WD Black SN770M 2 TB

[Chrispy_]

But read efficiency is the best ever tested, which matters more imo, due to the read-heavy nature of the Steam Deck?

I don't worry about read efficiency because reading never requires as much power as writing, and it's peak draw that people are concerned about for something like the Deck.

For sure, the SN770M will make a great upgrade for the deck based on both speed and low power draw.

 

[W1zzard]

Why would WD do that? their brand is stronger than sandisk in my opinion.

Their analysis is something like "our valuation on the stock market only considers our HDD business and the SSD business is pretty much ignored"

and it's peak draw that people are concerned about

why? this makes no sense. for a battery powered device with limited thermals the average power draw = average heat output is most important? power spikes don't matter for the power supply, because they are too small to overload it, and the thermal mass of the device will absorb heat output spikes

 

[Chrispy_]

why? this makes no sense. for a battery powered device with limited thermals the average power draw = average heat output is most important? power spikes don't matter for the power supply, because they are too small to overload it, and the thermal mass of the device will absorb heat output spikes

Valve's official comment on avoiding drives that draw more power than the included drive.

Drives get their hottest and draw the most power during sustained writes, so it seems to me like the peak write temperatures are the most relevant.

Without any room for cooling and no heatsink, these 2230 drives all hit their thermal throttle point very quickly indeed when installed and given a sustained write workload, such as copying a library from and external drive...

 

[lexluthermiester]

THIS is the drive SteamDeck owners should be buying. Quality TLC instead of QLC. @Space Lynx Here's your storage upgrade!

 

[ymdhis]

You listed “No DRAM cache” under negatives twice.

Should've listed it thrice.

 

[oiawshboiwsahnoidaws]

@W1zzard I don't own a ssd with HMB, but have you ever tried disabling HMB to check what kind of difference it makes?
Supposedly changing HMB size can be done via registry: HMBAllocationPolicy
If that works could be interesting to see how a HMB drive does on systems that don't have HMB

 

[Wirko]

I would imagine the lack of support for L1 ASPM trumps both read and write efficiency with regards to battery life, although I have no idea how often the Steam Deck puts its NVMe device in L1 state.

It looks like for all WD SSD's, idle power consumption is the same regardless of the L1 ASPM setting. Is power management really broken on all WD SSD's?

Now that I noticed this L1 ASPM detail in the review, I personally wouldn't choose this drive for any battery-powered device.

I'm still quite sure that all half decent M.2 SSDs support power saving. M.2 is a mobile form factor first and foremost, and each wasted watt matters a lot. But we could only be sure if someone measured comsumption in an actual notebook or a portable game console. W1zzard has a desktop system, and while it's capable of putting most SSDs in a very low power state, all WDs and a few others resist. It looks like there's some incompatibility at work here.

But WD itself is weird. They fail to list any consumption numbers for their newer, higher range SSDs (SN770, SN770M, SN850X). But they do list the numbers for the lower range, including SN750. SN580's data is specific enough: 3.3 mW in the PS5 sleep state, and "Power consumption during PS5 is measured in system that supports PCIe L1.2". Older SSDs (SN570, SN750) have a PS4 sleep state with a similarly low consumption.

Anandtech has some useful information on these power states, they did the measurements on the SN750 back when it was new, and noted:

The SN750 is one of a few NVMe drives that cannot even come close to a reasonably deep sleep state on our desktop testbed, a problem that seems to be hard for the industry to eliminate for good.

And the said problem is still with us.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Should've listed it thrice.

Not really. It's not a huge problem anymore.

 

[chrcoluk]

@W1zzard I don't own a ssd with HMB, but have you ever tried disabling HMB to check what kind of difference it makes?
Supposedly changing HMB size can be done via registry: HMBAllocationPolicy
If that works could be interesting to see how a HMB drive does on systems that don't have HMB

Yep would be a good test, found this. Pretty sure W1zzard usually references read random i/o when he talks about HMB.

 

[ShogoXT]

The only one that could compete i think is the Visiontek DLX4 2230. It comes in sizes up to 2tb as well, but it's double sided at that point.

Innoogrit 5220 with TLC

Amazon.com

Also on Newegg. $100 for 1tb $200 for 2tb.

EDIT: I guess it would be like that Atom 50 on the chart then. I don't know the nand it uses though I've never seen a TLC 5220 go to 2tb... Visionteks OWN website advertised TLC though.

 

[Mussels]

Is power management really broken on all WD SSD's?

Controllable in their software, IIRC.
Maybe it's defaulted to "Game Mode" out of the box now?

