Corsair MP700 2 TB

[Ferrum Master]

11w isn't a lot of heat to bleed off with a heatsink.

Yeah sure.

Current Rating: *0.5A/Power contact (continuous), * The temperature rise above ambient shall not exceed 30˚C, * The ambient condition is still air at 25˚C, * EIA-364-70 Method 2

And then reading PCI-Sig... they have only suggestions upping that bar to 1A. As far I remember there are only 9 3.3V pins in m.2, that's why I asked w1z about the duration. Because all we see from the review it has continuous load that violates connector ratings and fixes are suggested that are only coming home recently, you have to trust the board partner that he overbuild the design.

11W is quite enough for the surface area. We aren't all using XXXL towers with Delta fans anymore.

None of your recommendations have taken account the enthusiast segment with z690ies sporting 500W fire breathing graphics cards breathing hot air exactly towards the pcie5 m.2, and the CPU itself is spitting ~200W in Intel case. Let it be 300W for the GPU and 100W for the CPU, but the M.2 SSD is located in the worst place. U.2/U.3, AIC no problems, but M.2?

Active cooling on a storage device should be banned as idea. I am rather skeptic looking at the real datasheets, the PCI-SIG datasheets are not available publicly. With all due respect, but back to the drawing boards.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I don't have a particularly strong opinion against actively cooled devices, though they seem more practical on an AIC format. One that should be compatible with Z690 boards regardless, at least the one I have (with two physical gen 5 x16 slots). Then again, I'm much more inclined to use the drive in one of my Z690 Ace's existing gen 4 slots, of which it is generously supplied with five and a very large heatsink for them.

I'm just concerned for operating system and data integrity in case of a thermal shutdown while using this unit as a boot/system drive. The OS just isn't ready to lose access to its main storage pool without causing major problems.

IMO, thermal shutdowns should be reserved for the most extreme situations only. Implementing a throttle point to prevent that from occurring is necessary in this specific situation.

 

[Chris_Ramseyer]

There were many great points made. Let me address some of them.

Q: @Chris_Ramseyer Appreciate the input, but I have a hard time understanding why the lack of a M.2 slot on the motherboard would be factor.

CR: We are essentially talking about Z690 with that scenario. Z790 and AMD boards move the M.2 slot above the first PCIe slot. There is an signal integrity benefit with that shorter jump from the CPU to the M.2 SSD. Just as important and on the major topic being discussed, a massive thermal benefit from moving the M.2 SSD to an open space for air to flow.

Q: Also, do you figure a typical case with 1-2 fans would suffice if the room temperature gets closer to 30C?

CR: It doesn't take a lot of air to cool these drives. We saw a partner demo an early E26 for media and the case had two 120mm low-cost, low-output fans at the bottom of the case. When you put your hands over the fans there wasn't any flow. So to answer your question, fan placement is important. If they are blowing across the motherboard, you are good. If a very limit flow is coming in, and it's further blocked by a GPU, that can cause an issue.

Q: I would still say: avoid gen 5 SSDs without a heatsink like the plague at this point. Motherboard-supplied heat spreaders aren't really good. With no heatsink fins, they don't have the surface area needed to dissipate the heat, which just soaks in until the inevitable slowdown (or shutdown in this case) happens.

CR: Boards that support Gen5 have really good cooling these days. There isn't really a short stubby passive heatsink shipping on most of them. They are either active, passive tall, passive tall with a heatpipe, or short + long. Intake fans placed to move air over the motherboard's integrated cooler work really well.

Q: I also tend to say that a product should work as it is. If the SSD is supplied without a heat spreader, it means it should work perfectly even under a GPU or other add-in card. If it doesn't, it's a bad product. The box doesn't say "use with a heatsink" or "place only under a CPU cooler" anywhere.

CR: If you look at the specification and feature sheet for the Crucial T600, it states the bare drive is for motherboards with heatsinks. Essentially, why pay for a heatsink twice? Take the AM5 Taichi, as an example, it has a great active M.2 heatsink that is silent. You can save the (insert price difference) when buying the SSD without the heatsink already attached. $20 bux is $20 bux.

Q: We get that, but a drive shouldn't just thermally shutdown, throttling is much more sane behaviour.

CR: Agreed. We are on it!

 

[W1zzard]

Great review as always at TPU. Btw, it seems like the KC3000 SLC cache values are identical to the KC2000 review.

Thanks! The KC3000 values are fixed now, also in the other reviews recently posted

 

[Eternalightwithin]

What's up with the Kingston NV2 numbers? Back in January you called this budget ssd crap. Now in this article, this ssd is the best random r/w ssd on the list (QD1 - QD4)