When it comes to DIY performance upgrades, the two biggest strides have been made in high performance graphics cards, and the mass market adoption of SSDs. While most high performance GPUs still only need a spare PCIe slot, and adequate power, for it to give you a generational boost in performance, SSDs, however, have changed with the recent unveiling of the Intel Z97 and X99 platforms, offering higher performance than before. The new M.2 SSDs, no bigger than a stick of gum, shame even the fastest 2.5 inch SATA units, and unfortunately, don’t just “plug in” to older motherboards. That’s why the Plextor M6e is such an interesting product to those of us, still hanging on to an “old skool” platform.
Features and Specifications
The Plextor M6e is essentially, a PCIe Gen2 x2 card with an M.2 slot, and one of the company’s M6e M.2 2280 SSDs pre-installed into it from the factory. This allows older systems to use the latest SSD technology, without having to completely replace an older system. We reviewed the bare M.2 2280 version recently, and came away very impressed with the performance for Intel’s next generation platforms, and it was priced reasonably against the top end SATA SSDs. So we’re eager to see how it does in our “old skool” Intel X58 platform, which will be the subject of our testing.
The adapter itself is a half height card, with a full height bracket attached. LEDs on the back indicate read write states, and the card physically fits into any PCIe Gen2 x2 and above slot, without the need for external power. This version of the M6e comes in three models: 128GB, 256GB (as tested), and 512GB.
| Model | PX-AG128M6e | PX-AG256M6e | PX-AG512M6e |
| Capacity | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB |
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Buffer
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| DRAM Cache | 256MB DDR3 | 512MB DDR3 | 1GB DDR3 |
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Read/Write Speed (Under Windows NTFS)
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| Sequential Read Speed | Up to 770 MB/s* | Up to 770 MB/s* | Up to 770 MB/s* |
| Sequential Write Speed | Up to 335 MB/s* | Up to 580 MB/s* | Up to 625 MB/s* |
| Random Read Speed (IOPS 4KB) |
Up to 96,000* | Up to 105,000* | Up to 105,000* |
| Random Write Speed (IOPS 4KB) |
Up to 83,000* | Up to 100,000* | Up to 100,000* |
In terms of performance specs, as indicated above, the adapter seems to provide no added overhead as the specs seem nearly identical to the M.2 2280 version. The PX-AG256Me, which we’ll be testing today, is in the middle, in terms of sequential write speed, but all the products have the same top read speeds at 770MB/s, which far exceeds even the highest end SATA SSDs on the market.
The entire series offers a high level of system compatibility with support for all flavours of Windows 7 and up, including various distributions of Linux. TRIM, SMART, NCQ, including 256 bit AES encryption are all part of the list of features.
Plextor offers a full 5 year warranty on the M6e series. Pricing is $159.99 US for 128GB, $269.99 US for the 256GB, and $469.99 US for 512GB.
What’s In The Box?
The Plextor M6e doesn’t come with much in the box. But it also isn’t needed as the card is a complete plug and play solution, and should be recognized like any other SSD. You’ll get basic instructions, including an invitation to their VIP Club.
Most curious was the inclusion of a slot mounting screw. While most cases are tool free, the Plextor M6e could be potentially carrying your OS or valuable data. So having it fixed with a screw, might not be a bad idea.
Let’s throw the Plextor M6e in an “old skool” rig that we still rely on every day, and see what happens!
Test System Setup
As we mentioned, this would be the perfect generational step up for anyone running an older SSD, or is stuck with, SATA2 ports (or those crappy Marvell SATA3 ports that made their way onto some X58 boards). It doesn’t rely on a newer slot or port, but instead, employs the bandwidth already built into your PCI Express slots. It’s the perfect place for high throughput devices like the Plextor M6e, so we decided to throw it into our video editing workstation, that’s still running the very powerful Intel X58 chipset, along with a Core i7 980X processor. Our GIGABYTE G1.Killer Assassin X58 board does indeed, have those crappy, Marvell SATA3 ports, but it also has a lot of hungry PCI Express slots that aren’t full of stuff.
Besides the board and the CPU, our operating system of choice will be Window 7 Ultimate 64-bit, all patched. We’ve got 48GBs of ADATA DDR3 1600MHz memory onboard, and for GPU duties, we’ve been rendering our projects with the still very powerful, NVIDIA GTX 690. The Plextor M6e will be compared against two other storage solutions that we currently make use of in this system, which includes and ADAPTEC RAID 3805 controller with four 1TB Seagate SAS Drives onboard, running in RAID 0, and a Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB SSD, running off one of the Marvell SATA3 ports onboard.
