Very few low cost 1TB Nvme, is Plextor M8Pe(G) best if not only choice?

[unseengundam101]

I have been looking for 1 TB NVMe that better than SATA but keeping at $100 premium (around ~$350 USD).

I have been digging around for NVMe you can actually buy only option that could be consider is Plextor M8Pe(G) M.2 2280.

Its $362.34 over at Newegg.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820249087


It did notice for $23 less there some MyDigitalSSD SBX but review I saw at Tom's hardware and specs, the Plextor is clearly much better.

Anything else I am leaving off the table? Otherwise, I will probably buy the Plextor soon.

 

[UsandThem]

They're likely clearing them out at that price (I think a replacement is coming soon), so outside of the SBX, there isn't much competition in that price range for a 1TB NVMe drive.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

The new WD Black 1TB that ties/beats the 960 Evo 1TB was on sale with a 20% off coupon on preorders bringing it down to $364 or so.

Also, while sold out currently, the 1TB 960 Evo is only $338 if you have a .edu email to sign up for Samsung's student discount program.

If you can wait a week or two either of those options would be quite a bit bettet than the M8PE. That drive is hot and also held back my planar nand and its controller.

Edit: Looks like the WD coupon is no longer valid and both drives are sold out. Bleh.

 

[fleshconsumed]

This is one of the very few 1TB MLC NVMe drives if having MLC is important to you (it is to me). Performance wise it's not the fastest, but TBH I don't think anybody would notice. I have HHHL version and it runs under 40C, but I'm not sure how hot it would run without the giant HHHL heatsink. It's been sold at low 300's before the memory gouging started, and it's been at the mid to high 300's ever since. This price is nothing special, but if you want to have MLC, you should probably get it since it is discontinued.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I had considered buying a Plextor NVME drive, but was patient enough to wait for the 960 units. As for its performance, it isn't at the very top, but those sustained throughput speeds aren't more than 1,000 MB/s slower than the pricey competition. So if the drive lives up to its spec, it should be 3 to 4 times faster than an SATA SSD.

If I were set on buying a Plextor like this one, I would invest ~ $35 in a Kryo-M.2 heatsink kit after carefully removing the blingy red heatspreader. Of the 15% "1-egg" reviews, a significant number seem to be knowledgeable users who cited temperature problems the the unit "as-is" or as received.

Also, to be honest . . . . If you're willing to spend ~$360 on the Plextor, I wouldn't go short on the selection. I see a 1TB Samsung 960 EVO at B&H Photo for $450. And I would still add to that the price of heat-sinking the unit -- either with a Kryo-M.2 kit or a DIY application of a chipset sink and 40mm fan, or even just a chipset sink. To put it another way: If you follow the indications in the customer-review bad-rating cohort, you'd spend nearly $400 anyway. The EVO and mod options would cost you maybe $470 to $480. You get better performance in some read and write benchies by another 30%.

But there were other choices cited here by other posters, and following the acceptance of these units from fellow members, I'd think you might still do as well or better than the Plextor.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you deal with ISO files more than just rarely, then an MLC drive is really "the way to go", for any type of SSD (SATA or NVMe). Even 3D TLC with SLC cache, once you write more than X GB to them sequentially, they slow WAY down. For example, my Adata SU800, an otherwise fairly "fast" SSD (500MB/sec+ read and write), drops down to a painful 30-40MB/sec write speeds, which is notably SLOWER than a modern HDD.

So for those of you slinging ISOs around, a 3D TLC SSD with SLC cache is not a good solution. (But it is for your average web-browsing box.)

Either MLC SSD or bust, or a good, modern, fast HDD.

 

[XavierMace]

I've been using M8Pe's as SLOG drives in my two servers for almost a year now. I've been quite happy with them. It's certainly faster than my MyDigitalSSD SBX.

The EVO and mod options would cost you maybe $470 to $480. You get better performance in some read and write benchies by another 30%.

