Avg. Power at DVD Playback
Finally, we looked at the power requirements of the flash SSDs when delivering a defined data stream. We used a DVD .vob file and played back the video to create this defined data stream:
Again we see Samsung and OCZ dominating. The other drives all require clearly more power when they have to provide only the limited bandwidth required to play a DVD video.
Idle, Peak Power
We don’t want to forget the results of our idle and peak power measurements. We measured peak power across all the benchmarks above, and took the largest result we found.
Lowest Idle Power
In an effort to determine the lowest active idle power, we disabled all Windows power saving options and had the drives idle for about ten minutes before we tracked the power consumption numbers. Some drives, especially conventional hard drives, have advanced power saving features that won’t kick in after several minutes of inactivity.
