How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling (2021)
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How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling (2021)
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Re: How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling (2021)
#2It is strange for it to attributed to thermal throttling when there are no measurements taken and not even a simple correlative graph to demonstrate the relationship. I'm sure it definitely could be the case though, just a comment on the strange assumption the article seems to take.
With no research what-so-ever I would have attributed the slow down to some kind of cache or buffer filling up.
Re: How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling (2021)
#3I did not see any temperature measurements of the controller though in this article so the test doesn't feel very scientific to me.
It's not just thermal throttling of the controller that causes slowdown, it's also the filling of the DRAM/SLC cache.
Also, we should talk more about some vendors screwing over customers by replacing controllers or NAND chips with slower parts to cut down cost while keeping the same SSD SKU, after seeding the original SKUs to reviewers to lock in good benchmark scores in online tests. This is why I recommend only buying SSDs from reputable vendors/OEMs who are more vertically integrated: Samsung, WD, Sandisk, Micron.
Re: How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling (2021)
#4With all the respect to the author, any experiment should be reproduced. More than 1 disk should be tested, the temperature should be measured, and a comparison to the externally cooled disk would be looking great here. Without that, we just have some assumptions, that are partially (or fully) correct (or incorrect).
Re: How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling (2021)
#5[deleted]
Re: How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling (2021)
#6I did not see any temperature measurements of the controller though in this article so the test doesn't feel very scientific to me. It's not just thermal throttling of the controller that causes slowdown, it's also the filling of the DRAM/SLC cache. Also, we should talk more about some vendors screwing over customers by replacing controllers or NAND chips with slower parts to cut down cost while keeping the same SSD…
Are there any programs that can track temperature for different vendors? I'd love to run a few ssds through a benchmark and have hard data for thermal data.
Re: How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling (2021)
#7Jay has done a test regarding ssd overheating: https://youtu.be/dDTH93dgulE
Verdict: once you have any kind of passive cooler on one it won’t overheat. But he has only tested it with one fast PCIe 4 x 4 drive.
Re: How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling (2021)
#8It had never even occurred to me that my storage would want cooling, until I swapped in a new motherboard, moving from atx to mini-itx, and I noticed that the nvme.2 socket was covered by a heat sink. Performance is literally 50% better - and it still gets toasty.
Re: How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling (2021)
#9I did not see any temperature measurements of the controller though in this article so the test doesn't feel very scientific to me. It's not just thermal throttling of the controller that causes slowdown, it's also the filling of the DRAM/SLC cache. Also, we should talk more about some vendors screwing over customers by replacing controllers or NAND chips with slower parts to cut down cost while keeping the same SSD…
Are there any programs that can track temperature for different vendors? I'd love to run a few ssds through a benchmark and have hard data for thermal data.
You can read the temperature from SMART interface.
Re: How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling (2021)
#10I have seen SSDs on Windows at least lose a lot of performance due to file fragmentation. While there is no particular reason why the SSD would run slow once you try to read a file from the filesystem it does slow down and it can impact performance dramatically. Dropping drive performance to 1/5 of normal after 10x of overwrites of the drive contents.
The dogma at the moment is that SSDs don't require de-fragmentation and that is potentially true to a certain point but I think Windows actually needs the file system de-fragmented due to its overhead. I have a program to reproduce the effect and have been meaning to test EXT4 and write an article about it at some point. I need to check its something that happens across a range of devices before I publish and it really is just windows, I know defragging the files (copy away, delete files and replace) works to instantly fix performance but it could be device/controller/firmware specific.
The other possibility is large amounts of writes filling the device can result in reduced working space especially in drives with very small amounts of cache that cause slow downs near the end of tests.