’S
EDITOR
ICE
CHO
AWARD
Plextor M3 256GB SSD
RRP: $339.99 | Website: www.goplextor.com
Test Machine
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Intel Core i7 3770K
GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H
SEAGATE 7200.12 500GB
ANTEC HCP 1200
Windows 7 64-bit SPI
O
ne should be forgiven for
having low expectations
of Plextor SSD drives. After
all, if they were any good
they’d be all the rage on tech
sites and to all enthusiasts
instead of the better known
drives from OCZ, Kingston,
Corsair or equally capable
competitors. So it is with this
mind frame that we took on
the Plextor M3 256GB SSD
review. It’s never a good idea
to have preconceived notions
about a brand or product
before the actual testing,
but after a while it becomes
clear who are the players to
watch out for are and who are
the ones to pay a little less
attention too.
16 The OverClocker Issue 19 | 2012
You can imagine our
surprise then when we saw
the results. As we performed
each benchmark suite, it
became increasingly clear to
us that we were not dealing
with your average SSD here.
What we had was a sleeper
drive that was unassuming,
but packed a wallop of a
punch. Easily the fastest drive
we have tested to date and
by a margin at that might we
add. Rarely do we see such
compelling performance
from a drive but even through
repeated and varied testing,
the Plextor M3 held on to its
lead, leaving all other drives
in the dust. The Plextor M3
thoroughly trounced our
previous favourites all the
while commanding a lower
retail price and offering
higher capacity.
Average read speeds are
nothing to write home about
at a hair under 500MB/s but
we must stress to you that
the difference between our
highest scoring drive in this
particular test at 506MB/s
as compared to the M3 drive
at 499.6MB/s is within the
margin of error. In reality
there isn’t a difference in the
speeds and you’re certainly
not going to experience this
performance difference under
any circumstances.
The average write results
however are a different story,
as the M3 drive is well and
truly above the rest with a
50MB/s sequential write
performance advantage over
the second closest drive.
Staggering numbers indeed
and they sure do make
themselves pronounced even
in general usage scenarios
provided you’re writing
sufficiently large data. More in
line though with everyday use
is IOPS and 4K performance.
The IO Meter numbers were
once again; significantly
higher than anything we had