If benchmarking is your life, I guess an extra 30% cost for an extra 30% performance on benchmarks might be worth it. If all you're concerned about is real world performance, not so much. As @VirtualLarry mentioned, you can bring a TLC SSD to it's knees if you exceed it's cache. Personally I do that on a regular basis (Bluray rips). I'd rather have 70% performance 100% of the time rather than 100% performance 80% of the time and 5% performance the rest of the time.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

If you deal with ISO files more than just rarely, then an MLC drive is really "the way to go", for any type of SSD (SATA or NVMe). Even 3D TLC with SLC cache, once you write more than X GB to them sequentially, they slow WAY down. For example, my Adata SU800, an otherwise fairly "fast" SSD (500MB/sec+ read and write), drops down to a painful 30-40MB/sec write speeds, which is notably SLOWER than a modern HDD.

So for those of you slinging ISOs around, a 3D TLC SSD with SLC cache is not a good solution. (But it is for your average web-browsing box.)

Either MLC SSD or bust, or a good, modern, fast HDD.

I've been using M8Pe's as SLOG drives in my two servers for almost a year now. I've been quite happy with them. It's certainly faster than my MyDigitalSSD SBX.



If benchmarking is your life, I guess an extra 30% cost for an extra 30% performance on benchmarks might be worth it. If all you're concerned about is real world performance, not so much. As @VirtualLarry mentioned, you can bring a TLC SSD to it's knees if you exceed it's cache. Personally I do that on a regular basis (Bluray rips). I'd rather have 70% performance 100% of the time rather than 100% performance 80% of the time and 5% performance the rest of the time.

The 960 Evo (1TB) is a bit of an outlier. It doesn't have a fixed amount of SLC write cache. If you have enough overprovisioned space (as you should already for other reasons) it can expand its write cache up to something like 42GB on the fly. Not to mention that its sequential write is rated at a still reasonable 1200MB/s after exhausting that write cache.

Even if you deal with large files there are few cases where you'll genuinely exhaust the 960 Evo. Besides, if you only have one NVM-e drive, how are you going to saturate its write speed anyway? For a normal user its a moot point since even the exhausted speed is faster than any data source outside of the drive or other NVM-e drives.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well, as for the Plextor, my major concern was the many reports about its stock thermal performance. Anyone would like to have an MLC drive if they could for the price, or others will settle for TLC, shorter lifespan -- perhaps even performance limitations. And you can mitigate those thermal issues -- just not likely with the blingy red heatspreader.

Also -- I can't speak firsthand about the Plextor -- I never bought one myself.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Well, as for the Plextor, my major concern was the many reports about its stock thermal performance. Anyone would like to have an MLC drive if they could for the price, or others will settle for TLC, shorter lifespan -- perhaps even performance limitations. And you can mitigate those thermal issues -- just not likely with the blingy red heatspreader.

Also -- I can't speak firsthand about the Plextor -- I never bought one myself.

If we look at the anandtech review for the 960 Evo and M8PE, the M.2 M8PE fared poorly on long duration sequential writes due to the thermal issues its contriller has. The 960 Evo was much faster, however they pointed out it was still thermally constrained. The PCI-E add in card heatsink version of the M8PE that did not throttle scored slightly above the non-heatsinked 960 Evo.

If we had the same testing data for a 960 Evo with a heatsink, I suspect its possible that even after exhausting the write cache it may still be faster than the M8PE since it is already very close in sequential steady state performance to the large heatsinked M8PE.

Unfortunately due to review availability they are comparing a 512GB M8PE to a 1TB 960 Evo, but I think this data should be compelling enough to dissuade the argument that simply because the M8PE is MLC, it will have better steady state sequential write speed. There are more factors at play, like thermals, and the 1TB 960 Evo is not a slouch when write cache is exhausted.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/10833/the-samsung-960-evo-1tb-review/7

https://www.anandtech.com/show/10909/the-plextor-m8pe-512gb-ssd-review/7

 

[BonzaiDuck]

If we look at the anandtech review for the 960 Evo and M8PE, the M.2 M8PE fared poorly on long duration sequential writes due to the thermal issues its contriller has. The 960 Evo was much faster, however they pointed out it was still thermally constrained. The PCI-E add in card heatsink version of the M8PE that did not throttle scored slightly above the non-heatsinked 960 Evo.

If we had the same testing data for a 960 Evo with a heatsink, I suspect its possible that even after exhausting the write cache it may still be faster than the M8PE since it is already very close in sequential steady state performance to the large heatsinked M8PE.

