[Review] Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme 256GB

Introduction

In most of the South East Asia SSD market, Plextor is a company that is quite relatively unknown compared to other big name companies like OCZ, SanDisk, Micron, Samsung & Intel. This is quite surprising when their SSD’s are very well known in the US & European market for its superior performance & high reliability. Plextor has a few range of SSD in their inventory for the consumer market & enterprise market ranging from the M2P & M3 series to their current most top of the line M5 Pro series.

In this review, I will be reviewing the Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme 256GB which the folks from Build Technology Supply Sdn Bhd have been kindly enough given me a sample to take it for a spin through a series of benchmarks. The table below listed out some finer details of the M5 Pro Xtreme released by the manufacturer: 

Specifications: Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme 256 GB
Brand:	Plextor
Model:	M5 Pro Xtreme 256 GB
Controller:	Marvell 88SS9187
Flash Type:	Toshiba Synchronous Toggle Mode MLC NAND, 19nm
Buffer:	512MB DDR3
Form Factor:	2.5”
Dimension:	69.85mm x 100mm x 7mm
Capacity:	256 GB (238.47 GB usable)
Interface:	SATA 6 Gbps (SATA III)
Firmware:	1.02
Supported Tech:	256bit key AES Encryption, 128bit ECC, SMART, NCQ & TRIM
Warranty:	5 Years

Packaging

The front of the M5 Pro Xtreme packaging really stands out among the dull monotone packaging that most of SSD manufacturers are using. With its electric blue metallic packaging it really does look fresh. The model brand numbers & capacity are easily read and understood.

The rear of the packaging listed out details like the warranty, supported file format, its specifications etc for those who are interested in it.

Rejoice for all slim ultrabook users who’s looking for an upgrade, the M5 Pro is made with the 7mm height form factor in mind.

Some of the extra features according to Plextor that is integrated into their M5 Pro’s SSD which is True Speed & True Protect. According to their website, the features helps by:

• True speed prevents the drastic performance drops seen in some SSD’s after intense or long-term usage.
• True protect ensures that data is stored and retrieved without error by using ECCs, Plextor firmware and robust data hold-out algorithm.

Opening the outer box packaging, you will be greeted with a rubber like foam packaging to protect the SSD drive itself for any knocks during transport and handling. On top of the foam lid is pasted with instructions and key of the NTI SSD Solution Suite for Plextor software for buyers to easily do backups and migration from their current drives & ssd. Its a really nice bonus for any Plextor SSD buyers.

Inside the foam, creative use of space and arrangement is evident here where you can find all the included items in a nice tight packaging.

Inside the packaging you will receive:

• The SSD
• 3.5” Mounting Bracket
• The Screw Package
• Quick Installation Guide

 The SSD Drive

Unlike the flashy outer box packaging design, the drive has a nice simplistic design most modders would loved. A simple Plextor brand and logo adorns the top of the drive and a sticker with some details of the drive at the bottom. The whole drive case assembly material is fully aluminium unlike most other ssd in the market that uses hard plastic or combination of plastic/aluminium/metal. This may help in keeping the drive temperature down.

Details like manufactured date, firmware revision, capacity and model number are clearly stated in bottom sticker label of the drive.


The Software Suite

The NTI SSD Solution Suite is a fairly straightforward and easy program to use. In the main menu users can choose to use either Echo or Backup Now EZ. I dare to say that most users could clearly even guess their use from the name alone.

The Echo option lets the user to clone their existing hard drive or ssd to the new M5 Pro Xtreme ssd that the user have purchased. It’s really helpful when the user do not wish to go through the process of reinstalling and resetting up their pc all over again.

Backup Now Ez option lets the user do backup of the entire pc to protect from sudden data loss from cases of computer crash.

Review Testbed Configuration

In the review, I will be comparing the Plextor M5 Pro with a few run of the mill SSD & Hard Drive’s to show the difference in performance that any typical user would get in an event if they were to upgrade to the M5 Pro Xtreme SSD.

Testbed configurations are as follows:

• AMD Phenom II X6 1075T (Thuban, 6 cores, 3.3Ghz overclocked)
• Asus Crosshair V Formula (990FX, SB950, BIOS 1402)
• 2 x 2 GB Gskill Ripjaws DDR3-2000 (1766Mhz 9-9-9-24-1T)
• 2 x 4 GB Crucial Ballistix Elite DDR3-1866 (1766Mhz 9-9-9-24-1T)
• MSI HD6870 Hawk (930Mhz Core/5200Mhz Memory)
• Tested SSD/HDD

• Plextor M5 Pro Extreme 256GB (Firmware 1.02)
• Mushkin Chronos 120GB (Firmware 5.02)
• Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB
• Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARX 2TB

• Corsair TX650M 650W Power Supply
• Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64
• Drivers

§         Display: AMD Catalyst 13.1

§         SATA: Microsoft AHCI

Read Test Suite

In this first test, I will be using AIDA64 Extreme disk benchmark to get some estimation in the performance difference between the M5 Pro Xtreme with most SSD and Hard Drive any typical users would have in their system currently. AIDA64 Extreme Disk Benchmark is commonly used to determine the data transfer speed of modern hard disk drives, solid-state drives, optical drives, and flash memory based devices.

