Wednesday, September 13th 2023
SSDs With Phison E26 Controllers Shut Down at Higher Temperatures
The advent of PCIe 5.0 SSDs with Phison's E26 controllers has been a double-edged sword. While these SSDs offer impressively high data throughputs, they come with a significant drawback: severe overheating issues that can cause the SSDs not only to throttle down but to shut off entirely. TechPowerUp first noted this issue back in May, in our Corsair MP700 review, where the uncooled drive shut down after 86 seconds of reads and after 55 seconds of writes. Regarding criticism from tech reviewers, Corsair has released a firmware update (version 22.1) for its MP700 SSD to ensure that it throttles down rather than shutting off when overheated. Yet, many other SSDs like the Crucial T700, Seagate FireCuda 540, Gigabyte Aorus Gen 5 10000, and ADATA Legend 970 still suffer from temperature issues.
However, it's crucial to note that these extreme overheating problems occur only when the SSDs run without any cooling. While some manufacturers have planned firmware updates to address the issue, Corsair is the only company that has taken tangible action so far. Crucial has released a new firmware (PACR5102), but the ComputerBase report indicates that the SSD continues to shut off at high temperatures. The problem, though, can generally be mitigated with proper cooling. Whether using the included cooler or placing the SSD under a motherboard cover, temperatures usually stay below the critical limit, thus avoiding a complete shutdown. When we tested the SSTC Tiger Shark Elite 2 TB with Phison E26 (with updated firmware) without adequate cooling, the SSD continued to operate and throttled down, indicating that the remaining SSDs using this controller need a proper firmware update that throttles the SSD instead of shutting it down.
Sources:
via HardwareLuxx, ComputerBase
However, it's crucial to note that these extreme overheating problems occur only when the SSDs run without any cooling. While some manufacturers have planned firmware updates to address the issue, Corsair is the only company that has taken tangible action so far. Crucial has released a new firmware (PACR5102), but the ComputerBase report indicates that the SSD continues to shut off at high temperatures. The problem, though, can generally be mitigated with proper cooling. Whether using the included cooler or placing the SSD under a motherboard cover, temperatures usually stay below the critical limit, thus avoiding a complete shutdown. When we tested the SSTC Tiger Shark Elite 2 TB with Phison E26 (with updated firmware) without adequate cooling, the SSD continued to operate and throttled down, indicating that the remaining SSDs using this controller need a proper firmware update that throttles the SSD instead of shutting it down.
47 Comments on SSDs With Phison E26 Controllers Shut Down at Higher Temperatures
Phison and the other SSD controller makers can't do anything to improve here.Pretty much.
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Alphacool Core M.2 NVMe PCIe 5.0 liquid cooler
Every E26 SSD was advertised to use a heatsink. The "bare drives" are sold to use with motherboard's heatsinks so you are not paying twice for a heatsink.
There is also all of this talk about U.2/U.3 being a solution for the consumer market. I wonder how many people actually own any of these drives... They use up to 25w and the cases are expensive (in PC component terms). You are not going to stick a 25w SSD in a modern PC where the drive mounts on the back of the motherboard tray (where there isn't an airflow) and expect it to not throttle. For reference, the the first U.2 Intel drive required 300LFM airflow. I only mention it because I memorized the spec back in the day.
Then there is the signal integrity for PCIe Gen5 over wires. Even on motherboards, to get the Gen5 signal to the lower PCIe slots through traces requires another Phison product that you can see on most AMD X670E motherboards (redrivers/retimers). We will talk a lot more about these at OCP Summit 2023 in October. Sending the signal over a cable uses the most expensive version of these products. As a former reviewer I know how much the PC community loves $100 cables! U.2/U.3 is not a viable solution for many reasons in the consumer market.Please see what I said about moving data over cables. This also applies to the other enterprise form factors. If it doesn't plug directly into the motheboard then it has to move over wire and Gen5 over wire is expensive.
With a redesigned case with fitting openings on the side, they could connect directly to the motherboard, and be arranged side by side to be closer to the CPU/chipset. If used with existing cases there might be connectors perpendicular to the motherboard so that they face backwards as normal, but that seems more awkward and might require a few more centimeters of traces.
www.serialcables.com/product/pcie-gen5-x4-to-u-2-vertical-adapter/
Bloody nobody would bat an eye if this controller would have existed only for AIC cards, but you had to go pop. Now look at the backlash.
If you run these SSDs in SFF or next to a hot graphics card, then it may throttle all the time or maybe shut down, but I haven't seen my SSDs shutting down, even though sensors on Crucial were showing up to ~85°C spikes. Most SSDs will shut down when they reach the critical temperature ( usually 90°C+). If they shut down, then throttling doesn't work, or it triggers too late ... or simply ambient temp is way too high, no airflow, etc.
In terms of the rest of what you said yes cases would need to be more like older style cases where drive bays was common, they changed before they can change again. The stick on the back of the board idea was poor to begin with, and perhaps you can release data of these drives running full load, no throttle, on a low/medium end board thin slab heatsink sandwiched between a hot cpu/gpu with no more than two fans in the case, then I will take your word for it.
The 4090 comment seems a bit desperate, not a good idea to go there, those GPUs come with huge beefy cooling. They dont tell end users to provide their own cooling.
Appreciate the comments though from the industry wanting to defend what they have done here, and maybe in the future the costs for the gen 5 cables can be brought down. I remain of an opinion that gen 5 drives just arent worth it at all in the consumer market, so my final part of my reply to you, if you concerned about the consumer market paying extra for things it doesnt need then why have you even released this product?
I also experimented with using just a heatsink (with thermal tape) without a fan. The temps shot up close to 90C. I tried several different heatsinks. I absolutely cannot recommend a stand-alone heatsink without a fan for the Corsair MP700.
And Phison doesn't mandate anything; they just sell the controller and a reference SSD design. They likely strongly recommend the use of a dedicated cooling solution, but ultimately it's up to the company selling the physical drives to decide how to market their product, and most simply aren't going to want to force their users to pay more for a bulky and noisy cooling solution. Phison should have anticipated this and designed their controller and firmware to not require a HSF, but they were so preoccupied with being "first to market" that they ended up delivering an entirely substandard product - one that can't be fixed with any number of firmware revisions, but will require an actual hardware redesign. Likely by the time that redesign is done, other competitors will have delivered PCIe 5.0 controllers that aren't prototypes being sold as production-ready.