# SSD drives and heat - is there any?



## keakar (Mar 13, 2014)

do bigger SSD drives (250GB+) produce a lot of heat?

and if so is it comparable to that of regular disk drives?

lastly if they do give off a lot of heat, what is the better mounting position to help them cool better, circuit board side up or down?


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## FreedomEclipse (Mar 13, 2014)

they do get a little warm but nothing to worry about - hard drives get a lot hotter as they require more voltage and have motors and other shit inside that spin and create that heat


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## Tyrael (Mar 13, 2014)

OMG... SSD(s) are static and they don't have moving parts! So, heat issue is out the door buddy. 

You shouldn't worry too much...


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## keakar (Mar 13, 2014)

Tyrael said:


> OMG... SSD(s) are static and they don't have moving parts! So, heat issue is out the door buddy.
> 
> You shouldn't worry too much...



well so are RAM aren't they? you cant hardly buy RAM today without them all having fancy heat sinks on them

its great to hear SSDs don't make heat but then why do RAM need heat sinks?


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## FreedomEclipse (Mar 13, 2014)

keakar said:


> well so are RAM but you cant hardly buy RAM today without them all having fancy heat sinks on them



Only for brand marketing and aesthetic purposes, unless youre pumping colossal amounts of voltage to your ram in an effort to overclock them to over 9000mhz, heatspreaders are there just to look pretty.


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## Tyrael (Mar 13, 2014)

keakar said:


> well so are RAM aren't they? you cant hardly buy RAM today without them all having fancy heat sinks on them


SSD(s) chip + controller operate differently and they don't overclock (yeah, everybody knows that... nothing fancy.). Therefore, it's only design to store data. Whereas DDR2/3 RAM(s), they are flush when you shutdown your system. Even worse, some memory today runs way faster than 1866MHz Bus Speed @ ridiculous timings. That is HOT and CRAZY!


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## FX-GMC (Mar 13, 2014)

Tyrael said:


> SSD(s) chip + controller operate differently and they don't overclock (yeah, everybody knows that... nothing fancy.). Therefore, it's design to store data. Whereas DDR2/3 RAM(s), they are flush when you shutdown your system. Even worse, some memory today runs way faster than 1866MHz Bus Speed @ ridiculous timings. That is HOT and CRAZY!



Intel wanted to bring SSD overclocking to the table.  They must have realized it was a stupid idea.


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## GreiverBlade (Mar 13, 2014)

Tyrael said:


> OMG... SSD(s) are static and they don't have moving parts! So, heat issue is out the door buddy.
> 
> You shouldn't worry too much...


anything that involve electricity produce heat be it ram chip ssd or other  GDDR vRAM most of the time have heatsink for stability.

my Vertex III sit at 30° and is in the direct airflow of a silverstone AP181 180mm fan so basically yes it produce heat "as every electronics part do" but nothing to be worrying about in the case of the OP (unless you cramp it in a isolated styrofoam box  )


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## keakar (Mar 13, 2014)

Tyrael said:


> SSD(s) chip + controller operate differently and they don't overclock (yeah, everybody knows that... nothing fancy.). Therefore, it's only design to store data. Whereas DDR2/3 RAM(s), they are flush when you shutdown your system. Even worse, some memory today runs way faster than 1866MHz Bus Speed @ ridiculous timings. That is HOT and CRAZY!



thanks, I didn't know that



GreiverBlade said:


> anything that involve electricity produce heat be it ram chip ssd or other  GDDR vRAM most of the time have heatsink for stability.
> my Vertex III sit at 30° and is in the direct airflow of a silverstone AP181 180mm fan so basically yes it produce heat "as every electronics part do"



would this be in terms of heat needing airflow to cool it or just electrical heat in the realm of warm to sorta hot but doesn't need cooling consideration?


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## rtwjunkie (Mar 13, 2014)

@keaker:  Because of electrical flow, they can get a little warm, especially if writing data to them, but not hot like an HDD.  I don't think I have seen any of my SSD's go above 27 or 26c.  So, a little airflow can help, but not totally necessary.

EDIT: I just noticed you are right near me!


