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Plextor S3C SSD Review: Does Plextor have a chance to return?

Introduction

The Plextor trademark has always been associated with solid solutions in the SSD industry. It has never been involved in a race of decreasing the price at any cost. That is why Plextor M3 and Plextor M5, even having not the lowest price, were one of the most respected among users and quite widespread models of storage drives.
Up to now, Plextor has noticeably lost its popularity, but in general it continues adhering to the old policy: the usage of expensive components and fixed hardware platform.
Plextor S3C was officially announced within the Computex 2017 tradeshow and at the same time it was deployed at retail.

Main Characteristics

Of course, it's impossible to refuse to participate in the race for price reduction completely. So the hardware platform developed by Silicon Motion on its SM2254G controller was taken (it should be mentioned that the first lots of the Plextor S3C were based on the SM2258G), to which TLC NAND was taken too.

The specification immediately shows the presence of SLC-caching mode: even for a modification of 128 GB, the recording speed is declared up to 500 MB per second.

Due to the fact that initially the line is of a budget class, only three variants are presented — 128, 256 and 512 GB.

Plextor S3C SSD (128GB)
Capacity (Raw/User) — 128GB/128GB
Form Factor — 2.5-Inch
Interface/Protocol — SATA 6Gb/s/AHCI
Controller — Silicon Motion, Inc. SM2254
Price — $85

Plextor S3C SSD (256GB)
Capacity (Raw/User) — 256GB/256GB
Form Factor — 2.5-Inch
Interface/Protocol — SATA 6Gb/s/AHCI
Controller — Silicon Motion, Inc. SM2254
Price — $94

Plextor S3C SSD (512GB)
Capacity (Raw/User) — 512GB/512GB
Form Factor — 2.5-Inch
Interface/Protocol — SATA 6Gb/s /AHCI
Controller — Silicon Motion, Inc. SM2254
Price — $197

All S3 products come with a three-year warranty and an endurance limitation.

The Plextor S3C has a direct analog, using the same controller and memory and differing only in form factor and available volumes: The Plextor S3G is a M.2 device of the 2280 size and is released in 128 and 256 GB volumes.

Design

The packaging doesn’t differ from the previous Plextor’s SSD models: a cardboard box containing a plastic blister with a device and a booklet with information about the storage drive, its installation and a warranty in different languages.

A distinctive property of the Plextor models is the presence on the box of labels with the full information about the particular device.
The same information is duplicated on the storage drive itself, which is designed in a high-grade metal case — a neat, brilliant solution that does not create the feeling of cheapness. The case helps in cooling the internal components.
From an aesthetic point of view, it is a pleasant device.

Closer View

Inside, we do find the Silicon Motion SM2254G controller and the 14nm SK Hynix memory. Despite a cheap NAND controller being used, it is still fully equipped with external buffer memory. Creators Plextor S3C wisely did not get addicted to such fashionable DRAM-less modern solutions like Silicon Motion SM2256S, Marvell 88NV1120 or Phison S11.
The presence of a full buffer memory in the controller allows the platform to provide more stable performance on small-block operations with random access, and also reduces memory wearout.
The interface is SATA 6 Gb/s.

Software

S3 products work with Plextor's software. Plextor uses a monitoring software that is called PlexTools for the status updates checking and TRIM the drives viewing. There are also some additional software:

Plextor's PlexVault software provides you with the protection of your personal information. Even if you use a computer with someone else, you can still keep your documents private with the given software.

PlexCompressor
The most important thing is SSD storage capacity. Plextor's PlexCompressor provides you with more storage capacity without any influence on the system performance.

PlexTurbo is an intelligent SSD RAM caching solution that improves the system RAM in accelerating SSD storage performance. It supports the service life of the SSD (32GB recommend DRAM capacity).

3D NAND is the popular theme, but there is still place for planar NAND even when the latest 3D technology grows up. People presuppose that improvement of 3D NAND production means the end of 2D products, but it’s not true. Planar NAND is still less expensive to produce, and it's better for low efficiency products.
There are some high-performance SATA products on the market, but prices are high. The NAND shortage has increased the cost of the most vital component, and the cost between entry-level and mainstream products is melting.

Conclusion

Plextor produces S3C series in three models from 128GB to 512GB. This series ships in the 2.5-inch form factor, but Plextor's S3G M.2 2280 is a SATA model that shares similar specifications and components.
The device is a good-looking one and made of high-quality materials.

The S3 designation is part of Plextor's new product naming scheme for SATA SSDs. New line begins with the release of S1, S2 and S3. Plextor is going to create a product with 3D NAND that will come to the market in 2018.
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  • 21 September 2017, 17:30
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