Plextor PX-256M3 256GB SSD Review

Plextor PX-256M3 SSD hardware.

Now let’s take a closer look at the hardware of the Plextor PX-256M3.

Drive internals

Plextor PX-256M3 256GB SSD (PCB top-side)

On the top side of the PCB, we can see eight TOSHIBA MLC NAND chip packages and also the two DDR3 Cache chips.

Plextor PX-256M3 256GB SSD (PCB underside)

On the underside of the PCB we can see the Marvell 88SS9174 SSD processor.

Marvell 88SS9174 SSD processor.

Above we see the Marvell 88SS9174 SSD processor, designated 88SS9174 – BLD2 on the Plextor PX-256M3 SSDs.

Toshiba 24nm MLC NAND

The Plextor PX-256M3 SSD has eight 32GB Toshiba high quality Japanese NAND, and the available capacity that you get is 238GB.

Specifications

The following specifications can be found at the Plextor website.

From the above specifications we can see a very detailed view of the Plextor PX-256M3. The PX-256M3 gives has a read speed up to 510MB/sec and a write speed up to 360MB/sec.

Before we move on to our tests, we’ll spend some time looking at what this drive has to offer to the consumer.

 First stop is the five year warranty that Plextor offers, and that shows a lot of faith in their M3 SSD. For the first three years you get the standard collect and return from Plextor, and for the remaining two years you can send the drive to back to Plextor. Overall this is very impressive and it’s very relaxing knowing that you are secured for the next five years.

 True speed is there to ensure that you will get the best performance from your SSD even if your drive gets “dirty” after some heavy use. The general idea behind true speed is that it will prevent the drop in speed after a heavy use and even if your drive gets heavily fragmented it will maintain the performance of the drive. At first look all this seems impressive and it will be tested in this review.

Let’s head to the next page where we take a look at our testing methods and the review PC.

 

• Introduction
• Test PC and testing procedures