Plextor Announces M6e Black Edition PCI-Express SSD

[btarunr]

Plextor launched its flagship SSD for PC enthusiasts, the M6e Black Edition. Clearly intended for enthusiast PC builds, miles away from an enterprise environment, this drive features a focus on product design, with its matte black PCB, full-length metal shroud, and a racy red aluminium heatsink popping out from a cutout in that shroud. This heatsink cools the controller and NAND flash chips. The drive comes in three capacities - 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB.

Under the hood, the M6e Black Edition is essentially an M.2 riser with PCI-Express 2.0 x4 wiring. The drive sitting on its M.2 slot is driven by a Marvell 88SS9183 controller, wired to Toshiba-made 19 nm Toggle NAND flash, and 1 GB of DRAM cache. The drive offers sequential transfer rates of up to 770 MB/s reads, with up to 625 MB/s writes; with up to 105,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 100,000 IOPS 4K random writes. In addition to PCIe bus power, the drive requires power from a SATA power connector. Features include PlexTurbo 2.0 technology that shuttles hot data to system memory, TRIM, NCQ, and NVMe. The drive is bootable.



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[timta2]

Dang that looks sharp!

 

[inferKNOX]

Ha ha, the Samsung SM951 PCIe M.2 SSD completely smokes this, at 2,150MB/s and 1,550 MB/s (read/write), 130,000 and 85,000 IOPS (inputs/outputs).

Samsung are really on a roll, it seems, forcing others to market their stuff by "dressing it up", since it lags in performance.

 

[bogami]

Cosmetic intervention does not increase performance and in this case unnecessary . All newer motherboards have already M.2. slot onboard . RAID option would be the the right solution but what about when this one samsung easily overcome that.
More could earn if I sell this type of carrier and that for RAID .

 

[jabbadap]

I haven't seen any pcie ssd card from samsung(I don't mean m.2 but pcie as this), is there any?

Just wonder if you can change that m.2 card of these drive. And how is that pcie2 x2 keeping performance down. Kingston uses x4 and have more speed.

 

[AsRock]

Price is going be the deciding factor with this.

 

[Hood]

I have the bare M6e drive, and it's not fast enough so you can tell any difference over an 850 Pro - PCIe 2.0 x2 is a dead end. PCIe 3.0 x4 drives are coming this year and they will be fast enough to feel it and reasonably priced.

 

[Disparia]

Very slick, performance is adaquate for most, and...

In addition to PCIe bus power, the drive requires power from a SATA power connector.

what the hell? Way to ruin the image, the whole purpose of spending money on that fancy heatsink/shroud.

 

[AsRock]

Very slick, performance is adaquate for most, and...



what the hell? Way to ruin the image, the whole purpose of spending money on that fancy heatsink/shroud.

Thinking they get a little hot, hopefully that's a sticker on a ram chip and not the controller as i bet that gets a least a little hot too.

I like the heatsink it looks like it's made to take the heat completely away from any chips.

 

[Cybrnook2002]

Don't forget though guys, the samsung drives lack an OP ROM, so many people are having boot issues with these if you want to install windows 7. If your on 8 or higher and don't mind running EFI mode (using your UEFI's EFI drivers) with Secure boot enabled, then you may have better luck. Nevertheless I am about to sell my 2 x Samsung XP941 256's because of this and have fallen back to my trusty Plextor m6e 256 (with OPROM). - This is on X99 platform

 

[Patriot]

Ha ha, the Samsung SM951 PCIe M.2 SSD completely smokes this, at 2,150MB/s and 1,550 MB/s (read/write), 130,000 and 85,000 IOPS (inputs/outputs).

Samsung are really on a roll, it seems, forcing others to market their stuff by "dressing it up", since it lags in performance.

Can't wait to see a price for the samsung... hope they don't just sell it to OEMs...

 

[Schmuckley]

I like the performance numbers.

