Plextor M5 Pro SSD review

The SSD can be opened up easily and shows a full-sized PCB with a plastic spacer that spans the drive perimeter. This 6Gbps storage unit makes use of Intel 19nm MLC Toggle NAND. 

At total of 16 NAND flash memory ICs (eight on each side) can be spotted on the PCB. The NAND FLASH partition are assigned directly to the controller. All the way to the lower left you can see two ICs, these are in fact Nanya RAM ICs, each bringing 256MB of cache memory towards to controller for fast file write operations. The two Nanya 256MB DDR3 DRAM chips operate at 1333MHz

Then we flip the PCB around on the right the Marvell Monet 88SS9187-BLD2 8-channel dual core controller can be seen. The labeling has been a little washed out unfortunately. This is an eight-channel controller with (from what we heard) the ability of a possible 200MB/s per channel throughput, which is just a crazy high value. Fact is that with such values we can not state that the SATA3 controller is again a bottleneck.

Still, that is good news for the lower 128GB SKU performance wise. Combined the bandwidth is just exceptional for single non RAID drive. The controller support TRIM. 

As stated the MLC Toggle NAND used is 19nm in architecture, Toshiba Toggle NAND has SKU code TH58TEG7DDJTA20. 

Mind you that Plextor is releasing three models (SKUs), the Plextor M5 Pro 512GB is retailing for roughly $450, 256GB model for $250, and the 128GB model for $130, so that's give or take 1 USD per GB. Prices in EURO will be roughly equivalent. 

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