4KB file size, as it
is believed that Windows will create and modify many of this size of file
constantly in the background during a typical Windows session. It is said that
most 4K random writes take place at a queue depth of only one.
Queue depth 1
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD (Queue depth 32)
4K random write queue depth profile
For this
test I used various queue depths from 1 – 32 to give you an idea how this SSD
performs at different queue depths. For a normal desktop user, with lightweight
multitasking, the queue depth will rarely rise above 2. For heavy multitasking,
the queue depth is unlikely to rise above a value of 8.
Only by reading the specifications on the
box was it clear that the Plextor M6e Black SSD's write speeds weren't the
strongest point for the 128GB SSD, and that was verified by the above graph.
IOMeter 4K random read test.
If there are many 4k files created, then
that must also mean that many 4k files need to be read. This test measures 4k
reading performance.
Queue depth 1
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD (Queue depth 32)
4K random read queue depth profile.
This test
shows how the review drive scales with increasing queue depths.
Reading performance was very good for the
Plextor M6e Black, and that is verified in the above graph.
IOMeter 512KB write test with repeating data.
Sequential writing performance is also very
important; in this test sequential writing performance is measured.
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD - 512K Sequential write with repeating data
The Plextor M6e Black PCIe SSD managed to
give the best result that it can, 333.18MB/Sec.
IOMeter 512KB read test.
This test measures 512k sequential reading
performance.
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD – 512K sequential reading test
An outstanding result for the Plextor M6e
Black, which achieved 738.07MB/Sec.
IOMeter Workstation simulation (outstanding I/Os = 64).
When running applications you will find
that there is a mixture of small random files and larger sequential files,
being created and read. Not only that, it isn’t just one file at a time. In
this test I measure a simulated workstation pattern, with a queue depth of 64 (threaded).
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD – Workstation simulation
311.63MB/Sec is not the best result that I
got in this test, but this was expected from the 128GB drive.
Summary
Sequential read performance was the part where
the Plextor M6e Black really shines. Write numbers are also very close to the
ones that Plextor states on the box for the 128GB drive, but if you can, try to
get the 256GB drive for the extra write performance.
Now let’s head to the next page where we
will look at how the Plextor M6e Black SSD
performs using Anvil's Storage utilities....
Anvil’s Storage Utilities
As well as performing SSD endurance tests.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities has a very nice SSD benchmarking application. The SSD
benchmark tests many different aspects of SSD performance, including 4K random
at different queue depths, and also sequential performance, but more importantly
than this, all using real test data.
Another very nice feature of Anvil’s SSD
benchmark is the fact that you can change the compression levels of the test
data. The compression levels of the data sets used for the tests can be varied
from 0% compression right up to 100% compressed data, and there are even a few
data profiles already included, such as database (8%) compression, and also an
application profile (46%) compression, which is designed to simulate real
application data being read and written to the SSD.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities is still in beta
at the moment, but the application is currently solid enough to use in this
article, and I have already verified the results obtained using an SATA
analyser.
I will include a screenshot of the review
drive, and all comparison results will be presented in the form of graphs. If
you would like to see screenshots of the test results obtained on the other
SSDs in this article, you can do so by following the link here.
I will also be testing three different
compression profiles, which are as follows.
- 0 fill (100% compressible data)
- Application simulation profile (46%
compressed) - 100% (non compressible data)
So let’s begin the tests.
0 fill
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD (0 fill)
Results
are ranked by highest total score.
As usual we see that the SSDs with a Marvel
controller don’t like compressible data. Overall the result is very good.
Application profile
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD (application profile)
Results are ranked by highest total score.
The Plextor M6e Black is in the middle of
the chart, something that was expected, mainly because of the low write speeds
of the 128GB model.
100% incompressible
Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD (100% incompressible)
Results are based on the highest total score.
Again the result isn’t the one that I would
like to see, but overall the drive is showing impressive performance.
Summary
The overall experience is very good but for
this set of tests I would have liked to have seen higher results.
Now let's head to the next page for some
real world tests....
It has become clear that simply conducting
endless benchmarks on SSD drives is pointless. Real users may run a few
benchmarks when they first fit their SSD drive, but most users just want a
drive that performs well in the real world. They want their drive to work
"out of the box" and work fast and smoothly.
Most of the latest SSD drives can deliver
very fast sustained reading and writing speeds, but these alone tell you very
little about how the drive will perform in the real world.
If you intend to use your SSD as your
primary system drive, with an operating system and applications installed and
running from the drive, real world performance becomes much more important than
just fast sequential read and write speeds, in this case I felt that it was
time to move into a different method of testing.
From now on I will only use the log files
from the Event Viewer to measure the start-up and shutdown of the system, and
also use filecopy to measure all my copy tests from a RAM disk to the selected
storage drive that I will be testing. For these tests I will also enable all
power savings features that are available, since I believe that this is the way
that the majority of the users will have them set on their PC.