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## Sasqui (Mar 13, 2014)

A USB stick I had burnt to a crisp, smoke and everything.  But I digress...

Lot of hits on Google:  https://www.google.com/#q=does ssd need cooling


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## GreiverBlade (Mar 13, 2014)

keakar said:


> would this be in terms of heat needing airflow to cool it or just electrical heat in the realm of warm to sorta hot but doesn't need cooling consideration?



no in my case its more because the SSD is behind the motherboard tray so there is a little heat from the mobo/cpu and the 2 3.5 HDD above i never seen it go past 30° and when i was in my GR one with no airflow at all zip tied in the back of my 5.25" cage : 26-27° was the max as rtwjunkie wrote


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## keakar (Mar 13, 2014)

rtwjunkie said:


> @keaker:  Because of electrical flow, they can get a little warm, especially if writing data to them, but not hot like an HDD.  I don't think I have seen any of my SSD's go above 27 or 26c.  So, a little airflow can help, but not totally necessary.
> 
> EDIT: I just noticed you are right near me!



yep, holding my breath waiting to hear whats going to happen with mighty mouse (Darren sproles) be a shame to see him go


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## Glenderbender (Feb 12, 2015)

SSD do heat up because they use more voltage than mechanical hard drives. Same goes for RAM. Just because it is electronic does not mean it does not produce heat. Think about your monitor or your digital TV. What about your game station? SSD does not equal cool or cold operation. It always depends on the resistance of the object and the amount of electricity it uses. This is basic physics. The more resistance the more heat. Because SSD's use more voltage than HDD drives they actually produce more heat. I have a netbook that overheated when I installed an SSD and would shut down when charging and heavy CPU usage. I had to install a low voltage product. Check put www.crucial.com and use their SSD advisor to find a compatible hard drive. About a M500 240 GB for $100 on amazon with free shipping and no taxes.


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## peche (Feb 12, 2015)

FX-GMC said:


> Intel wanted to bring SSD overclocking to the table.  They must have realized it was a stupid idea.


 i was aboout to say that....


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## AsRock (Feb 12, 2015)

I believe my OCZ SSD died from heat, shortly from putting it in a laptop it died and when i striped it you could see heat mark on the metal as they used steel which discolored.

I know what i be doing with the ones that run out of warranty and that would better placing heat sinks on the controller chip or a heat pad to make contact with the metal casing which i be doing with my Intel SSD's soon as they have the ideal casing.


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## RCoon (Feb 12, 2015)

Glenderbender said:


> they use more voltage than mechanical hard drives



No. No they don't. First post is a 1 year old thread necro and totally incorrect. Good job.


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## FreedomEclipse (Feb 12, 2015)

Glenderbender said:


> SSD do heat up because they use more voltage than mechanical hard drives. Same goes for RAM. Just because it is electronic does not mean it does not produce heat. Think about your monitor or your digital TV. What about your game station? SSD does not equal cool or cold operation. It always depends on the resistance of the object and the amount of electricity it uses. This is basic physics. The more resistance the more heat. Because SSD's use more voltage than HDD drives they actually produce more heat. I have a netbook that overheated when I installed an SSD and would shut down when charging and heavy CPU usage. I had to install a low voltage product. Check put www.crucial.com and use their SSD advisor to find a compatible hard drive. About a M500 240 GB for $100 on amazon with free shipping and no taxes.




I actually had the opposite, I had a laptop that used to overheat and switching to an SSD dropped temps quite a bit. You could actually feel the difference on your lap and less heat permeated up through the keyboard. Id question where you got this information from as its not correct


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## R-T-B (Feb 12, 2015)

SSDs CAN get hot, but a well designed one should produce less heat than a HD any day of the week.


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## AsRock (Feb 12, 2015)

FreedomEclipse said:


> I actually had the opposite, I had a laptop that used to overheat and switching to an SSD dropped temps quite a bit. You could actually feel the difference on your lap and less heat permeated up through the keyboard. Id question where you got this information from as its not correct



Same here, only one small hot spot now on my DELL 1764 ( near the end of the cooler which is expected ), before it was more like 1/2 the laptop.