Installation Notes
The Plextor M6e boasts a high level of compatibility, even with our older X58 platform. Despite being a “gamer” board, the M6e installed uneventfully into one of four PCI Express slots (we chose the one closest to the GPU) and booted up, loading its own BIOS. Then it zipped right into Windows 7, where we quickly used disk manager, to quickly format and setup the drive, and we experienced nothing out of the ordinary. It was exactly the same as installing any other SATA device. In fact, drivers aren’t even needed.
Benchmarking Results – CrystalDiskMark
Our first round of benchmarks includes the latest version of CrystalDiskMark, which gave us some very impressive numbers for the Plextor M6e (above), even slightly faster than the ones we achieved in our test of the Plextor M6e M.2 2280 bare drive. This is extremely good news for anyone that wants today’s technology, on yesterday’s still very capable systems. What’s even more impressive is how it fares against the two other storage options mentioned…
The Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB SATA SSD (above), hobbled slightly by the older Marvell controller, on our X58 platform, definitely gives it up to the Plextor M6e in the PCIe slot. With the slight exception of 4K write speeds, the PCI express powered M6e runs over it. Even if the HyperX 3K SSD was attached to a more healthy SATA3 controller in one of today’s platforms, the results would still be significantly in favour of the Plextor M6e.
The Plextor M6e also does fantastically well against our ADAPTEC 5805 powered RAID 0 array (above), which is using four 1TB Seagate SAS drives. Considering that the amount of storage we need for this array is nowhere near 4TBs, we could easily get away with a single Plextor M6e in the 512GB version for our video editing duties under Adobe Premiere Pro CC. It would end up removing a lot of additional bulk and complexity. A much smaller, high performance, video editing system, can easily be realized with the use of these types of high speed storage products.
Let’s run through one very important benchmark that will tell us if the M6e would really make a worthwhile upgrade for our system.
Benchmarking Results – BlackMagicDesigns Disk Speed Test
BlackMagicDesign’s Disk Speed Test assesses your storage system’s ability to handle the rigors of reading and writing for a range of different video resolutions and formats. The Plextor M6e checks off most, if not all, the major NTSC screen resolutions that are commonly used today.
The Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB drive, which again, is somewhat hobbled by the Marvell SATA3 controller, gets considerably lower read and write scores, and fails in more resolutions as the bit depth increases. It’s clearly the wrong storage medium for the job, and won’t get much better, even with a “better” SATA3 port.
Finally, our ADAPTEC 5805 RAID 0 array shows of why it’s been in our video editing system for so long. Compared to the Plextor M6e, the max read and write speeds basically trade places with this array, but it gets the nod in more places when it comes to overall format support. While the ADAPTEC 5805 with four 1TB SAS drives is the optimum solution, the Plextor M6e gets the nod in all the categories that we currently edit in.
The issues only seem to crop up with we’re at 50 or 60 fps at 1080p, which are resolutions we rarely use at all. It’s possible that the 512GB version of the Plextor M6e, with its higher write speed performance, would be able to seal the deal. It’s also a much less complex solution, without the need for a controller card and four additional hard drives.
Final Thoughts
After all the testing is done, the Plextor M6e does prove itself to be an extremely advantageous upgrade for any user without access to an M.2 slot on their motherboard, and wants to take advantage of the performance of today’s latest technology moving forward. In benchmarks, this product proves itself extremely well, going toe to toe with a much more complex RAID 0 array with a hardware controller, and showing why this technology is the future, by basically embarrassing a fairly decent SATA SSD.
And the best part is, it plugs right into your older system, with a high level of compatibility, with setup no more difficult than what you’re used to installing a SATA based drive. We know that if that RAID 0 array drops a drive, we’re doing one of these in a 512GB version. We’re also moving everything into a smaller case!
While the Plextor M6e does offer a much less complex way to get high data throughput, the pricing does come at a bit of a premium vs the available storage. That’s where SATA SSDs are still a good value for fairly brisk storage for the dollar. The Plextor M6e in the 512GB version, in this configuration with PCIe adapter, will run you $459 US, while one of the fastest SATA SSDs, the Samsung 850 PRO 512GB, will run you $379.99 US. But of course, it’s nowhere near as fast.
About the only thing that’s a detriment, would be the premium price, for the storage given, if you need more than the Max 512GBs currently available. But it sure is fast though!
Pros
- The latest storage technology available on your older system
- Faster performance than any SATA SSD and less complex than a RAID 0 array
- Extremely easy and quick setup
Cons
- Takes up a PCI Express Slot
- Priced at a premium for the amount of storage given
Overall Rating: 9.0 / 10.0
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