The Plextor M8Pe (512GB) SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on December 14, 2016 9:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage and unlike our Iometer tests, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, a few data points about its latency, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The Plextor M8Pe isn't breaking any records on The Destroyer. Its average data rate is slower than Samsung's PCIe SSDs and the OCZ RD400, but it does beat the Intel SSD 750 and is about 75% faster overall than the fastest SATA SSDs. The heatsink on the M8PeY only provides a very slight performance boost.
The average service times of the M8Pe are on par with the OCZ RD400 and the Intel SSD 750, and substantially worse than Samsung's PCIe SSDs. The differences are minor in comparison to the huge latency advantage they all enjoy over the best SATA SSDs (and Intel's TLC-based SSD 600p).
The frequency of high-latency outliers places the M8Pe in the second tier of drives. Samsung's PCIe SSDs have few or no operations take more than 100ms and the smallest percentage of operations that exceed 10ms. The M8Pe scores similarly to the Intel SSD 750 and OCZ RD400.
The Intel SSD 600p is the only thing keeping the M8Pe from taking last place for power consumption among M.2 PCIe SSDs. The M8Pe uses significantly more power than the OCZ RD400, which itself is more power-hungry than Samsung's 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.