Gen5 NVMe have active cooling

[BFG10K]

Consumer PCIe Gen 5 Gaming SSDs Arrive For Sale In Japan At A Smoking 10GB/s

The first PCIe 5.0 SSD popped up in Japan with a familiar face and blistering performance.

hothardware.com

A fan on an SSD? This is really getting quite ridiculous. These things are turning into GPUs.

 

[Seba]

I think M.2 has only 3.3V and that voltage is not that great for powering fans.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Additionally because of the low voltage, each pin has to put around half an amp through itself. As such the M.2 spec is limited to around 15W. When you look at the chart for this drive, that's not much headroom. Yes there would be room for a fan still, but these drives are rapidly approaching the over all power limits of the M.2 slot.

Mostly because using M.2 for this kind of drive is just silly It's hard to get over just how wild it's gotten with these exotic coolers just to keep temps down on a 10W load. Something 2.5" notebook drives have been managing since the 90's

 

[BFG10K]

PNY unveils 12GB/s PCIe 5.0 SSD with dual cooling fans

PNY says its new CS3150 SSD leverages the NVMe PCIe Gen 5 x4 interface to offer sequential read speeds of up to 12 GB/s and sequential writes...

www.techspot.com

...Because why have only one fan when you can have two?

As such the M.2 spec is limited to around 15W. When you look at the chart for this drive, that's not much headroom.

Coming up next: the SATA connector for the fan will also provide supplemental power for the drive. I can just see them shipping >15W drives for PCIe gen 6.

 

[BFG10K]

Looks like a normal liquid cooler AIO, right? Look again, it's for M.2 SSDs.

Team Group Launches T-Force Siren GD120S AIO SSD Cooler

T-FORCE, the gaming brand under Team Group Inc., today launched the T-FORCE SIREN GD120S AIO Cooler, a unique all-in-one liquid cooling solution for PCIe 2280 SSDs that uses exclusive patented technology (Taiwan Invention Patent No.: I778726). The SSD water block fits perfectly with M.2 2280...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[In2Photos]

Just use your GPU as a cooler!

 

[beginner99]

I'm still using gen 3 m.2 and have yet to hit a real world usage that saturates it's bandwidth

Don't see the point of these things for consumers

And even worse I suspect for copying a folder with 1000s of 1kb files on windows, it will be just as "fast" (=slow) as a gen 1 ssd. There is really no need for these speeds even less so since we are getting gimped on the network side since >10 years. some 2.5 gb stuff is available now. but 5 or 10gb/s ethernet for consumers? nothing.

You really need 2 of these drives and then what exactly is the scenario of having to copy stuff between 2 disks all the time?

Really sad optane was killed. that solved the effing problems with small file copy.

Wow. Didn't know that.

Does cooling the NAND chips on an SSD negatively affect its reliability?

The problem of heat dissipation in high-performance, small form-factor SSDs is well-known, for example, the paper Transient Thermal Analysis for M.2 SSD Thermal Throttling published in 2018 17th IEEE

electronics.stackexchange.com

That could be one reason why metallic Sandisk USB flash drives run so hot. Maybe they are trying to ensure that data retention doesn't become an issue due to writing to cold NAND.

true, you can almost burn yourself with these after some heavy writing.

 

[biostud]

Next Gen PCIe 5 drives are on the way

Phison reveals specs for new USB 4, PCIe Gen 5 SSD hardware — more details at CES 2024

Phison will be showing off a prototype SSD that is faster than today's fastest Gen 5 SSDs at CES 2024.

www.tomshardware.com

 

[coercitiv]

trolololololo


MSI unveils Spatium M570 Pro Frozr PCIe Gen5 SSD offering up to 12.4/11.8 GB/s read and write speeds

 

[In2Photos]

trolololololo

View attachment 90711
MSI unveils Spatium M570 Pro Frozr PCIe Gen5 SSD offering up to 12.4/11.8 GB/s read and write speeds

Reminds me of the cooler I had to add to my northbridge chipset on my MSI X58 Pro.

 

[DrMrLordX]

trolololololo

That's just silly. At that point you may as well require watercooling for the thing. Or at least offer it as an option.

 

[Brainonska511]

That's just silly. At that point you may as well require watercooling for the thing. Or at least offer it as an option.

Given the proximity of some NVME slots to processors, seems like there could be an opportunity for a company to release a AIO cooler that handles both the processor and the NVME drive.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Given the proximity of some NVME slots to processors, seems like there could be an opportunity for a company to release a AIO cooler that handles both the processor and the NVME drive.

