SSD Overclocking? It can be Done, with Serious Performance Gains

[bonehead123]

Some folk just seem to have WAY too much free time on their hands

I'll just stick with o/c'ing my cpu's & gpu's, at least that doesn't require a bunch of other parts & softwarez to do

 

[delshay]

Does anyone know how to read the buffered memory timings inside an SSD?

They normally come with 256, 512, 1MB ect, ect depending on size of SSD. ...Example: I have 2TB SSD & I know it has 2MB DDR2 memory onboard. But is there a way to read it's memory timings,

 

[mechtech]

"While this NAND Flash die is rated for up to 400 MHz or 800 MT/s, it only ran at less than half the speed at 193.75 MHz or 387.5 MT/s at default settings."

If it's rate for 400MHz, why run it at less than half?? I mean if you paid for those chips why not run them closer or at rated speed and sell the product at a higher price since it has higher performance??

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

"While this NAND Flash die is rated for up to 400 MHz or 800 MT/s, it only ran at less than half the speed at 193.75 MHz or 387.5 MT/s at default settings."

If it's rate for 400MHz, why run it at less than half?? I mean if you paid for those chips why not run them closer or at rated speed and sell the product at a higher price since it has higher performance??

Bottlenecks elsewhere, such as the controller. If you don't have the bandwidth you may as well save the power.

 

[R-T-B]

If you only unlock the full 400MHz of the nand I'd say it's less of an overclock and more of a true performance unlock, or a de-hobbling.

He went to 500MHz.

Hi,
Sure isn't that called mem cache

No, this is something else.

 

[Bwaze]

"Usually, subjects for overclocking include CPUs, GPUs, and RAM, with other components not actually being capable of overclocking."

Au contraire, almost nothing is overclockable these days to any useful degree. SSDs included.

 

[Broken Processor]

Can't help but think this is a terrible idea, definitely cool but no just don't do it on you home putter.

 

[Sabotaged_Enigma]

Finally something interesting and creative appeared in the PC industry! I haven't been reading in a lot of curiosity for years! Good job!

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

He went to 500MHz.

On the controller. Flash was 400 MHz.

The overclock results were an increase of 17.6% for the Silicon Motion controller, up to 500 MHz from the original 400 MHz, and 106% with 400 MHz clock for the NAND Flash, which only operated at 193 MHz stock.

 

[A&P211]

Can this overclock my girlfriend to teach her about how to turn on a PC, really she needs to learn about PC basics.

 

[hojnikb]

I am curious tho about those tools used. I have a old Intel 80GB ssd that i would love to toy around with.

Even 10% increase for such drives would be huge.

These are so called Mass Production Tools (MPTools for short). You won't find any kinds of tools for 1st party controller vendors like Intel or Samsung, because they don't sell their controllers to other vendors. So unless someone leaks them from their factory, it's a fat chance you'll get one.

SiliconMotion, Phison, Maxiotek and others usually sell controllers and/or complete board designs to vendors, which they can customize using said MPTools. Because many factories/vendors then manufacture these drives, tools like that usually quickly leak to the interwebs.

If anyone is brave enough, there's an awesome resource for such tools. It's in RU, but Google translate fixes that. Beware, that wrong settings can easily brick your drive.
www.usbdev.ru/files/

Since no one seems to mention it, I will: What does this do to NAND durability?

Overclocking other types of electronics is doable because we're generally talking about transistors or other very durable components. NAND flash cells are NOT durable. They are in fact relatively very delicate. So overclocking them? Seems a bit dubious to me. Granted, the article and whatnot above talks about the NAND controller as much as the NAND itself, but still.

Likely not much. This is NAND interface overclock (ie the bus connecting the nand die to the flash controller -- similar to SATA). At worst, you'd get data curruption, because of errors on the interface itself.

I'm guessing bulk of the performance gain is from the controller overclock, not the interface. It's likely factory chose that toggleddr frequency for a reason (ie. die itself isn't capable of higher speeds, so faster interface clocks aren't needed).

Might need further testing.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Likely not much. This is NAND interface overclock (ie the bus connecting the nand die to the flash controller -- similar to SATA). At worst, you'd get data curruption, because of errors on the interface itself.

You might be misunderstanding how NAND works. Overclocking NAND is iffy at best.

I'm guessing bulk of the performance gain is from the controller overclock, not the interface. It's likely factory chose that toggleddr frequency for a reason (ie. die itself isn't capable of higher speeds, so faster interface clocks aren't needed).

Plausible. But as you said...

Might need further testing.

... further testing is needed.

 

[GabrielLP14]

On the contrary, what really helped out was the NAND clock increase, that was the first and main reasons for the performance uplift

 

[lexluthermiester]

On the contrary, what really helped out was the NAND clock increase, that was the first and main reasons for the performance uplift

I'm not arguing that point. I'm arguing the wisdom of doing it at all. NAND is NOT durable. It degrades over time under normal use, to say nothing about over clocking which very likely degrades durability greatly.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

I'm not arguing that point. I'm arguing the wisdom of doing it at all. NAND is NOT durable. It degrades over time under normal use, to say nothing about over clocking which very likely degrades durability greatly.

The NAND die was rated for the 400MHz clock.

 

[GabrielLP14]

I'm not arguing that point. I'm arguing the wisdom of doing it at all. NAND is NOT durable. It degrades over time under normal use, to say nothing about over clocking which very likely degrades durability greatly.

Like the own video title, its just a curiosity, not something i recommend to do, sine as you can see in the video, has a high chance of things go wrong.

The NAND die was rated for the 400MHz clock.

originaly yes, but like i mentioned, there are many reasons why they downclocked it

 

[hojnikb]

On the contrary, what really helped out was the NAND clock increase, that was the first and main reasons for the performance uplift

That's really interesting. I really do think that ToggleDDR (what you're overclocking) is the interface between flash controller and the raw nand die itself. (sort of like sata between spinning rust and motherboard).

Overclocking just the interface shouldn't affect nand performance, unless the interface speed is lower than what nand die is actually capable of delivering.

I might be wrong, i'd love to get some better insight about this.