Real
world copy tests
I will now conduct some real world copy
tests so that you can have a much better view of how the drive will perform. In
these simple tests I try to simulate what a real user does with their drives. I
will be copying some mp3 files, various picture and MKV files, and finishing by
installing MS Office 2007.
As I said earlier from now on all my test
files will be stored in a RAM disk and copied/pasted to the destination drive
using filecopy. The filecopy utility will be used from now on for all my tests,
and I’ll be using it this way to measure the time that it takes to copy the
files.
Before I move on to the test, I want to
give you an idea on how fast your RAM is. Below you can find the results.
As
we can clearly see speed isn’t going to be an issue in these tests.
Copy tests – 259 MP3 song files (1.36GB total)
I will start this set of tests by copying
259 MP3 files from the RAM disk to the destination SSD and also from the SSD to
the RAM disk.
As it was expected the drive has
outstanding read performance, but falls behind when it comes to write speed.
Copy tests – 3,377 JPEG picture files (2.56GB total)
Continuing my set of tests, but this time I
will be copying 2.54GB of pictures that are stored in the RAM disk to the currently
testing SSD and vice versa.
The Plextor M6e Black managed to give some
very impressive results, both read and write speed were excellent.
Copy Tests – 1 MKV and 1 SRT file (3.46GB)
Copying a movie is very common task for all
of us, and in this test there are two files that will be copied from the RAM
disk to the SSD and again from the SSD to the RAM disk.
Once again the limitation on the Plextor
M6e Black is the write speed, looking at the read performance the Plextor drive
does an excellent job and gives the best time that I have seen so far.
Copy Tests – Small files (533MB)
I have decided to adapt the very small
files test that I am using in my USB3 flash test, so this time I will be also
copying all the files from the RAM disk to the SSD and again from the SSD to
the RAM disk.
I introduced this test for flash drives
sometime ago, however I thought that it would be nice to have an idea of how an
SSD handles small files, so let’s compare the Plextor M6e Black with other SSDs
that I have tested and see what result I obtained from this test.
As you can tell by the numbers the Plextor
M6e continues to have outstanding read performance, but write performance is
again the limiting factor for the 128GB SSD.
Copy Tests – ISO (7927MB)
For this test, I copied ISO of the 'Iron
Man' movie from the RAMDisk to the SSD and vice versa.
Everything pretty much follows the same
pattern as the previous tests, outstanding read speed but falling behind when
it comes to write speed.
Windows start-up and closedown based on the Event Viewer
Logs
Start-up & Shutdown time
The next two screen shots were taken after I'd
installed all the drivers and software that I use every day. Below are the
results.
The start-up
time for the Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD.
Shutdown
time for the Plextor M6e Black 1TB SSD.
You can see some previous results here
that are based on my old system when I was using a Z77 ASRock extreme4 and an
Intel 2500K.
Installing applications
Installing applications is possibly
something you don't do that often. But should you replace your system disk,
then you will most likely have to re-install your applications. Most of the SSD
drives I have tested up until now are quite slow at installing applications,
most likely because their I/O performance was quite limited.
For these tests, we picked some popular
applications and copied the entire contents of the CD or DVD media to the RAM disk.
We did this to make sure that the reading speed of our CD/DVD reader would not
hamper the performance of the target drive.
We then installed these applications onto
our comparison HDD drives, which were all running mirror image installations of
our Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit installation, and timed the amount of time
taken to install the application with a stopwatch on each of the drives.
MS Office 2007 Enterprise (full install)
Now let’s see
how the Plextor M6e Black SSD performs
with the installation of MS Office 2007 Enterprise Edition.
The procedure
followed was very simple. I copied all the files from the CD to the RAM disk and
used the virtual drive as a source for the installation files.
I am leaving the previous graphs as
reference points, but the Plextor M6e Black did install Office 2007 in 101
seconds, an excellent number for the Plextor M6e Black.
Plexturbo
PlexTurbo is PLEXTOR's exclusive
development of an intelligent “Smart Cache Technology”, using system RAM to
greatly accelerate the SSD’s storage performance. In addition, PlexTurbo boosts
the service life of the SSD and significantly improves access speed as well.
After your PC boots up, the programs running before the last shutdown will be
automatically preloaded, reducing the waiting time for running these programs.
PlexTurbo also provides automatic load balancing which supports multiple drives
and interfaces. Even if you use two or more PLEXTOR SSDs, you will still be
able to use PlexTurbo. You can find more information about PlexTurbo here.
So let’s take a look at PlexTurbo.
This is the main options window of the
PlexTurbo software. As we can see Plextor allows us to set the maximum cache
size and also the time that the data will be released from the RAM, the default
values were 3.97GB and 10 minutes. Also there are two more options that are
self-explanatory.
So let’s do some tests and see how much of
an improvement in speed there is.
With AS SSD the numbers look impressive;
however you need to keep in mind that you are basically benchmarking your RAM,
even though this has a positive effect on our SSD.
Again we see very similar result with ATTO.
Even with CrystalDiskMark the numbers
continue to be outstanding.
Anvil's benchmark shows again outstanding
numbers when it comes to read speed, but the write speed is almost identical to
the result that I got when I first tested the drive.