 

[Space Lynx]

@W1zzard nm about my question from before regarding which 2230 to buy, this 2tb sn770m is on sale at best buy for 159 bucks, and i believe steam deck oled has heatsink built in for the nvme, if not... i will figure out some shenanigans to get it cooled better

only 59 more dollars than if i had went with the 1tb deck matte oled, i get a sharper glossy screen and 2 tb



@oxrufiioxo all i do is win win win

as seen here:

What's your latest tech purchase?

Is the Ally worth twice the price though? possibly not baaaahahhahahahhaa ... i got mine second hand for 250chf (well almost a BNIB, the seller told me he used it only for 3 weeks, tho he was sad the auction ended at 250 and not 500+ :laugh:) and a Steamdeck basic model is 549chf ... full price...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[mab1376]

Are there any 2230 drives that have DRAM cache?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Are there any 2230 drives that have DRAM cache?

Unlikely. Not enough room on the PCB..

 

[Chrispy_]

Unlikely. Not enough room on the PCB..

Don't think there's ever been a 2230 with DRAM cache, and I've even owned (long time ago now) double-sided 2230s with the controller on one side and the NAND on the other.

 

[Mussels]

Are there any 2230 drives that have DRAM cache?

probably not, that format would be too focused on power and size efficiency

Drives like this SN770 that perform well without the cache would be the way to go

 

[TrantaLocked]

SN850X 1 TB owner here. When I enabled L1.1/L1.2 in my ASRock B650M BIOS and set PCIe power saving to maximum in Windows power profile config, my SN850X (non-OS drive) temps dropped by about 8 C. I don't know if the temp sensor is for NAND or a composite. It makes me think ASPM is working and maybe the WD drives TPU tested just needed the Windows setting for it to engage, while drives from other manufacturers don't?

 

[W1zzard]

SN850X 1 TB owner here. When I enabled L1.1/L1.2 in my ASRock B650M BIOS and set PCIe power saving to maximum in Windows power profile config, my SN850X (non-OS drive) temps dropped by about 8 C. I don't know if the temp sensor is for NAND or a composite. It makes me think ASPM is working and maybe the WD drives TPU tested just needed the Windows setting for it to engage, while drives from other manufacturers don't?

That's great feedback. I agree, these lower temps suggest that ASPM is working.

I do have the Windows setting enabled for ASPM testing, without it there's no savings, no matter the drive (at least in my system)

Just to confirm you have it running in the M.2 slot closest to the CPU?

 

[chrcoluk]

I can get my SN850X temps to drop, but not via ASPM. I may have misconfigured bios, this is why I asked on here not long ago about the bios ASPM settings.

Its via these two settings, I put inside the red rectangle. (they hidden by default).

Basically a higher number represents more power saving, it is a value to use as an acceptable wake up from sleep time, if the sleep wake up time is above the value, then it wont go in that sleep mode, so 0 disables power saving. If I switch to a power schema (power saving e.g.) that utilises this, I definitely see my SN850X temp drop.

 

[W1zzard]

I can get my SN850X temps to drop, but not via ASPM. I may have misconfigured bios, this is why I asked on here not long ago about the bios ASPM settings.

Its via these two settings, I put inside the red rectangle. (they hidden by default).

Basically a higher number represents more power saving, it is a value to use as an acceptable wake up from sleep time, if the sleep wake up time is above the value, then it wont go in that sleep mode, so 0 disables power saving. If I switch to a power schema (power saving e.g.) that utilises this, I definitely see my SN850X temp drop.

View attachment 358424

Maybe that's what blocks the WD drives from transitioning .. adding a reminder to look into it

 

[Wirko]

Maybe that's what blocks the WD drives from transitioning .. adding a reminder to look into it

Any chances of testing low power states in a notebook?

 

[W1zzard]

Any chances of testing low power states in a notebook?

I need to mount a big power measurement adapter and I need native Gen 5 SSD support, also adding one more device to keep around/working seems complicated just to make WD drives work?

 

[Wirko]

I need to mount a big power measurement adapter and I need native Gen 5 SSD support, also adding one more device to keep around/working seems complicated just to make WD drives work?

I didn't even mean to suggest you to run all the benchmarks with a notebook, just power-related ones, so Gen 5 wouldn't be a requirement. But it would be impractical, that's for sure. If at all possible.

 

[W1zzard]

so Gen 5 wouldn't be a requirement

Makers of Gen 5 SSDs won't agree with that I will do some research into @chrcoluk's suggestion, maybe this can solve the problem

 

[Wirko]

Makers of Gen 5 SSDs won't agree with that

In a way, they may be right. New generations of PCIe, NVMe etc. bring new features, some of which may be related to power savings.