low power consumption ssd

It's Not Lupus

Senior member
Aug 19, 2012
838
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I have the following:
Intel X25-M G2 80gb
Samsung 830 128gb
Crucial M4 128gb

Which of the three is best for putting in a laptop?

Also, which new SSD on the market has the best low power consumption?

Has anyone noticed a difference in battery life compared with a hard drive in laptops?
 

Hellhammer

AnandTech Emeritus
Apr 25, 2011
701
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All are good and there's no big difference. We have an article coming up soon about power measurements with DIPM enabled, which shows the real idle power consumption of SSDs when used in a laptop.
 

johny12

Member
Sep 18, 2012
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I have the following:
Intel X25-M G2 80gb
Samsung 830 128gb
Crucial M4 128gb

Which of the three is best for putting in a laptop?

Also, which new SSD on the market has the best low power consumption?

Has anyone noticed a difference in battery life compared with a hard drive in laptops?

Intel X25-M G2 80gb is good
 

taq8ojh

Golden Member
Mar 2, 2013
1,296
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I thought SSDs already consumed so little it doesn't matter in the slightest.
 

pandemonium

Golden Member
Mar 17, 2011
1,777
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We're talking - at most - 3-4W between SSDs and 10W over HDDs. While this is important for a laptop, you'd be better served by worrying about the display brightness instead.
 

Magic Carpet

Diamond Member
Oct 2, 2011
3,477
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I have the following:
Intel X25-M G2 80gb
Samsung 830 128gb
Crucial M4 128gb

Which of the three is best for putting in a laptop?
I'd reckon Samsung 830 would be the most economical in your setup.

Also, which new SSD on the market has the best low power consumption?
I'd say, Samsung 840 Pro is pretty good.

Has anyone noticed a difference in battery life compared with a hard drive in laptops?
Not really. I am sure there is a difference, but I am not a walking benchmark to notice that (e.g. Hitachi TravelStar are very economical until your start transfer massive amount of data (it needs more time, even though, peak writes are pretty low), depends on your usage really).
 
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hhhd1

Senior member
Apr 8, 2012
667
3
71
All are good and there's no big difference. We have an article coming up soon about power measurements with DIPM enabled, which shows the real idle power consumption of SSDs when used in a laptop.

Waiting for that impatiently.
 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
Super Moderator
Mar 4, 2000
27,370
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I use the Samsung 830 256GB in my laptop. I've bothered with battery life - rarely use the battery. The Samsung performs very well.
 
Feb 25, 2011
16,994
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I thought SSDs already consumed so little it doesn't matter in the slightest.

Weeeeeellllllll...

Idle power use is a better indicator of battery life - I've seen idles listed anywhere from 0.2w to 2w. With ultraportables pulling <10w while surfing the web and 7-12 hours of battery life, an additional 1w (~10% power draw) can cut an hour off of your battery life easy. That's a whole episode of Downton Abbey!

Load draw, though... SSDs vary a lot; between 2w and 8w for load draw, for the models I've looked up or seen reviewed. 2.5" HDDs vary between 2w and 5.1w for load draw - again, for the models I've looked up or seen reviewed.

Load doesn't matter for battery life so much - generally if a machine is running full tilt and throwing enough disk I/O to keep an SSD drawing load power, you're going to nuke the battery in short order anyway. But from a design standpoint, a laptop expected to handle 3w max in its HDD bay might have a heat issue if you threw a 6w Intel DC S3700 in there.