They could, yeah. For people that don't have custom loops. Though depending on the CPU, a standard 360mm AiO might not have enough capacity to handle the heat flux from both these PCIe 5.0 drives and a CPU like a 13900ks/14900k.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

trolololololo

View attachment 90711
MSI unveils Spatium M570 Pro Frozr PCIe Gen5 SSD offering up to 12.4/11.8 GB/s read and write speeds

May as well bust this out for a proper cooler



At what point is fast enough, “fast enough”?
Does adding active cooling add enough performance for it to be perceivable?

For example:
When I went from cable internet at 2mb to fios at 5mb up and down it was a large improvement.
When fios increased my speed to 25/25 the jump was noticeable
When I upgraded to 50/50 is felt a faster
When I moved and signed up for new fios service and got 100/100 it was faster downloading steam stuff but otherwise it felt the same.
Last year when I changed to 300/300 the speed difference is imperceivable.

I know it’s heresy to say on a tech board but when is fast enough good enough?

 

[BFG10K]

MSI unveils Spatium M570 Pro Frozr PCIe Gen5 SSD offering up to 12.4/11.8 GB/s read and write speeds

Comedy gold. 3 heatpipes...many GPUs using far more than 15W don't even have that many.

No way that weight's safe for M.2 slots. PC cases will become a house of stilts with another support bracket required.

At what point is fast enough, “fast enough”?

For most people that's SATA2 SSDs. You only need NVMe if you copy files all day or have some other niche I/O workload.

Again, I can't see why they don't incrementally keep increasing SATA speeds. M.2 is dead-end, and consumers don't want U.2/U.3.

 

[BFG10K]

Next Gen PCIe 5 drives are on the way

Phison reveals specs for new USB 4, PCIe Gen 5 SSD hardware — more details at CES 2024

Phison will be showing off a prototype SSD that is faster than today's fastest Gen 5 SSDs at CES 2024.

www.tomshardware.com

So the "solution" to gen5 heat problem is to throttle to gen4 speeds?

Granted, most people don't need either speed, but you see the irony here.

 

[gdansk]

E31T is not Gen 4 speeds (up to 10.8GB/s).
But the real solution is other new controllers made on more advanced manufacturing processes which Phison is too cheap to do yet.

Or perhaps to use conventional 2.5" sized SSDs that connect via U.2/U.3.

 

[AdamK47]

The Gen-Z.2 card that came with my motherboard makes cooling these drives less ridiculous. M.2 is a silly format for desktop PCs. Not only is it becoming harder and harder to cool, it has also been stuck at 8TB for years now. My next drive will be U.2 or U.3.

 

[biostud]

So the "solution" to gen5 heat problem is to throttle to gen4 speeds?

Granted, most people don't need either speed, but you see the irony here.

I think the solution is to wait for 7nm controllers instead of 12nm.

 

[DrMrLordX]

consumers don't want U.2/U.3.

I do.

 

[DrMrLordX]

May as well bust this out for a proper cooler

When I want my NVMe drive to fly.

edit: woops sorry for extra reply, I'll nest them in the future I promise.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Comedy gold. 3 heatpipes...many GPUs using far more than 15W don't even have that many.

No way that weight's safe for M.2 slots. PC cases will become a house of stilts with another support bracket required.


For most people that's SATA2 SSDs. You only need NVMe if you copy files all day or have some other niche I/O workload.

Again, I can't see why they don't incrementally keep increasing SATA speeds. M.2 is dead-end, and consumers don't want U.2/U.3.

I remember when the 100TB Exadrive released and because it is on a SATA 3 interface, it has "unlimited" specified endurance for it's 5 year warranty. That's because at that size, it was physically impossible even with 24/7 writes and deletes to exhaust the NAND within 5 years due to the limitations of the SATA 3 interface

That said, I'm one of those heretics with SATA SSDs for bulk storage. I've had a 1TB SATA SSD for 6 years now as my primary game drive. The only time I saturate an interface is when Steam is updating a game, and it simply doesn't matter. Yeah it's a couple minutes for a huge update, but a couple of minutes means nothing to me especially compared to an old HDD. I have an NVMe SSD for my OS and daily Apps but as long as SATA SSDs remain so much cheaper (especially used Enterprise ones) than NVMe SSDs I'll keep using those for bulk storage without any concern.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

I do.

