Update: Plextor has provided MSRP pricing for all three drives (see table below). Further, the company expects Newegg prices to be at or possibly slightly below MSRP. The new pricing information certainly makes the drives more attractive than previous estimates.
Plextor showed off its M6e PCI-E SSD at CES earlier this year, and the drives will soon be available for purchase in the US. The M6e is a M.2 form factor SSD that uses a Marvell 88SS9183 controller and Toshiba Toggle NAND MLC flash to offer up to 512GB of speedy (and bootable!) storage.
The Plextor M6e drive comes as a bare M.2 drive or as a version paired with a M.2-to-PCI-E adapter card for desktop PCs without the newer M.2 connector on the motherboard itself. In either case, the M6e utilizes two PCI-E 2.0 lanes and avoids the SATA III 6Gbps storage bottleneck altogether. The drive has its own BIOS implementation and should not require users to install separate drivers. The SSD supports both legacy and UEFI BIOSes along with standard storage technology such as AHCI, NCQ, encryption (AES-256), TRIM, SMART, et al.
The drives come in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities. The M6e SSDs are rated with a 2,400,000 hour MTBF and come with a 5 year warranty. Both the 256GB and 512GB drives reportedly offer up 770 MB/s sequential reads, 105,000 4K random read IOPS, and 100,000 4K random write IOPS. The 512GB M6e SSD has the highest sequential write speeds at up to 625 MB/s with the 256GB model topping out at 580 MB/s. The 128GB version is a bit slower in sequential writes and random read/write IOPS due to fewer NAND chips and channels, but still manages to offer up to 770 MB/s reads, 335 MB/s writes, 96,000 4K random read IOPS, and 83,000 4K random write IOPS.
The table below lays out the speeds and estimated pricing of the drives at the available capacities according to Plextor. Fortunately, Tek Syndicate found that at least the 256GB drive performs very close to its rated speeds in their video review.
Plextor M6e Capacities | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB |
---|---|---|---|
DRAM | 256MB DDR3 | 512MB DDR3 | 1GB DDR3 |
Sequential Read* | 770 MB/s | 770 MB/s | 770 MB/s |
Sequential Write* | 335 MB/s | 580 MB/s | 625 MB/s |
Random Read IOPS* | 96,000 | 105,000 | 105,000 |
Random Write IOPS* | 83,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 |
Price MSRP | $179.99 | $299.99 | $549.99 |
*All listed speeds are "up to n MB/s."
The drives will be available later this month at as-yet-unreleased MSRPs. The drives will initially be a Newegg exclusive in the US from April 7th to April 13th, after which it should make its way to other retailers. Note that the USD prices in the above chart are estimates based on pricing information scattered around the internet for the M6e drives. I have reached out to Plextor for comment and will update with official MSRP information as soon as possible.
your article has a typo…
your article has a typo… but still manages to offer up to 770 MB/s writes, 335 MB/s reads, 96,000 4K random read IOPS. You have the reads and writes reversed for the 128MB model.
D’oh, I will fix that ASAP.
D'oh, I will fix that ASAP. Thanks for pointing that out.
all I can say Is I want one.
all I can say Is I want one. I dont need one, i cant justify buying one, but, man oh man, I want one!
Here, take all my money!!!
Here, take all my money!!!
Yes…absolutely. Puts us on
Yes…absolutely. Puts us on par with the new macs.
About fricking time !
So, that SATAe thing is never
So, that SATAe thing is never going to take off then,…….right,….???
SATA Express? Well it’s
SATA Express? Well it's taking forever and a year to come out and will likely be outdone by direct PCI-E or other direct-to-chip interconnect technology before SATA Express in the currently proposed form is released 😛
What would be faster a pair
What would be faster a pair of cheap ssd’s in raid 0 or this?
Your mom
Your mom
2 Samsung 256 840 pros will
2 Samsung 256 840 pros will run you about $400 total and will be faster as well. In raid 0.
PCI-E latency is MUCH lower
PCI-E latency is MUCH lower than SATA. Depends on the benchmark and/or how the drive is used.
So what about these new
So what about these new motherboards coming out with so many SATA connections? Does it even matter when PCIe is coming out?
2 Samsung 256 840 pros will
2 Samsung 256 840 pros will run you about $400 total and will be faster as well.
But going direct via PciE
But going direct via PciE would have a lower IO transaction latency, than going via SATA in most cases.
Isn`t this like what Apple
Isn`t this like what Apple did…bond the SSD right to the bus ?
It may be a Tiny Bit faster
It may be a Tiny Bit faster than my Samsung Evolution.it would have to come way down in Price even to be considered to stray away from Samsung drives,just my Opinion
Does anyone know if these can
Does anyone know if these can be put in a raid 0? perhaps with a bios prompt at boot, similar to the OCZ RevoDrives?
does this work on windows XP?
does this work on windows XP?
This drive cannot be seen by
This drive cannot be seen by Win XP at all, I assume this is related to the lack of AHCI support by this older OS. It does work beautifully for Win 7 or higher. Win 7/8 installer DVD will recognize the drive and partition/install to it. I currently have the Plextor M6E 512GB in the M.2 slot of my Gigabyte GA-X99-UD5 motherboard as a Win 7 boot drive. I bought the PCIe adapter version but took out the bare module, since I needed my PCIe slots for other things. Detection of this drive by the motherboard BIOS is perfect and consistent.