Model: Plextor M8Pe 512GB PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
Manufacturer: Plextor
Provided By: Plextor LLC

As one of the biggest names in the storage industry, Plextor doesn't need much of an introduction. For nearly twenty years, they've produced some of the best optical drives the industry has seen. Known the world over for their quality, performance, and features, these drives have become favorites among consumers and professionals alike. Today, Plextor continues to lead the way by bringing cutting edge storage technologies to market. Along with an assortment of high-performance DVD and Blu-ray drives, the company offers a growing number of solid state drives.

With solid-state technology advancing at an ever increasing rate, Plextor has begun to look for ways to push performance beyond the limits of the current SATA specifications. In addition to technologies like PlexTurbo, which uses unused system resources to boost storage performance, the company has introduced a number of PCIe-based SSDs. The latest addition to this lineup is the M8Pe. Designed with gamers and professionals in mind, this NVMe 1.2 compliant, M.2 form factor drive is powered by Marvell's 88SS1093 "Eldora" controller and is available with up to 1TB of Toshiba's 15nm Toggle MLC NAND flash. The M8Pe also uses a PCIe Gen3 x4 lane interface to deliver up to 2,500 MB/s read and 1,400 MB/s write speeds along with a maximum of 240,000 random write IOPS.

The M8Pe is offered in a wide range of capacities and not one or two, but three different configurations. The drive is available by itself in the M.2 2280 form factor (M8PeGN), with a small aluminum heatsink (M8PeG) and as a PCIe add-in card (M8PeY) that's equipped with an extra large heatsink and LED lighting. For this review, Plextor sent us the 512GB version of the add-in card, which is capable of delivering up to 2,300 MB/s sequential read and 1,300 MB/s sequential write speeds along with up to 260,000 random read and 250,000 random write IOPS.

   Plextor M8Pe 512GB PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
General Specifications
Part Number PX-512M8PeY
Capacity 512GB
NAND Flash Toshiba 15nm Toggle MLC
Controller Marvell 88SS1093
Cache 512MB DDR3
Form Factor HHHL PCIe card
Interface PCIe Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.2

Performance
Sequential Read 2,300 MB/s Max
Sequential Write 1,300 MB/s Max
Random Read (IOPS 4K) 260,000 Max
Random Write (IOPS 4K) 250,000 Max

Environment and Reliability
Power Requirement DC 12V 2.0A (Max.) at PCIe Slot
Temperature (Operating) 0°C ~ 70°C / 32°F ~ 158°F
Shock 1500G (Max.), at 1 msec half-sine
Vibration (Operating) 7 ~ 800Hz, 1.63Grms
MTBF >2.4 million hours
Endurance (TBW) 768TB

Dimensions and Weight
Dimensions 182 x 121.04 x 22.39 mm
Weight 230g

Other Features
Aluminum heatsink with LED lighting
Supports Plextor's TrueSpeed and TrueProtect technologies
Latest LDPC technology to guarantee data accuracy
Five year warranty

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the M8Pe has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at Plextor's new NVMe SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the M8Pe have what it takes? Can it deliver the performance and features that we've come to expect from Plextor? Keep reading as we find out.


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