Crucial's T700 PCIe 5.0 SSD can throttle to HDD speeds without a cooler

[Daniel Sims]

A hot potato: With the rise of blazing fast NVMe SSDs, storage has become another PC component that needs dedicated cooling. Recent tests of two new PCIe 5.0 models show precisely why: they reach temperatures typically seen in CPUs and GPUs, which can stop the drives from working as they should.

ComputerBase's recent tests of Crucial's T700 and Corsair's MP700 NVMe SSDs could further convince consumers that they should strongly consider paying extra for the heatsinks retailers offer with new drives. Their impressive read speeds, normally sitting in the neighborhood of 10GBps, completely evaporate if the SSDs get too hot.

Both drives can reach temperatures in the 80 Celsius range without cooling but handle those extreme conditions differently. The outlet's review of the Corsair SSD reveals that, without a heatsink, it can idle at 67 C. A CrystalDiskMark test pushes it up to 87 C, at which point it crashes.

The T700, meanwhile, continues operating upon reaching similar temperatures but throttles to speeds resembling HDDs. In the screenshot below, Crucial's 2TB drive initially reads at an incredible 12.3GBps but quickly plummets to 101MBps and then 53MBps as the temperature reaches 86 C. It's preferable to crashing and risking data loss, but the extra speed that defines NVMes seems to completely disappear under load without dedicated cooling.

Click to enlarge

As the first wave of PCIe 5.0 SSDs hit the market, Gigabyte's Aorus Gen5 is another stark example of the thermal obstacles they run into. Its 10GBps sequential read speed generates enough heat to justify a cooler that dwarfs the drive.

Most users affected by the current situation are likely enthusiasts, rendering professionals, and early adopters. Only the most recent motherboards support PCIe 5.0, and not all applications fully utilize PCIe 5.0 SSD transfer speeds.

For many users, PCIe 4.0 drives could remain the standard for a while. Their read speeds typically range between a still-impressive 4GBps to 7GBps, which PC games haven't yet fully tapped. Moreover, prices for these mature SSDs are steadily declining due to the recent 3D NAND oversupply. They've fallen by over 30 percent since the start of 2023 and could continue dropping for much of the rest of the year.

The Crucial T700 ships on May 30. Customers who pre-order the drive on Crucial's website will receive a free copy of Company of Heroes 3.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/98677-crucial-t700-pcie-50-ssd-can-throttle-hdd.html

 

[toooooot]

This is not cool. I can not approve of this.

 

[bviktor]

How is this even legal? If the device can't function properly without that part, shouldn't it be mandatory to bundle?

 

[godrilla]

Instead of focusing on more storage capacity the industry is stagnating at the 2 terabytes. Crucial use to be a decent choice for budget reliable drives but this is not acceptable. Is a heatsink sufficient or do you need to liquid cool these for optimal performance?

update we are already up to 8 terabytes of nvme ssd storage with gen pcie 4.0 .

 

[yRaz]

Instead of focusing on more storage capacity the industry is stagnating at the 2 terabytes. Crucial use to be a decent choice for budget reliable drives but this is not acceptable. Is a heatsink sufficient or do you need to liquid cool these for optimal performance?

The heat sinks actually do a pretty solid job. Part of the problem is that these chips have almost zero mass to dump the heat into so they get hot REALLY quick. Throwing on a few grams of aluminum with a thermal pad is enough. In laptops the cases do a decent job of sink the heat into them. You really have to be ripping on these drives to over heat them when they're equipped with a heatsink.

Going to "why are we stagnating at 2TB" well, we are and we aren't. For local storage I have a 240gb SSD as a bootdrive, a 2TB HDD for media storage and a 2TB NVME drive for games. I would rather have different physical drives than cram everything onto a single drive.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Instead of focusing on more storage capacity the industry is stagnating at the 2 terabytes.

I recently bought a 4TB NVMe for $200. There is no industry stagnation in capacity as 4TB drives are readily available at affordable prices.

 

[godrilla]

I recently bought a 4TB NVMe for $200. There is no industry stagnation in capacity as 4TB drives are readily available at affordable prices.

Seems I am mistaken we are already up to 8 terabytes for pcie 4.0 nvme drives but those are around $1k. Also supposedly MSI and crucial will have 4 terabytes pcie gen 5.0 in the pipeline but no pricing as of yet.
Check this out! https://a.co/d/77oU1Ep

 

[Lew Zealand]

Seems I am mistaken we are already up to 8 terabytes for pcie 4.0 nvme drives but those are around $1k. Also supposedly MSI and crucial will have 4 terabytes pcie gen 5.0 in the pipeline but no pricing as of yet.
Check this out! https://a.co/d/77oU1Ep

Yeouch! That seems to be slightly more than 2x $200. The 8TB Samsung 870 QVO is $460 but SATA and QLC so... maybe for effectively read-only game storage? But can you imagine loading 8GB of data onto something with QLC write speeds?