Ha ha, the Samsung SM951 PCIe M.2 SSD completely smokes this, at 2,150MB/s and 1,550 MB/s (read/write), 130,000 and 85,000 IOPS (inputs/outputs).
Samsung are really on a roll, it seems, forcing others to market their stuff by "dressing it up", since it lags in performance.

Ha Ha Ha,the Fusion ioDrive2 completely smokes that @ 3.0GB/s and 2.6 GB/S

http://www.solidstateworks.com/ioDrive2-Duo.asp

both are made of unobtanium.

..but i do know somebody that had one.

 

[inferKNOX]

I like the performance numbers.



Ha Ha Ha,the Fusion ioDrive2 completely smokes that @ 3.0GB/s and 2.6 GB/S

http://www.solidstateworks.com/ioDrive2-Duo.asp

both are made of unobtanium.

..but i do know somebody that had one.

Umm... would you really say that is a reasonable comparison of items in the same bracket? The SM951 is comparable to the XP941, whose 256GB price is $250, yet you're comparing it it 1.2+TB drives for $28.5K?

I haven't seen any pcie ssd card from samsung(I don't mean m.2 but pcie as this), is there any?

Note:

Under the hood, the M6e Black Edition is essentially an M.2 riser with PCI-Express 2.0 x4 wiring. The drive sitting on its M.2 slot is driven by a Marvell 88SS9183 controller, wired to Toshiba-made 19 nm Toggle NAND flash, and 1 GB of DRAM cache.

This is just an M.2 card. If you want the Samsung equivalent, just pair the Samsung's M.2 card with a riser card the same way, et voila.

 

[Hood]

Don't forget though guys, the samsung drives lack an OP ROM, so many people are having boot issues with these if you want to install windows 7. If your on 8 or higher and don't mind running EFI mode (using your UEFI's EFI drivers) with Secure boot enabled, then you may have better luck. Nevertheless I am about to sell my 2 x Samsung XP941 256's because of this and have fallen back to my trusty Plextor m6e 256 (with OPROM). - This is on X99 platform

I'm hoping the new Samsung SM951 drive will be different, it uses NVMe instead of AHCI driver, so it will probably require an OPROM to boot...

 

[Cybrnook2002]

I'm hoping the new Samsung SM951 drive will be different, it uses NVMe instead of AHCI driver, so it will probably require an OPROM to boot...

We will see. I would hope so, having the built in OPROM really helps when booting from a UEFI motherboard. I never "really" made the transition until Z97, X99 in UEFI. Most of my boards prior were either BIOS based or your standard Hybrid EFI/Bios system. But on a true UEFI system, it is a different game. Had to reformat my thumb drive with my windows 7 installer on it so make sure it was GPT and not MBR etc.... lot's of small things that took me for a learning curve. Then once it was up and running it was a crap shoot whether it would boot or hang (due to UEFI drivers baked into your systems UEFI). So, now you tied to board manf's to pan out issue with updates.

Then there is SCM and Secureboot which are all rolled into this as well.

Running my (not 4 x, but 2 x) Plextor m6e again, and all is well in the world.

 

[jabbadap]

This is just an M.2 card. If you want the Samsung equivalent, just pair the Samsung's M.2 card with a riser card the same way, et voila.

A bit late respond, but m6e-bk is pcie-gen2 x2 card as is it's predecessor not x4. Upcoming m7e is pcie2-x4 same as samsungs xp941. And of course SM951 is pcie3-x4 so it's one step advance over plextor.

Quick look at the prices at 256GB m.2 ssds from germany:
m6e-hhhl start at 213€, m6e m.2, start at 184€, xp941 m.2 start at 249€, Delock adapter card at 19€. Yes the m6e is inferior than xp941, but it's a lot cheaper too. Granted this m6e-bk is all in all old tech(rebranded m6e-hhhl with prettier outfit, why to hell not m7e), and if it's prized poorly it's bad product.