Acoustics and Thermals

Our acoustic tests measure the decibel levels while the system is at idle and under load while running the Hard Disk test suite within PCMark Vantage. We take measurements at a distance of 5mm from the rear and front of the drive in a separate enclosure and report the highest reading. The test room has a base acoustical level of 20dB(A).

Since there are not any moving parts, the Solid State Drives are virtually silent and so we will bypass the results charts for this particular test.

Our thermal tests utilize sensor readings via the S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) capability of the drives as reported by utilizing the Active SMART 2.6 utility. We also utilize thermal sensors and infrared measurement devices to verify our utility results. We test our drives in an enclosed case environment. Our base temperature level in the room at the time of testing is 25C.

Drive
Operating Temperatures - Celsius

Drive
Operating Temperatures - Celsius

By way of its greatly reduced power dissipation, the Samsung/OCZ 64GB SSD leads our test group in both idle and load thermals thanks to the lack of mechanical parts.

Hook me up... Much Improved Performance
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  • tim851 - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    Seeing as all drives are quite close in load times I think it's safe to assume, that we've reach the apex and the load times are pretty much bottlenecked by CPU speed now.

    Most real world application performance numbers are pretty close these days, there aren't any dead slow hard disks anymore. Flash won't bring us more speed, but less power draw and noise.
  • FITCamaro - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    I got a pair of 74GB Raptors for $150. I'm quite happy with my load times. Even in the Age of Conan beta, my load times were pretty quick.
  • araczynski - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    nothing mainstream about a $1000 64gb drive.
  • piroroadkill - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    I agree, it's definitely good, but it's not $1000 good
  • JarredWalton - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    More "mainstream" than a $4000 64GB SSD. :)
  • dingetje - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    sorry, this is about as mainstream to the st0rage industry as brasilian fart p0rn is to the p0rn market.

    nice article by the way, thanks ;)
  • AssBall - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    Yes, but the key is that now you can store and access your fart Pr0n even faster!
  • retrospooty - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link

    dang... I didnt even know there was such a thing as brazillian fart porn. I need to get out more !

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