Power Consumption

For the SSD power consumption tests, a Quarch QTL1999 programmable power module is used, paired with in-house TPU software. This method allows for the monitoring of a drive's power usage profile with microsecond precision in our custom workloads. Data is pulled into our processing pipeline over Ethernet, on a separate machine, ensuring that measurements do not affect the SSD being tested. All measurements are drive power only, not full system.

Idle Power

We present two results for SSD Idle Power Consumption. The first one is called "Desktop" and represents the usage in a typical desktop, which by default does not have the advanced PCIe sub-states enabled, and drives cannot enter their lowest power state. The second result, named "Mobile," represents power consumption with L1 ASPM enabled, as found on most modern laptops.

Power Consumption under Load

In order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the drive's power consumption when not idle, we subject it to both random and sequential load patterns at different queue depths. The "Weighted" result in the comparison charts takes into account the typical behavior of today's client workloads, which mainly operate at low queue depths.

Gaming Power Draw

For our gaming power draw test we chose to measure Red Dead Redemption 2 while loading a savegame from the main menu.

Maximum Power Consumption

The highest observed value of all testing on this page is reported as maximum power consumption.

Power at Fixed Speed

Most of the time an SSD will not run at its highest transfer rates. Testing in this section accounts for that and tests sequential read and write at specific transfer rates, so you can get an idea of power consumption when only lightly loaded.

Energy Efficiency

Last but not least, we have energy efficiency, which is calculated from the "Power Consumption under Load" results, at both read and write.