Closing this small presentation on PlexTool
I will say that I've never used any software that uses the RAM like this before,
however there are a few things that I like. The key one being the fact that
Plextor allows you to customize the size of the RAM that will be used, and I
really like the fact that it releases the data from the RAM very quickly. You
can change that to your liking, but for me 10 minutes is the sweet spot for
normal daily use.
Compatible with legacy BIOS.
The ability to boot with both UEFI and
legacy BIOS systems is something that adds more value to the Plextor M6e Black.
This should make life much easier for all those that still have an old system
which doesn’t have an M.2 slot.
Now let's spend just a few words talking
about this since I don’t want to go into much detail. I put the drive in my P55
system with an overclocked Intel 750 @ 3.66GHz, I cloned my OS to the Plextor,
rebooted, and selected the Plextor as my boot hard drive. The first impression
was very positive. My old system that already had an SSD appeared to be more
responsive and a few clicks faster. This part was also verified by the boot
times. With my Kingston V200 SSD I needed 39-45 seconds to boot, and with the
Plextor it needed about 25-33 seconds.
I can say that this should be a good
upgrade if you have a older system and you don't want to use RAID0, or have to
deal with all the extra cables, BIOS settings, and the extra power consumption
that you need with more drives.
You have lots to gain from a drive like the
Plextor M6e Black if you have an older system. A nice example would be my old
Intel i5 750 on a Gigabyte P55A-UD4. I would need three SSDs to reach the
maximum read speed of the Plextor M6e Black.
But now let's move forward to the review.
Speed degradation after heavy testing
On this page I will measure how the SSD
performs after heavy testing and usage.
I will run an AS SSD benchmark test when
the OS is freshly installed so that we can get a good view of how the drive
performs with the OS. After that I will fill the drive up to 50% of its
capacity, use the drive for a few days, and then re-run the AS SSD benchmark.
The same procedure will be followed once again, but this time the drive will be
filled close to 90% or higher of its capacity. To finish this test, I will
simply delete all the extra data and leave the PC idle for a few hours so that
the controller has the time to perform any necessary cleaning, then see how the
drive performs.
In this picture you can see the test files
that I will be copying to fill the drive with data, as you can see files vary
from 8GB ISOs to very small text files.
In the picture below you will find all the
applications that were installed for this test using Ninite, and I have also installed Microsoft
Office 2007.
Now let’s start our tests.
This is the first run of AS SSD with the Plextor
M6e Black 128GB SSD, and here the overall score was almost identical to the one
that I got when the drive didn’t have the OS on it. An excellent result.
When leaving the drive with less than 4GB
of free space we can see that the M6e Black continues to give an excellent result.
After deleting almost half the files from
the SSD the Plextor M6e Black 128GB SSD was capable of maintaining its performance
and give a slightly higher score than the first run that I did with a clean
install.
Finally, after removing all the unnecessary
files, plus leaving the drive for five minutes to idle, the result continues to
be excellent and the numbers are almost identical to the ones that I got when I
first ran AS SSD.
This concludes our review. To read the final
thoughts and conclusion, click the link below....
To sum up, this is what I would say:
It’s time to close the review, and I will
start with the my only complaint about the drive, this is not the slow write
speed of the 128GB, even though I would like to have seen higher speeds, but I'm
complaining about the price. If Plextor could only have been more aggressive
with the pricing of the M6e Black then this drive would have been an excellent
choice.
Now it’s time to focus more on the
positives of the Plextor M6e Black, starting with the packaging and its
overall presentation, then there is the software that Plextor offers,
something that is very useful to all of us, and should make things much more easy.
Another positive is the five year warranty that Plextor offers, which shows
that Plextor has a lot of faith on their product. The drive was one of the
fastest SSD’s that I have tested, and the 128GB drive with its limited write
speed was the only thing that held it back from giving much higher results.
Overall performance is very good,
and in the real world tests the drive gave some very impressive results, as
expected in the read tests. In all my other tests though the performance was
also very good. Having the option to boot the drive in a system with a legacy
BIOS was something that gives some extra points to the drive, and from my
testing I was very happy to see an improvement in boot times, but mainly how my
old PC started to feel more alive. The same story also applies to the X99
system that I tested the Plextor M6e Black with. The drive was very fast in every
test that I usually run, and the experience was something that continued to
impress me. The Plextor M6e Black has the looks, for those that want to
have it on display on their case, but it also has the speed, and this is
something that everyone is looking for in a modern SSD, not that we will have
to wait for Plextor to release a PCIe Gen3 X4 drive, but for the moment this
is the fastest drive that Plextor has to offer.
The parting sentence is:
“The Plextor M6e Black is simply an
excellent drive, with great performance, outstanding looks, very good software,
and is also bootable in older systems. An excellent upgrade not only for your
new system but also for your older PC.”
I am going to give the Plextor M6e Black
the “Very good” rating and the “Editor’s Choice” award.
Thanks to:
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EFD |
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Alex Schepeljanski for |
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FutureMark for
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