Plextor M8V SSD Review (256GB)

REAL WORLD FILE TRANSFER

We also wanted to see how performance was in a real-world use when transferring large files to the SSD. For this test, we are going to simply stress write performance by transferring over a 30GB folder of movies off of a 512GB Samsung 950 Pro to the test SSDs and time how long it takes. Once complete we can calculate the average speed.

The Plextor M8V averaged 318MB/s during the 30GB write transfer. From this result, we can see that the SLC write cache fills up before 30GB.

POWER CONSUMPTION

For our power consumption testing, we have the drive connected to the system as a secondary drive. To record the wattage, we are now utilizing a Quarch Technology Programmable Power Module. It allows us to accurately measure power consumption over time and is flexible enough to allow us to test any SSD that comes our way.

Our power analysis may change as time goes on, but for now, we are looking at just a few metrics with the main goal of measuring our results against the manufacturer’s ratings. Because most consumer systems are at idle for about 80% of the time, idle power consumption is an important measure to look at when understanding the efficiency of a drive.

Our result with Active State Power Management enabled shows that the Plextor M8V averaged 0.053W at idle. This is great to see and a stark contrast to the power-hungry Plextor M9Pe we just reviewed.

POWER EFFICIENCY

Finally, we wanted to post up a graph of the power efficiency of the SSDs in write transfers. We are looking at MB/s per Watt in this graph. The higher the result, the better.

The chart above shows us just how efficient an SSD is in writing data. Here we can see that the M8V averages 148MB/s per watt. While it doesn’t make the M8V a leader in efficiency, we can see that it isn’t inherently bad either.