Heat Output Results

Solid State Drives are not yet a household technology, and because of this the marketing propaganda has become high-pressure. Benchmark Reviews has tested SSD products from: OCZ, Super Talent, Mtron, MemoRight, Samsung, Crucial, and Silicon Power, and each of these manufacturers has taken full advantage of the vast new technology improvements offered by their products. Some manufacturers have made claims that other websites have taken to the mat and wrestled with, only to later be criticized for improperly testing the hardware. Well, we don't intend on repeating the mistakes of our mega-site affiliates, which is why we plan to approach this in small bites.

There have been television shows made famous on the principal of dispelling rumors and myth. This section is not exactly meant to imitate that concept, although we do separate fact from fiction. The first myth we challenge is the claim that Solid State Drives produce no heat. Nearly every manufacturer has claimed that SSD products do not produce heat, which on many levels is believable because there are no moving parts. Well, chances are very good that you have already peeked at the illustration below, so I won't delay in explaining what we've found.

Using a some spare Styrofoam I constructed a small unit to shield two 2.5" notebook drives from the nearby power supply. Although not pictured, there was also an open-top wall section that surrounded this unit, further insulating it from thermal effects of any nearby environment. Since there was no data connection made, these tests are what I would consider idle. The power leads were connected, and power was delivered for twenty minutes before temperatures were taken with a non-contact IR thermometer. The rooms ambient temperature as measured directly at the test site was exactly 19.0°C at the time I recorded the results for the units pictured.

In the image above there are only two devices pictured of a four-cell test platform. On the left side is the Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 60GB HTS721060G9SA00 7,200 RPM SATA 2.5" Hard Disk Drive, and on the right is the Mtron Pro 7500 32GB SATA-II 2.5-Inch SSD Solid State Drive MSP-SATA7525-032-N-A. The Hitachi 7K100 is one of the few 7200 RPM notebook hard drives available, since these faster spinning disks use more power and thus create more heat. Although not pictured because of camera direction, my test rig setup compares up to four products at once. The results are shown in the chart below.

Temperature Readings at 18.0°C

Temperature Readings at 19.0°C

Disk Hardware Tested:

• Crucial / Lexar 32GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD CT32GBFAB0
• Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 2.5" 60GB SATA 7,200 RPM HDD HTS721060G9SA00
• MemoRight GT 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD MR25.2-064S
• Mtron MOBI 3000 16GB 2.5" SATA SSD MSD-SATA3025
• Mtron Pro 7000 16GB 2.5" SATA SSD MSP-SATA7025
• Mtron Pro 7500 32GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD MSP-SATA7525-032-N-A
• OCZ 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD OCZSSD64GB
• OCZ 32GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD OCZSSD2-1S32G
• OCZ 64GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD OCZSSD2-1S64G
• OCZ Core Series 64GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD OCZSSD2-1C64G
• Samsung 64GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA
• Seagate 7200.11 500GB 3.5" 7,200 RPM SATA-II HDD ST3500320AS (32MB Cache Buffer)
• Silicon Power 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD SP064GBSSD25SV10
• Super Talent MasterDrive MX 60GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD FTM60GK25H
• Western Digital Raptor 74GB 3.5" 10,000 RPM SATA HDD WD740ADFD (16MB Cache Buffer)

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