No guessing needed, 19 hours to fill:

 

[magisys]

For those not interested in this extreme performance, there isn't a way to lock speed of these drive to pci-e 3.0 or 4.0? So they doesn't get this hot?

 

[McMurdeR]

For those not interested in this extreme performance, there isn't a way to lock speed of these drive to pci-e 3.0 or 4.0? So they doesn't get this hot?

Easier and cheaper to buy a 4.0 drive?

 

[Skully]

Not a fan of NVMe drives that require heatsinks to not get hot or throttle. Of course my use case isn't one that needs top tier data transfers, so I just buy relatively fast drives that don't require them. Having to use a heatsink kind of defeats the purpose of such a small footprint of the NVMe IMO. Again I realize other folks might need the raw speed, but for 90% of us we can get something that runs cooler (and a bit slower) and never tell the difference.

 

[saladbarsmash]

I almost bought this too. Glad I didn't. I was planning to get 4 and use it in RAID 10 with a RAID controller (once one came out in PCIe5), but I guess Crucial only wants this as a standalone device.

 

[takaozo]

Gen 5 needs a beefy passive cooler to run.

Gen 6 will need a tower cooler maybe. Can't wait for Noctua to release a 150mm dual fan 6-8 heatpipes for this.

 

[Watzupken]

Instead of focusing on more storage capacity the industry is stagnating at the 2 terabytes. Crucial use to be a decent choice for budget reliable drives but this is not acceptable. Is a heatsink sufficient or do you need to liquid cool these for optimal performance?

update we are already up to 8 terabytes of nvme ssd storage with gen pcie 4.0 .

This is not a Crucial specific issue. PCIE 4.0 SSDs will throttle without any cooling as well.
In any case, most people won't benefit from the higher sequential transfer rate. It only sounds good on paper and in benchmarks. Looks like PCIE 5.0 drives are not going to fit into a laptop anytime soon, at least not without active cooling.

 

[neeyik]

It would be interesting to know exactly what components on the drive are getting so hot — the controller, the NAND flash modules, or both. If it’s just the first one, then fabbing them on smaller, lower power nodes should help reduce the issue (though it will increase the cost).

But if its the flash, then there’s no easy fix to this at all, as die sizes are constantly being shrunk to fit more planes into the module (increasing storage capacity and read/write performance). Smaller dies typically results in higher operating temperatures.

 

[godrilla]

This is not a Crucial specific issue. PCIE 4.0 SSDs will throttle without any cooling as well.
In any case, most people won't benefit from the higher sequential transfer rate. It only sounds good on paper and in benchmarks. Looks like PCIE 5.0 drives are not going to fit into a laptop anytime soon, at least not without active cooling.

Makes sense. both my z390 and now x670e Asus itx strix motherboards came with m.2 heatsinks. Just in case a motherboard doesn't the m.2 drive heatsinks sell for about $12 to 15

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-heatsink-enclosure-for-m-2-nvme-ssds-and-ps5-black/6504515.p?skuId=6504515&extStoreId=1115&ref=212&loc=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwjYKjBhB5EiwAiFdSfk8Qdst8D6TLbl1sKq7RJ1lH1j2x0UWZIebWVYwy1boTbp4PnH3-5BoCTAQQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

be quiet! MC1 M.2 SSD Cooler (Black) https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1638477-REG/be_quiet_bz002_mc1_m_2_ssd_cooler.html

If $12 fixes the performance 1000x
100mb to 12,000 megabytes then it is the fault of the vendor by not providing the heatsink or disclosing that it is required for optimum performance. The $12 is the consumer price. The price for them in bulk would be miniscule in comparison.

 

[magisys]

Easier and cheaper to buy a 4.0 drive?

actually I already have 4.0 drives that became really hot during normal use... and old 960evo with the controller reaching 90° under light load (OS drive in an htpc with mainly gaming and playback activities). I hope that in future 3.0 drives will still be available, or maybe there will be "low performace" 4.0 and 5.0 drives that run cooler.

 

[GoldenGoat]

A lot of motherboards come with a heatsink and some people like to choose a 3rd party solution. They should be required to have something on their web site, packaging, manuals etc that say you need a cooling solution to get the specified performance, but this is true for most pcie4 ssd's as well.

 

[toooooot]

actually I already have 4.0 drives that became really hot during normal use... and old 960evo with the controller reaching 90° under light load (OS drive in an htpc with mainly gaming and playback activities). I hope that in future 3.0 drives will still be available, or maybe there will be "low performace" 4.0 and 5.0 drives that run cooler.

I never checked my 4.0 temp under load. Now I am curious.