Western Digital deploys heatsink on remodelled M.2 to tempt gamers Western Digital has remodelled its M.2 SN720 mobile and edge device gumstick SSDs into a faster SN750 gamers' drive with a heatsink option. The Black SN750 comes in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities mounted in a single-sided M.2 card with an NVMe interface. It uses 64-layer TLC (3bits/cell) NAND. The heatsink option is a …
AFAIK a heatsink is actually a problem for most memory chips. As they work better at a medium to high temperature. Lifespan/speed is less at room temperature.
However, I guess for the controller chip and occasional overheating (AFAIK a consumer cannot even push that kind of OPS through them, you'd need a server setup for that) is still an issue. But 99% of these heatsinks are going to be for show, not actual performance or longevity.
Just a heatsink ... where's the RGB options that seem to be essential nowadays. I avoid RGB enhanced components as my PC is in a black case and I'm concerned if I have too many RGB components then there there will be a build up of photons inside that may cause the case to explode!
Give that heatsink some RGB LEDs and maybe we'll finally see a speed improvement worthy of gaming!
Snark aside of course, gaming is very rarely IO-limited and there's a sizeable market amongst the gaming crowd for functional/utilitarian designs with little in the way of bling. The heatsink is supposedly marginally useful, in that some NVMe devices throttle at high enough temperatures, but without TIM and the rest of it I think it's still of dubious utility. Thankfully it's available in a "naked" version for going in laptops or mobos where it won't fit (indeed, some mobos are coming with their own M2 heatsinks these days as well - but again that mostly seems to fall under the "heatsink ALL the things!" aesthetic).
The SN720 was seemingly a decent enough drive although apparently WD don't test it under linux and a couple of workarounds needed to be made in order to get it to boot IIRC;
https://community.wd.com/t/linux-support-for-wd-black-nvme-2018/225446
As someone who's using linux more and more I'm avoiding vendors without explicit Tux-friendliness; lots of SSD vendors seemingly only provide firmware updates via windows utils.
A SSD makes GTA V playable on machines produced far before it was released. I know, I have one. Before SSD it just paused every few seconds as it read textures in/out of RAM. After, it's smooth as anything. And that was just a SATA-level upgrade, not close to the speeds of NVMe.
Video-editing? Not a chance. 2Tb of raw video is really nothing and you'll spend half your life copying the data to the SSD from some other storage, spend ten minutes editing, and then spend the rest of the time copying it back, even with the fanciest of caching technologies.
And lower-end video is really not benefitting from SSD at all. You can stream HD/4K over the Internet. What do you think having it on a hard drive is going to do?
Always been the way: You can't game with Intel.
Unless (like the above laptop) it has nVidia Optimus sitting behind it.
They may change that in future years, but they've been happy with their products being regarded like that for decades.
When you see what something like GTA V is doing, it's a miracle it runs on anything that's not top-end at all.
Read this three-part series:
http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-graphics-study/
Yes had this with pendrives.
They really hate heat, causes throttling and eventually data loss due to clock speed variations. Incidentally if someone can make use if it I have a failed 256GB drive here which seems to have given up but manufacturer refused to honor the warranty.
Incidentally if someone can make use if it [sic]
Take it to somebody with good electrician training. They might be able to identify the failure and repair it. Possibly. (You can't break it more, but you might succeed).
manufacturer refused to honor the warranty.
Care to name and shame?
I've just built a new gaming rig, and added a 250GB WD Black NVME for the OS and essential programs... The motherboard already had a nice little heatsink with thermal pad to keep it cool... and most boards these days do... So I don't really see why it's needed. Gamers buy gaming boards and I've not seen one that didn't have a heatsink/spreader with it.
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