Plextor M6e SSD & M.2 Drive Standard Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,261 words · ~6 min read
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the CM Storm sf7 uses a massive 18 cm
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fan to cool your gaming notebook and it adds a four port USB hub click now to
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learn more this video ended up being less about the plexor m6 SSD
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specifically and more to do with what it represents in general finally a move
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away from the longtime bottleneck that is the SATA interface and towards PCI
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Express for system storage but with a bit of a Twist this time unlike previous
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cludy Solutions like the ocz revo Drive which used a RAID controller as a
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middleman between the PCI Express controller on your CPU or motherboard
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and the SATA controllers on multiple drives that were soldered onto a PCB
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something that caused long boot times no support for the trim command and poor
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compatibility aside from being something you could set up just as easily yourself
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this new approach uses native PCI Express all the way through to the
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controller on your Drive elegant ehy
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well okay so this product doesn't look particularly elegant but don't worry
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this PCI Express card that the daughter board sits on is basically nothing more
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than a dumb interconnect between your PCI Express slot and the m.2 interface
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SSD that's sitting on it here electrically it's just a straight pass
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through so Elegance isn't always about looks am I right before we get into the
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M60 specifically though it's probable that you've never actually seen an m.2
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drive before so let's do aqu WTF is that session here this interface
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on this motherboard here might look pretty much like an Neta or mini PCI
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Express lot but it's actually much more badass than that it gives whatever is
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plugged into it access to up to four PCIe gen 3 Lanes a seta 36 gbit port and
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even USB the card side of the interface is designed from the ground up for the
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best possible ratio of features to physical space making it a great way to
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get desktop performance on Ultrabooks and other small thin and light devices
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cards can be designed in a number of length and widths with most of them 22
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mm wide just wide enough for a flash chip and they can tap into whatever
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combination of connectivity they need including PCI Express SATA and SATA
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Express which is basically ahci commands over a PCI Express Bus using the new 3.2
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standard you'll be able to tell what your card needs by the keying on the
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bottom of the connector which leads us pretty well into the m6e it uses two PCI
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Express Gen 2 lanes for a theoretical Max throughput of 1,000 megabytes per
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second or about 60% more than SATA 36 gbit it's 80 mm long and 22 mm wide with
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eight of toshiba's 19 NM toggle Nan flash chips and a Marvel 9183 native PCI
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Express controller that uses ahci commands instead of NVMe to offer
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improved compatibility and driverless operation at the cost of some
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performance particularly in random workloads now while plex's product page
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laughably declares it to be the first SSD optimized for gamers the speed of
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this drive with their custom firmware is pretty impressive the 256 gig model that
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we have here can handle sequential right speeds of around
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580 megabytes per second and sequential reads of around 770 megabytes per second
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well over the maximum of SATA 3 with random reads and wres both rated at
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around 100,00 000 iops now beyond that
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plexer does include some extra Technologies including native UEFI boot
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support for faster drivve initialization and boot times on ufi motherboards as
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well as their usual true speed garbage collection algorithm that helps it
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maintain its performance over time and a 5-year warranty to go along with the
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claims about you know outstanding reliability that they make now speaking
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of those claims plexer takes an interesting approach here while another
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manufacturer a very reputable one I might add asked me not to talk about
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their use of flex R SSD testing Chambers plexer wears this right on their sleeve
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and calls out their driver liability testing standards right on the product
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page and it's for this reason that the lusch tips.com Forum uses a plexor SSD
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as its boot drive there are only a handful of SSD makers that I would trust
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in such a deployment so there you have it while the m6c is very expensive
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features a Frankenstein like implementation and and in the real world
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due to Microsoft's poor native Windows 8 ahci driver and some other early adopter
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struggles doesn't really perform better than a normal SSD it is the first Native
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PCI Express SSD I've had the pleasure of laying my hands on and I'm excited for
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the future of this new technology
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speaking of being excited for the future summer is finally heating up now you may
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have noticed my eyewear changing throughout the video today I'm actually
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supporting Linus techtips and thanks to you the viewer for watching without both
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of you then this whole thing wouldn't work and we couldn't make videos
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so way to go all of you as usual guys
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the link to pricing and availability for the plexor m6e is in the video
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Kickback whenever you buy stuff it helps us out a lot thanks again for watching
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and as always don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips for more videos like
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this one like ssds
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motherboards sunglasses
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can put these back on these studio lights are actually surprisingly
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bright it's much better