The Angelbird Wings PX1 M.2 Adapter Review: Do M.2 SSDs Need Heatsinks?
by Billy Tallis on December 21, 2015 8:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in a day's usage, but with idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here.
The read-oriented nature of the Light test allows the 950 Pro to show off its throughput capabilities, with an average data rate more than three times what any SATA drive has achieved. But with frequent idle times and not many writes, this test does nothing to make the 950 Pro overheat and the heatsink makes no difference.
The latency charts show virtually identical performance except for the number of 10ms+ outliers experienced by the 256GB drive. But on a test this short, that amounts to only about 16 more outliers and only 30ms difference in the total run time of the test. I'm actually surprised we're not seeing bigger random variation between runs.
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FunBunny2 - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
^^that's funny
Breit - Saturday, December 26, 2015 - link
You mean something EKWB did for the Intel 750?http://www.ekwb.com/news/638/19/EK-is-releasing-In...
:D
meacupla - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
I think this is where all those low profile, frag tape backed, RAM heatsinks, that came along with aftermarket GPU coolers, will come in handy.ironwing - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
I wonder how much heat 25 LEDs add to a heat sink?mostlyharmless - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
Yeah, and aren't the fins supposed to be external instead of internal?Billy Tallis - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
They're really more like ducts than fins as designed. What air does manage to enter the heatsink will not all flow across the entire drive. Some of the fresh cool air will bypass part of the drive, and some of it will just be cooling the heatsink itself. It looks like a design that would be very effective with a lot of airflow, but the intake is pretty small.Billy Tallis - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
The LEDs draw about 2W. Calculating how much of that gets converted to light that escapes the heatsink is left as an exercise for the reader.MrSpadge - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
10 - 20 mW each.r3loaded - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
So what we really need is the 950 Pro in a 2.5 inch drive and the U.2 interface. The bonus is drive capacities of 1TB and maybe even 2TB.Impulses - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
Great write-up Billy, I appreciate you running the full battery of tests again and re-addressing the Bench scores... A review of a heatsink feels somewhat incomplete without a single temperature measurement tho! SMART readings or something taken with a simple IR thermometer would've been helpful, specially to the kind of DIY'er that's likely to buy this. I'm curious if i can replicate comparable results with a simple stick on heatsink and some airflow, it's particularly relevant for those of us with multiple GPUs where the add in card might put the drive in just as bad of a spot but the M.2 slot might be exposed to more airflow.