M.2 temps query. How warm are they?

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hapkiman

hapkiman

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For those of you who have an M.2 PCIe x4 drive of any brand, I am curious as to what temps you are getting? I would like to see some posts on normal operating temps and load temps for comparison and informational purposes. I have a Samsung 950 Pro 512GB as my main drive now running at PCIe x4 on a Z170A board, and it's still so new that it's hard to find any useful data on real world usage.

Samsung claims the 950's normal operating temp range is 0-70C. Mine is typically around 30C at idle, and will jump to ~40C while gaming.

This 950 seems to be an excellent drive, and it is so fast it's almost ridiculous.

Any info is appreciated.

 
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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

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Here's my 512 GB 950 PRO is setup in an Asus Hyper kit M.2 PCIe expansion card, temps as reported by HD Sentinel are pictured below. But mine is cooled by a small 40mm x 10mm fan blowing directly down onto the controller - temps from light duty tasks, ie browsing, working financial programs, some photoshop work generally in the 37-39C range. When i use one of the partitions i've left empty as my "worktable" to write video files to as they're rendering, i might see temps go up as high as 42C.

The 2nd picture down is of my xp941 with the fan in the exact same orientation, i just don't have a pix of the 950's fan set up. When the xp941, prior to active cooling showed a max temp of 97-98C while rendering. While they do run hotter than the 950, the fan dropped temps about 20-21C, so i assume the 950 without the fan would be showing a 20-21C increase without the fan.

My case has pretty decent airflow, so your temps are surprisingly low from what i'd expect

Capture_zps0irjjes9.jpg


if you download and give the free version of HD sentinel 4.60.13 beta, i'd be interested to know what temps it reports.

IMG_1757_zpsx5lhrgkc.jpg
 
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hapkiman

hapkiman

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Thanks for the reply. I have been using AIDA 64 Extreme to measure temps, and I also occasionally run HWINFO64. I grabbed the beta of HD Sentinel beta and it shows the same. I have very good air flow in my case which is a Corsair Air 540. I mounted the 950 at the bottom M.2 slot (my mobo has two), because there is a 140mm intake on the back of the case that blows air right across it. That must be helping it stay cool.





Everything pretty much stays cool in my case and my i7 6700k idles in the teens or around 20C using an H80i GT.
 
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hapkiman

hapkiman

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It's showing at 34C right now on all three utilities and that is actually a tad warmer than it has been. But the ambient room temp is a little warmer than it usually is, and my computer has been on for a while.

Have you experienced any throttling at your warmer temps?
 
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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

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None - but i haven't had temps ever go above 44C. Plus, as i stated earlier, the "heavy" load for my drive is when i'm rendering video files, and i don't know that I'd notice the throttling - because my cpu (i7-4790) is reporting (in task manager) 98-100% usage while rendering. When i went from a Sata SSD to the xp941, i saw a considerable drop in rendering times, and i mean approx 55-60% drop in times to render the same file. The xp941 was or is PCIe 2.0 x4. With the 950 PRO i was hoping to see a further drop in render times but it didn't materialize. Prior to the xp941, cpu usage ran low 90%, it was with the xp941 that it jumped up to 98-100% usage. So i suspect my bottleneck is occurring at the cpu - the 4790 has 4C & 8T, so it's either build a new system with a Z170 mobo and one of the newer CPUs or stay with what i've got.

For the record, i've experimented with rendering the video file stored on the 950 to the xp941 and vice versa, and included a 840 EVO and a 4 TB Green WD HDD - render times remain the same, even writing to the HDD, so that's why i don't think i'd notice the 950 throttling if it were.

On the HD Sentinel, if you select "temperature", it'll display the day's temp history - the paid version will store more than one day's history.

but what gets confusing, one german website that did a study on the 950 thermal limit reported that throttling didn't kick in until 120 GB of continuous writing to the drive. Another review site indicated even with thermal throttling kicking in, overall performance, depending on the queue, dropped max approx 3% - i have a hard time reconciling that with the fact that the write speed drops to 70 MB/s when throttled.



 
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hapkiman

hapkiman

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Great info. Thanks! If you do that much rendering and video work you might benefit from switching to one of the new Broadwell-E procs on a X99 board although it would of course be a costly switch with board/RAM/proc.

http://wccftech.com/intel-broadwell-e-hedt-computex-2016/
 
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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

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interesting - no, make that real interesting, but holy moly, i'll need a 2nd mtge to pay for it lol

but still, 10C & 20T - that would definitely cut my rendering times down
 
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