Low power SSD selection

The problem with WD is that their “datasheet” for the Black drives don’t contain the “boring info chart” found on many other components (e.g. max tolerance, minimum guaranteed performance, shock tolerance, temperature, humidity, mean time between failure, different commands, baud rate, additional capabilities) and instead focus on vaguely brag about its performance (e.g. 7000MB/s (burst) read/write), so consumers are more likely to purchase it (because nobody care about shock tolerance).
I categorize that as a “flyer” rather than a datasheet. But, they did provide very detailed sheets for the other drives and I am pretty happy about it.

I went to the Crucial site to look for their SSD today. Nothing about power consumption.
They even labeled the link as “consumer flyer”, so its neither a datasheet nor will it contain any “industrial” regulatory info (such as power consumption).

I guess I would have known that since it mentioned " Designed specifically for intensive workloads, high-quality creative content, and hardcore gaming", which are very consumer things.

@Xavier_Jiang tomshardware.com has some data on the SN850, and they do efficiency testing (which I find to be more useful than pure w/h comparisons). Unsurprisingly, the P31 tops their charts, but the 980 Pro comes in second, which delights me as I bought one months ago.

1 Like

The main reason I am not a regular to their site is because it’s all over the place. Not that the content is bad (they are ok), but they don’t have a “homepage” that leads you to the many different articles they write. Or they do, but it’s clutter on top of clutter and I can’t find the ones I look for (literally LTT youtube channel is more organized)
The last time I visit them is like a year ago.

Interesting.
980 Pro is pretty good, having fast write speeds and a relatively low power usage during write (based on 980 PCIe 3). As you noted it is not on my chart because I can’t find the power consumption data on them.

1TB Performance Results - WD Black SN850 M.2 NVMe SSD Review: Top-Tier Storage for Gamers and Pros (Updated) | Tom's Hardware is the link for the review of the 1TB version for those who want to save time searching the site. Scroll down a bit and you’ll find a five picture gallery on power consumption which I found quite interesting and useful.

2 Likes

so as i’m also looking for a power efficient ssd for my laptop i haven’t been able to get a p31 or a p44 by sk hynix, it seems like crucial p3s (pcie3) seems to also be very power efficient based on this:

and then also this

2 Likes

I’d avoid anything using QLC on general principle. Perhaps Solidigm P44 Pro has greater availability? P41 Platinum is by SK Hynix, P44 Pro is just a rebadged P41 by Solidigm just FYI. My recommendation would be the Crucial T500 actually as it’s better than anything made previously.

1 Like

My Intel SSD seem to run very cool. Also significantly faster than my other stuff.

INTEL SSDPEKNU512G2, my lord.

The rest is … SAMSUNG MZ9LQ512HBLU, BIWIN SSD (2037009201978, and CA3-8D512-Q11 LITEON.

P44 have some frighteningly low write endurance numbers. Only 200 drive writes over the lifetime is downright unacceptable.

I have used many SSDs, the skhynx gold, 980pro, WD 850x. The battery life is not noticeably different. On AMD main boards you can turn the auto gen3 thing on the bios to save some battery when not connected to the wall (which does make a diff).

Currently with a WD. I can say it is speedy and while underload can get warm I have not seen this is a problem. Usually only when the drive is about 90% full the speed does go way way down.

There is a thread about adding a thermal pad and a heatsink but due to space a thermal pad and copper tape might be best. I have found this unnecessary. Maybe using thermal phase change pads might actually do make a difference but I have not tried.

My take would be to get the most storage at the best price you can get, powerwise there is not a huge difference. Maybe it is only noticeable when you have SSD heavy workload. But on machine learning, compiling, gaming I haven’t noticed.

The heaviest workload (drivewise) I Have done is moving and classifying my whole family’s pic library (1.5TB) and even there I couldn’t tell any difference while on battery.