Computex 2016 Coverage: Plextor Showcases Its New M8Pe Series NVMe SSD, EX1 External SSD and EP2 U.2 SSD

Plextor didn’t went for a booth in Nangang Exhibition hall this year, but they’re still available at Grand Hyatt Hotel Taipei to showcase some of their latest products for this year’s Computex 2016. 

We’ve first heard of U.2 during Computex 2015 as a new standard for high-speed storage device that supports data transfer rate of up to 32 Gb/s but there isn’t any motherboard on the market at that moment is able to support the new standard.

After a year long of waiting and the surfacing of U.2 connector on higher end Intel Z170 chipset motherboards, Plextor as one of the renown manufacturer in the industry presented its EP2 U.2, the very first few U.2 SSD we’ve seen throughout Computex 2016.

The M8Pe Series SSD is Plextor’s latest NVMe SSD that utilizes the NVMe 1.2 protocol to deliver blazing fast performance of up to 2,500MB/s sequential read, 1,400MB/s sequential write, 280,000 IOPS 4K random read and 250,000 IOPS 4K random write for gamers and enthusiasts who just wants the best performance possible. 

Just like its predecessor the M6e Black Edition PCIe SSD, the M8Pe series SSD features also a red-black accent heat sink to compliment ‘gaming motherboards’ that comes with the same red-black accent, something that gamers and enthusiasts who fancies of red-black themed build would like. 

It features the Marvell 88SS1093 controller that supports newer generation 15nm NAND flash, 15nm MLC NAND flash from Toshiba and 2 different form factor of HHHL and M.2 to suit different needs. The M8Pe Series SSD comes available in capacity of 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB, and is expected to hit the shelves by this month after Computex 2016.    

USB 3.0 has indeed made our lives easier especially when it comes to USB storage devices like external hard drives. Still, most external hard drives we’re using nowadays are still mechanical drives that has now hit a bottleneck in transfer speed and the fast USB 3.1 standard would probably gave an insignificant improvement due to the limitation of mechanical drives.

USB External SSD has been available for quite a while as a faster alternative for users who demands faster data transfer rate and here’s one of the latest External SSD from Plextor, the EX1 that utilizes the high-bandwidth USB 3.1 Type-C and is able to perform nearly as good as an SSD that is connected to the SATA III port.

The Plextor EX1 is expected to hit the market by July, which is just next month but Plextor did not disclose any further details on its price and full list of the available capacity of the drive itself.