Heat Output Results

Solid State Drives are not yet a household technology, and because of this the marketing propaganda has become as high-pressure as any political campaign. Benchmark Reviews has tested SSD products from many manufacturers (to name a few: Crucial, Intel, MemoRight, Mtron, OCZ, Patriot, Samsung, Super Talent, and Silicon Power) and each 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 a topic (such as power consumption), 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 new methodology 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 selling Solid State products has at some point claimed their SSD products do not produce heat, which is believable on many levels 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 some spare Styrofoam panels, 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 to be 'idle'. The power leads were connected and power was delivered for twenty minutes before temperatures were taken with a non-contact IR thermometer at approximately six inches from surface. 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 one our Solid State Drive test subjects. The Hitachi 7K100 is one of the few 7200 RPM notebook hard drives available to OEM builders, and since these faster spinning disks use more power they also create more heat as a by-product. Although not pictured because of camera direction, my test rig setup compares up to four products at once. The results of other SSD test products are shown in the charts below.

Temperature Readings at 19.0°C

The message here is simple: Although the heat produced by SSD's under load is usually the same as what the Hard Disk Drive generates at idle, Solid State Drives still produce heat. Don't let marketing hype fool you into believing that Solid State Drives are cold-operating devices just because there are no moving parts. Cooler, yes. Cold, no.

Disk Hardware

• Crucial / Lexar 32GB 2.5" SATA-2 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 Pro 7500 32GB SATA-II SSD MSP-SATA7525
• Mtron Pro 7000 16GB 2.5-Inch 16GB SSD SATA7025
• Mtron MOBI 3000 16GB 2.5" SATA SSD MSD-SATA3025
• OCZ 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD OCZSSD64GB
• OCZ SATA-II 32GB 2.5" SSD OCZSSD2-1S32G
• OCZ Core Series SATA-II SSD OCZSSD2-1C64G
• OCZ SATA-II 64GB 2.5" SSD OCZSSD2-1S64G
• Patriot Warp 128GB SATA-II SSD PE128GS25SSDR
• Samsung 64GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA
• Seagate 7200.11 500GB 3.5" ST3500320AS 7,200 RPM SATA-II Hard Disk Drive (32MB Cache Buffer)
• Super Talent MasterDrive MX 60GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD FTM60GK25H
• Silicon Power 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD SP064GBSSD25SV10
• Silicon Power 32GB SLC SATA-II SSD SP032GBSSD750S25
• Western Digital Raptor 74GB 3.5" WD740ADFD 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)

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