Right off the bat, the M5 Pro Xtreme showed its prowess in being able to sustain its read speed in the upper spectrum of 480 MB/s in all of the tests. The Chronos performance even though it is still quite good when you compared it to its Hard Drive rivals, still lacks in the performance department. In my opinion this may attribute to its slower aging SandForce controller and limited memory channel that is made available to the flash controller. The combination of Marvell controller & Toshiba NAND that Plextor has chosen for the M5 Pro Xtreme really shines in this test.



AS SSD Benchmark Test

AS SSD Benchmark is the second of the benchmark suites that I have selected to run in testing the M5 Pro Xtreme level of performance. So far it’s the only premier ssd only benchmark program in the market, used widely in ssd benchmark test all over the world; it does a good job of keeping the results simple but usable for users to understand. A fair warning though, the benchmark tests with incompressible data, so to some ssd with combination of flash controller and NAND memory that rely on compression for speed it doesn't always give a fair performance numbers.

Sequential Read/Write Speed

Sequential speed is where a SSD usually flex its muscle, with read speed going up almost to 500MB/s nearly saturating the maximum theoretical interface speed of SATAIII, the M5 Pro Xtreme makes mince meat of all the hard drives in the comparison. It even leaves the Mushkin Chronos, in the dust.

Random Read/Write 4K

Random Read/Write 4K-64

This is where things got a little bit surprising; in the random write 4k test, the Mushkin Chronos somehow suddenly was able to beat the M5 Pro Xtreme with about 10% difference in speed. Other than that it’s business as usual for the M5 Pro Xtreme in the random 4k read & read/write 4k-64 tests.

Compression Test

  

Based from the graphs you can see that the M5 Pro Xtreme has the best speed/consistency in both read and write. It’s read speed reaching as high as 480MB/s and maintaining it most of the time. Only in an instance that it’s write speed ever dropped low in the 70MB/s level. The same cannot be said about the others SSD & Hard drive in this test though.

Copy Benchmark

ISO Copy

Program Copy

Game Copy

In this test, the program emulates 3 types of copying workloads that a normal drive will be put through its entire lifetime in a consumer PC.  Again in each of the ISO, program & game copy test the M5 Pro Xtreme had registered both the highest copy rate & the lowest duration rate among the hard drives & ssd drives.

PCMark 7

When it was created, the developers of PCMark 7 had developed the program with a new approach in storage benchmarking, geared specifically towards SSD performance in real life applications. It does it through simulating real world scenarios by playing back recorded traces of user activities which unlike many other trace-based programs, it also records the waiting time between issued commands to show a more accurate representation of the actual user environment.

Overall Score

Windows Defender

Importing Pictures

Video Editing

Windows Media Center

Adding Music

Starting Applications

Gaming

As expected, the M5 Pro Xtreme took the crown with its performance in this benchmark suite, with a 5% to 42% performance lead from the Chronos and a whopping 6% to 94% performance difference compared to the hard drives in most of the tests. Only in a few tests was the M5 Pro Xtreme with its Marvell controller had lost with the tiniest of margin to the Mushkin Chronos with its aging SandForce controller.

Conclusion

Before i lay down my conclusion of this review, i would like to avert your attention to a small matter. During this review it was made clear to me that there was some slight performance bottleneck issue when the M5 Pro Xtreme was used on the AM3+ testbed, even after replacing the motherboard with a newer unit, the bottleneck still persist. In my opinion it could probably due to the motherboard aging SB950 south bridge design. I came to this conclusion after further digging done from various sources, i could safely say that from the comparison of the tests done on most Intel & AMD FM1/FM2 systems that i read from internet the performance penalty was not evident. Fret not though; i had calculated the difference is at worst around only 10-15% depending on type of test done. Not that noticeable I’d say for all end-users but still I do hope to revisit this test on an Intel/AMD FM2 testbed sometime in the near future.

The Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme is an exceptionally good SSD, at around the same price point; it competes with the big boys of the SSD world like the Samsung 840 Pro, OCZ Vector, OCZ Vertex 4 & Intel 520 SSD which incidentally performs more or less just as well. Choice is just a matter of taste to the buyer but still, i have no problem recommending the M5 Pro Xtreme if ever you’re in the market for a fast and reliable SSD drive. Having extra’s like the NTI SSD Solution Suite for your data migration needs and the plethora of features like True Speed & True Protect makes the deal so much sweeter to me.

Again I would like to say my deepest heartiest thank you to the peoples from Build Technology Supply Sdn Bhd for making this review even possible.

Pro:

Very high performance.

Components used is picked from the best by Plextor.

Supports S.M.A.R.T, TRIM, NCQ, 256bit key AES Encryption, 128bit ECC & garbage collection.

5- years warranty.

7mm form factor suitable for ultra slim laptops.

NTI SSD Solution Suite given free for buyers to easily do data migration or backup.

Con:

Price might be a bit too high for some buyers.
NTI SSD Solution Suite need to be downloaded from the internet.