In House Review - Plextor M8Se 512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD

[Ian]

Today, CDRLabs brings you a review of Plextor's new TLC NAND-based PCIe SSD, the M8Se. Targeted at entry-level gamers, this M.2 form factor drive is powered by Marvell's 88SS1093 "Eldora" controller and is available with up to 1TB of Toshiba's 15nm TLC NAND flash. To compensate for the slow write speeds typically associated with TLC NAND, the M8Se uses Plextor's exclusive PlexNitro cache acceleration technology to optimize performance without taking up any space on the drive. The M8Se is also equipped with a PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe 1.2 interface to provide higher bandwidth and lower latency than SATA SSDs.


Plextor M8Se 512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe Solid State Drive

[Ian]

Plextor has released the 1.01 firmware for the M8Se series. I haven't tried it yet, but the change log says:

This firmware revision improves:
1. SLC cache algorithm to enhance drive
stability.

http://www.goplextor.com/Product/Detail ... #/Download

[Ian]

I finally got a chance to try the 1.01 firmware. The drive does appear to be a little faster, especially when it comes to 4K QD16 writes.

Plextor M8Se Anvil v1.01.png (95.11 KiB) Viewed 22750 times

I also reran the PCMark consistency test and the giant spikes are now gone. The M8Se actually performed a little better than the M8Pe. However, when compared to the other PCIe SSDs, its still not great.

Plextor M8Se PCMark Bandwidth.png (83.01 KiB) Viewed 22750 times

Plextor M8Se PCMark Latency.png (81.71 KiB) Viewed 22750 times