The M9PG Plus comes packaged in an attractive black and rainbow colored box. In addition to a small, plastic window which lets you see what the drive looks like, the front advertises key features like its 1TB capacity, support for NVMe and 5 year warranty. The back of the box provides a bit more information regarding the M9PG Plus' specifications and features.
Inside the box, you'll find a clamshell case containing the M9PG Plus, a small mounting screw and a fold out guide containing warranty information as well as some brief installation instructions.
Physical Features:
The M9PG Plus uses the 2280 form factor for M.2 (NGFF) SSDs. It measures 80.00 x 22.86 x 9.20 mm and tips the scales at a 30.8g. The drive also has an "M key" edge connector which provides PCIe SSDs with up to 4x lanes of bandwidth.
The main difference between the M9PG Plus and the M9PGN Plus is the addition of a heatsink. Unlike Plextor's previous heatsink designs, this one wraps entirely around the drive and is held together using a series of clips. The heatsink also has a number of fins along the top which increases the surface area for greater cooling.
The M9PG Plus uses Marvell's 88SS1092 "Eldora Plus" controller. This 8 channel, PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe SSD controller is equipped with three ARM Cortex R5 cores and features support for 15/16nm MLC/TLC and 3D NAND. The 88SS1092 also integrates Marvell’s third generation low-density parity check (LDPC) technology for higher reliability and endurance.
For the 1TB version of the M9PG Plus, Plextor used KIOXIA's 96-layer BiCS 4 3D NAND flash. Looking at the pictures above, you can see that there are two 512GB NAND flash packages on the top of the PCB. The drive also has a single NANYA 1024MB LPDDR3L DRAM memory chip that is used for caching.
