turkey3_scratch :
Intel chips seem to be fine up to 100C whereas AMD chips struggle around 70C. Apparently there is some difference in materials. I don't know how that translates into SSDs. But if overheating M.2 SSDs were a real problem would not manufacturers like Samsung already have addressed the issue?
I'm no semiconductor expert, but I think it's a mistake to compare SSDs with CPUs. SSDs are trying to reliably and persistently store about 100,000 times as much information as a typical CPU holds (if you add up the capacity of a typical CPU's cache hierarchy and registers, it's on the order of 10 MB). More heat means more entropy, which is the enemy of persistent information storage. Hopefully, someone more knowledgeable can chime in on the specifics, or else maybe you can find it written about on the web.
Paul recently wrote about carbon nanotube storage that uses electrostatic charge and is far more heat resistant. The only problem is that it's also lower density.
turkey3_scratch :
Apparently in the real world it's not a problem at all.
Well, it depends on how much ventilation you have, for one thing. And it takes a while for the heat to build up. So, it would be a subset of cases where this would become noticeable. It certainly
does happen, and can be an issue for some people.
turkey3_scratch :
I find it hard to believe this could be a big issue pointed out by some people on forums, that SSDs need heat sinks, where the entire SSD faculty at Samsung would not have considered this and thought about it thoroughly.
Samsung's 960 announcement made a pretty big deal about the copper-infused product label doing double-duty as a heat spreader. Do you actually
read the news, or just comment on it?
; )
If the race to make SSDs more dense were somehow put on hold and the focus turned exclusively to sustained performance, then they might be able to make more headway on the heat tolerance front. That's obviously not going to happen.
IMO, the real problem is that M.2 is just not a great form factor for high-end desktops. A 70 C thermal ceiling shouldn't be an issue, if cooling weren't so highly constrained.