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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Billy Tallis - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
Unfortunately, the only high-quality thermometer I have is the temperature probe for the multimeter that was busy doing the power measurements. I'll be getting some kind of thermometer soon, and I'm open to suggestions of something with data logging capability. Otherwise I'll get a cheap IR thermometer and you'll have to be satisfied with just a few spot readings instead of the full graph we'd both rather see.defaultluser - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
I wonder if you could compare the performance of this heatsink versus just pointing a quiet 80mm fan at the drive? More moving air can have the same effect as much larger surface area, especially if we're only talking about half a watt extra required to reach full performance.ronboberg - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
So, basically they just need an extension cable/riser for the M.2 slot (they can do it for normal pci-e slot, these are basically the same thing but smaller) so you can relocate the drive in a normal drive bay to keep it cooled off. Or if they started out with something like a real cable going to a slightly modified M.2 connector that would be purposed for just drives on the board in the first place they could make normal 2.5" size drives with the new connector, 2TB+, and all the advantages that goes with being bigger and able to be placed like a normal drive. If you don't have the space, the small boards could still have the universal M.2 slot they have now for the bubblegum stick size drives but would just have to put up with the heat.extide - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
We already have what you are asking for: U.2tipoo - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
I wonder how this compares to just slapping these on the relevant chipshttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Zak - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
As few posters mentioned already: there is no room for even the tiniest heatsink.MrSpadge - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
Of course there is enough space: the chip packages themselves. It won't work in a laptop, but for a desktop some simple small memory heatsinks should do the trick just as well. for 5$ (aluminum is sufficient instead of copper) instad of 75$. And never mind if the heat sink overlaps the chips a bit, just make sure it doesn't short anything on the mainboard (use some insulation tape as needed).tipoo - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
Final words page, should the with and without heatsinks be flipped? If it was thermally shackled, should the higher bar not be for the one *with* the heatsink and not without?http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9856/79399...
tipoo - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
*for the 512GB drive at least, the 256 seems rightThe_Assimilator - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
I think you are correct, I also noticed it and had a "huh, WTF?" moment.