Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & Conclusion
Dear Gurus, you just had a taste of what the near future brings. M.2. and SATA Express will soar a new trend of SSDs, with performance a good notch faster. Typically the numbers you have seen only have been possible by RAID solutions, and these days RAID is not a favored solution at all. So yeah if you can't wait, run to the stores and get this storage unit. In the future once you upgrade you can just slide in the M.2. SSD onto the motherboard and move on as expected. One thing is for sure though, the product is very fast.
Performance
The Plextor M6e performance close to advertised, it can reach near 770 MB/sec reads and say 550 MB/sec writes. This however always goes for very selected benchmarks with bigger sequential writes. Once you pass 32/64KB files sizes the performance jumps up hard and fast easily passing 600 MB/sec easily. So the PCI Express storage unit shines at large sequential writes. IOPs performance was very good as well, though out write test showed below advertised performance, it was still more then you'll ever need.
We think that our trace test (in PCMark Vantage 64-bit)is by far the best test in our entire benchmark suite. This is a trace test and can emulate what you guys do on your PC but then multiplied by a factor 100. Trace testing resulted into a very good score.
Overall SSD Usage
As stated we very much enjoy the grand overall performance of this SSD series, so when you copy a fast amount of compressed data, then the SSD will perform seriously fast in performance. Make no mistake, replacing a HDD with an SSD in your desktop PC or laptop eliminates the random access lag of the HDD head, it is no longer mechanical. That combined with the performance SATA3/M.2. offers these days is simply a massive difference and probably the best upgrade you can make for your computer anno 2014.
Price, HDD VS SSD
First a generic rule that I always apply; you should probably stop looking at the Solid State Disk technology as if it were a traditional HDD. We'll all be old and grey before the two reach the same prices or top the multiple TB volume storage the HDD offers for less money. Comparing an SSD with an HDD is making a comparison in-between an integrated IGP or a dedicated graphics card, that last one will cost you a heck of a lot more yet you gain incredible overall performance. It is the very same with an SSD, use it as boot drive on Windows and applications and you instantly have removed a huge bottleneck, namely load and access times. It is a difference in-between night and day (in a proper system). For massive storage like movies, MP3 files and bulky data you do not access on a regular basis, sure that's where the HDD remains the winner as a cheaper storage solution. Guru3D's rule of thumb; the magic simply is finding a good combination in-between the two and balance things out. Use a nice 240GB SSD for your operating system and applications, and park these movies and MP3 files onto a separate TB HDD. That's where the magic happens. I kid you not, all my test systems and work systems run on SSDs, not once have I considered going back to HDDs. The benefits of a good SSD are simply grand. But that doesn't mean I do not understand the budget and cost dilemma that many of you are facing though.
Pricing
As mentioned on page two of this review, we looked up the numbers, you may expect the following prices:
MSRP M6e incl. 21% VAT:
- 128 GB - 160 EURO: 1,25 EURO / GB
- 256 GB - 260 EURO: 1,02 EURO / GB
- 512 GB - 505 EURO: 0,99 EURO / GB
These are rough MSRP prices and as you can see they are reasonable. You'll receive a two year carry-in warranty with this drive.
Concluding
As stated a couple of times now, this product shows what the very near future of SSDs will be like. Until motherboards get SATA Express, M.2. will be the next best thing. Once Intel releases their next-generation motherboard chipsets and once they get widely adopted these the M2 solutions will get very popular. Of course until that time if you would already like to taste the sheer performance it offers, you can pick up the M6e with PCIe daughter card. Just pop it into an empty x4 (or bigger) slot and you are good to go. The device is bootable, reliable, will last you a long time, has 5 years warranty and simply is extremely fast for this day and era. We've had no problems with the device whatsoever, we do like to mention that we have seen PCIe solutions react very different per motherboard and per motherboard manufacturer. So that is a bit tricky, for example I did a compatibility check on a Z77 ASUS Sabertooth, and the device did not pass ~400 MB/sec. That is the nature of some of the motherboards out there. The Z87 / Haswell solution from MSI we tested did not even want to go below 400 MB/sec :) Overall the M6e is a mighty impressive product that deserves the recognition and respect from all of us. As such I'd be happy to grant it a top pick award as this is truly next-gen performance being available now.
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