Unfortunately due to review availability they are comparing a 512GB M8PE to a 1TB 960 Evo, but I think this data should be compelling enough to dissuade the argument that simply because the M8PE is MLC, it will have better steady state sequential write speed. There are more factors at play, like thermals, and the 1TB 960 Evo is not a slouch when write cache is exhausted.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/10833/the-samsung-960-evo-1tb-review/7

https://www.anandtech.com/show/10909/the-plextor-m8pe-512gb-ssd-review/7

I'd guess it depends on the user profile: XavierMace versus the OP versus many others. And like I said -- to mitigate the thermal problem either with the Plextor -- which comes with reports on thermal performance -- or with the EVO in a PCIE x4 slot, you'd either need to custom-fit a sink to the Plextor, or get something like Kryo-M.2 for the EVO. That might account for some of the price difference. If it's a matter of which suffers less under a severe workout, you might swing to the Plextor.

And -- with either of these -- if a sub-model of the Plextor or the EVO "as-is" would be fitted to a motherboard M.2 slot, you would still want either "airflow" (a fan) or some sort of sink on the sucker. . . .

I haven't had any problem with my 250GB EVO-as-caching-drive. In maybe 8 months' time, it's racked up less than 7 TBW. There are only so many games or software installed to the cached source drive. Somebody else could hammer the EVO much harder -- I suppose. And for comparison purposes, it's 250GB as opposed to 1TB. Like XavierMace insinuates, performance may vary, so it's not "100% of the time" -- not 10% of the time -- but somewhere in between. And it depends on the file sizes being accessed.

For someone just building a desktop or even a gaming system, either one of those drives would be fine. Heck! buy the Plextor, and throw a $10 40mm fan on it!

 

[XavierMace]

I'd guess it depends on the user profile: XavierMace versus the OP versus many others. And like I said -- to mitigate the thermal problem either with the Plextor -- which comes with reports on thermal performance -- or with the EVO in a PCIE x4 slot, you'd either need to custom-fit a sink to the Plextor, or get something like Kryo-M.2 for the EVO. That might account for some of the price difference. If it's a matter of which suffers less under a severe workout, you might swing to the Plextor.

And -- with either of these -- if a sub-model of the Plextor or the EVO "as-is" would be fitted to a motherboard M.2 slot, you would still want either "airflow" (a fan) or some sort of sink on the sucker. . . .

I haven't had any problem with my 250GB EVO-as-caching-drive. In maybe 8 months' time, it's racked up less than 7 TBW. There are only so many games or software installed to the cached source drive. Somebody else could hammer the EVO much harder -- I suppose. And for comparison purposes, it's 250GB as opposed to 1TB. Like XavierMace insinuates, performance may vary, so it's not "100% of the time" -- not 10% of the time -- but somewhere in between. And it depends on the file sizes being accessed.

For someone just building a desktop or even a gaming system, either one of those drives would be fine. Heck! buy the Plextor, and throw a $10 40mm fan on it!

OP was asking about a low cost drive. Your recommendation is to take a drive that's already more expensive than the one he's looking at and add another $100 to it. I'm also getting the impression you've missed the fact that the Plextor drive the OP is looking at HAS a heatsink.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

OP was asking about a low cost drive. Your recommendation is to take a drive that's already more expensive than the one he's looking at and add another $100 to it. I'm also getting the impression you've missed the fact that the Plextor drive the OP is looking at HAS a heatsink.

I assumed that -- the way it's constructed. But then . . . why do folks complain about the temperatures? But I was thinking about that earlier since I last logged on: you might pay to improve the cooling on the Plextor, but you'd still have to pay to put a cooler on the EVO, even for just $5 - $10 DIY incidentals. So I concede to your point about it.

[Moments later .. ] Now I see that the Plextor comes with or without the heatsink. I've seen reviews at the Egg that are mixed across variations of the same unit. It's possible the complaints about temperatures came from buyers who bought it without the heatsink, but show up in the list of reviews for the heatsinked version. But I'm just speculating. . . I've seen it occur that way, even so . . .

 

[unseengundam101]

Thanks for input guys, a lot of good info! I think I will wait another week before I buy the Plextor in case something pop up.