I'm still curious if it will work out for U.3 as a direct drive interface. From a lot of my discussions, most workhorse server SKUs leveraging Granite Rapids or Turin will be transitioning to EDSFF. This leaves U.3 relegated to low-cost platforms and flexible storage nodes. That means direct attach U.3 will not evaporate, but it's obvious the bulk of SSD development in the market is focused on EDSFF form factors. I imagine a lot of general purpose SSDs will be moving toward E3.S 1T, as the design is built to almost directly replace 2.5" disk designs. Meanwhile we're already seeing E1.S 9.5mm designs replace M.2 card designs in servers today for boot volumes. E1.S 9.5mm is definitely larger, but not by much, and you can't install it in a lay-down slot like M.2, but in exchange it can handle power dissipation around 20W. in other words, it has absolutely no issues handling any of the current M.2 Gen 5 SSD designs.

Fortunately, since we're really discussing an electrical interface here, there are already E1.S -> M.2 conversion modules on the open market. HPE is currently using their own for their Gen 11 designs as they transition to EDSFF. The M.2 Card goes into the carrier, and it presents an EDSFF interface for the backplane. The backplane from a home enthusiast perspective is an open market. We'll see server designs leverage MCIO for density reasons, but there's no reason ICY DOCK and similar companies can't use Oculink, or any of the existing SAS compliant designs like U.2/U.3, mini-SAS HD, Slimline SAS, etc. for 1-4 drive designs to make the connection from backplane to system board or controller.

That's all a lot said to get to the point that I think direct attach U.3's universal interface support is going to be too little, too late in the home market. I think the benefits of SAS / SATA / NVMe on the same interface will be lost on most home enthusiasts who are really purchasing for the highest speeds possible. I think what does have potential is E1.S 9.5mm, and E3.S 1T, both in the form of "carriers" since EDSFF needs a backplane to connect into vs. a direct cable connection. What I could forsee happening is these M.2 Gen 5 SSD designs getting "enthusiast" variants via dropping it into an EDSFF carrier, where now there's no issues dissipating the heat. That to me makes way more sense compared to trying to put giant heatsinks on a module sitting on your motherboard. This also has the benefit of SSD manufacturers not needing to make an altered physical SSD SKU. "Regular" users get the bare SSD and heatspreader, and the unit throttles. Enthusiast users get the same SSD but with a thermal pad and dropped into an EDSFF carrier. Now the SSD can support sustained use without throttling. Seems like a more likely outcome to me when considering a business' interest in keeping hardware variants to a minimum.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Enthusiast users get the same SSD but with a thermal pad and dropped into an EDSFF carrier. Now the SSD can support sustained use without throttling. Seems like a more likely outcome to me when considering a business' interest in keeping hardware variants to a minimum.

So something like this?

CP116_4 x EDSFF E1.S / M.2 NVMe SSD Mobile Rack for External 5.25" Drive Bay

global.icydock.com

 

[thecoolnessrune]

So something like this?

CP116_4 x EDSFF E1.S / M.2 NVMe SSD Mobile Rack for External 5.25" Drive Bay

global.icydock.com

Yep that would be the thing! I think MCIO is a very aggressive bet here, but since these can be converted between there would be options for say, Oculink to MCIO or SlimSAS to MCIO cables. Just gonna be pricey. The carrier and drive latch are non-specified on EDSFF. In other words, an OEM can make any sort of of latch mechanism they want to go along with their Chassis. I could see an Internal 3.5" variant that has no latch at all. Just simply a carrier for say, 2 drives. On the other hand, could you imagine external 5.25" bays becoming popular on enthusiast computers again? I'm still a prodigious CD Ripper, and when I was building my last PC it felt like finding a reasonable case that supported both water cooling and at least one 5.25" drive bay was like finding a unicorn. The full mesh and full front panel look is so popular right now it's difficult to find a good selection of alternatives.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yep that would be the thing! I think MCIO is a very aggressive bet here, but since these can be converted between there would be options for say, Oculink to MCIO or SlimSAS to MCIO cables. Just gonna be pricey. The carrier and drive latch are non-specified on EDSFF. In other words, an OEM can make any sort of of latch mechanism they want to go along with their Chassis. I could see an Internal 3.5" variant that has no latch at all. Just simply a carrier for say, 2 drives. On the other hand, could you imagine external 5.25" bays becoming popular on enthusiast computers again? I'm still a prodigious CD Ripper, and when I was building my last PC it felt like finding a reasonable case that supported both water cooling and at least one 5.25" drive bay was like finding a unicorn. The full mesh and full front panel look is so popular right now it's difficult to find a good selection of alternatives.

From my PoV I just want something serviced with enough PCIe lanes that I don't have to worry about whether the PCIe slot my video card is in going down from 16x to 8x because I put in too many drives. That or if there aren't enough lanes in total for all the drives I've installed, I'd want them to be shared instead of stealing speed from the video card slot.