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## Cybrnook2002 (Feb 12, 2015)




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## crosis (Feb 6, 2016)

keakar said:


> well so are RAM aren't they? you cant hardly buy RAM today without them all having fancy heat sinks on them
> 
> its great to hear SSDs don't make heat but then why do RAM need heat sinks?



I know this is a very late response to your question above but thought i give it a shot.  It seems no one answered your question.  The difference between SSD and standard RAM you have for your Operating System or Graphics Card is this.  SSD is a static ram whereas the ram for your OS is dynamic ram.  This just means your SSD uses electricity to permanently set the binary data within it and done; there is no more activity within it.   For the ram within the OS the ram is constantly using electricity to replenish the set state. The moment this electrical replenishing stops  the binary data will be lost; the endless replenishing creates the heat u feel from the ram sticks.    Unless you are using your SSD as the drive which Windows resides on (Windows is frequently accessing stored data keeping any drive active) the SSD is pretty much turned off and not drawing much power besides typical interface do-dats.  For a standard HDD or ram stick they are always running, always moving electricity through it and therefore generating a significant amount of heat.

Hope this helps.


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## Xzibit (Feb 6, 2016)




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## RejZoR (Feb 6, 2016)

My Samsung M.2 SM951 is quite hot. Granted, it's not in an airflow spot, but still, one would expect them to get quite warm considering they are always in such spots. Why don't they mount thin aluminium coolers over their controllers that maybe even extend over NAND modules? Like they do it with RAM sticks.

If I push my SM951, it gets very close to the max operational temperature. I'm not that worried since I only have it as a cache drive so failure isn't as catastrophic, but still. If it was my primary storage, I'd keep it cooled way more.

Hm, maybe I'll buy a thin aluminium cooler cheap from ebay and mount it myself. Should help I guess.



crosis said:


> I know this is a very late response to your question above but thought i give it a shot.  It seems no one answered your question.  The difference between SSD and standard RAM you have for your Operating System or Graphics Card is this.  SSD is a static ram whereas the ram for your OS is dynamic ram.  This just means your SSD uses electricity to permanently set the binary data within it and done; there is no more activity within it.   For the ram within the OS the ram is constantly using electricity to replenish the set state. The moment this electrical replenishing stops  the binary data will be lost; the endless replenishing creates the heat u feel from the ram sticks.    Unless you are using your SSD as the drive which Windows resides on (Windows is frequently accessing stored data keeping any drive active) the SSD is pretty much turned off and not drawing much power besides typical interface do-dats.  For a standard HDD or ram stick they are always running, always moving electricity through it and therefore generating a significant amount of heat.
> 
> Hope this helps.



It's called "volatile" and "non-volatile". Not static and dynamic. Volatile memory is when data is lost if power is cut-off. Non-volatile is used in SSD drives where data remains after power is gone.

Static memory is for example ROM/EEPROM chips where data is read only or read/write in one pass (like BIOS upgrades). Dynamic is all memory that has random write ability, like RAM, NAND, technically even spinning HDD's are considered as dynamic storage.


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## newtekie1 (Feb 6, 2016)

The controller definitely generates heat, just like any other processor does.

If you take a 2.5" drive apart, they usually have a thermal pad between the controller chip and the metal housing, effectively making the metal housing a heatsink for the drive.  Some even have pads on the NAND chips themselves.  But just like with RAM, this heatsink isn't really necessary. That is why M.2 drives usually don't have heatsinks and run fine, even though they are actually working faster than 2.5" SATA drives.

But some of those PCI-E drives can get pretty darn hot, they even make waterblocks for some of them.  Not that that is anywhere near necessary.


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## RejZoR (Feb 6, 2016)

Well, my SM951 almost reaches it's max specified temperatues. I don't know if that's considered as normal for as long as it's within thermal specifications, but CrystalDiskInfo starts warning me and I don't like that. HDD on other hand, I have it suspended on rubber springs behind intake fans so it's always cooled perfectly.


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## Frenzic (Feb 6, 2016)

They will get warm if there is a constant read/write on them for an extended period of time.


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