Plextor M9P Plus 512GB NVMe SSD Review

TweakTown's Rating: 89%

The Bottom Line

The 512GB M9P Plus isn't as great as the 1TB capacity, but does offer a solid, reliable option for upgrading or building that gaming rig.

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The M8Pe, M8Se, and M9Pe all garnered a good amount of success for Plextor, but in the last two years, things have changed, and with that, the bar for performance as well. In its quest to remain a viable competitor in the market it was time to release the successor, and it comes in the form of the M9P Plus.

The M9P Plus changes a few things up for Plextor, including the hardware platform the drive is built on. The last three iterations of NVMe solutions took advantage of the 88SS1093, and while each generation from the M8 to M9 was able to increase performance with new flash technologies, the M9P Plus has chosen the 88SS1092 and paired it with 96-layer BiCS4 TLC. This increases reliability with a proven datacenter controller and the latest NAND technology.

Capacity options for the M9P Plus have stayed quite modest with a 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB option - the latter having already been reviewed here at TweakTown. Today, we test the 512GB model as it happens to be the most popular capacity option for consumers.

Performance is rated at 3400 MB/s read and 2200 MB/s write with random performance reaching 340K IOPS read and 320K IOPS write. Endurance offers 160 TBW per 256GB, so our 512GB model gets 320 TBW and the 1TB lands at 640TBW.

MSRP of the 512GB Plextor M9P Plus comes in at $96.99 with a five-year warranty.

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If you have seen or purchased the M9Pe then the packaging here will be quite familiar. Capacity is listed bottom right with warranty and features to the left.

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The back goes into more detail with a full specification list.

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The model sent for review is the 512M9PGN+, the GN meaning bare drive; the G model would have a heat sink included. Information about the drive, including model and capacity, can be found on the sticker.

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The drive itself is an M.2 M-Key solution. It features the Marvel 88SS1092 controller to the far right, followed by Nanya DRAM cache and two Toshiba NAND packages.

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Plextor does offer a rather simple toolbox for their M9P Plus. This solution provides capacity health and temperature indicators for the drive.

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To start testing, we run through CDM. Results show solid sequential performance touching 3380 MB/s read and 2243 MB/s write. 4KQ1 results give us 63 MB/s read and 175 MB/s write.

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With our 50% fill of the drive, testing as an OS drive, ATTO shows erratic performance from the M9P Plus. Peak performance is offered between 256K and 1M file sizes.

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Anvils gives us another look at the synthetic performance of the Plus with a score of 14,136.

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The next two scenarios are run with the new build of PCMark 10. In the quick system drive benchmark, we achieve a bandwidth of 411.6 MB/s and a score of 3415.

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In the full system drive bench, bandwidth drops to 383.18 MB/s and a score of 2395.

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In our game load testing, the M9P Plus did do quite well, top honors with an overall time of 10.2. The next best drive the SBXe at 11.8.

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Price v Performance for the M9P Plus sits it towards the bottom of the chart at 92.6%.

Closing out this review, the M9P Plus is solid step above past solutions from Plextor. Almost every performance metric has had a decent bump up, and reliability too has improved with the 88SS1092 and 96L BiCS4.

Performance of the drive excels in everyday scenarios from botting up your OS to gaming. The sequential performance was tested at 3380 MB/s read, a touch under the 3400 predicted by marketing and 2243 MB/s write, a touch over marketing performance.

4KQ1 came in at 63 MB/s for the 512GB M9P Plus. You will get slightly better performance if you bump up to the 1TB model. In game load scenarios, the M9P Plus bested every other drive tested by 1.5 seconds, making it the current chart leader.

The current MSRP of $96.99 puts this drive at the high-end for 512GB NVMe solutions, competing against the likes of the Samsung 970 EVO, EVO Plus, and WD Black SN750. That said, it does offer a class-leading endurance rating and warranty at five-years.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula X570 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB 2x8GB DDR4 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H60 (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Carbide 275R (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Corsair MP600 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)