SSD coolers to become new norm as Phison says future drives will run hot
I hadn't thought much to the idea of an all-in-one cooler that boasts both CPU and SSD cooling before today, but now it's all starting to make a little more sense. Phison's CTO, Sebastien Jean, has said that with SSD controllers and chips all getting hotter as performance improves, so too will heat output increase. Thus necessitating more beefy cooling solutions.
«As the speed continues to go up with each new generation, our challenge is to manage the heat. With Gen4, sometimes people need a cooler, sometimes they are okay with a metal foil label. If their board has enough airflow, it’s fine,» Jean says to MSI Insider and StorageReview.
"...I would expect to see heatsinks for Gen5," he continues. «But eventually we’ll need to have a fan that’s pushing air right over the heatsink, too.»
My condolences to all passive PC fans.
In a blog post (via Tom's Hardware), Phison outlines the measures required to keep modern SSDs cool, and how heat management has become of major importance for performance.
«With each additional GB/s of speed, an SSD also requires approximately one more watt of power,» it says citing Jean.
«We’re trying to stick within roughly the same power envelope as a 7GB/s SSD as we scale up to 14GB/s by making a lot of other changes.»
Power means waste heat, so trying to minimise extra power draw will be key to keeping SSDs cool. The best SSDs for gaming right now don't necessarily require specific thermal solutions, but even then they often come with heatsinks or require adequate case fan cooling to stay on the chillier side.
If power demands do increase, and it sounds like they might sometime fairly soon, what that means in terms of SSD construction is potentially larger heatsinks, even more focus on
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