Lowest power SSDs?

[Eug]

When I first put an SSD in my MacBook Pro, it was the (at that time) inexpensive Kingston V100. I noticed that my battery life took a serious hit.

The Kingston V100 power consumption was huge. I found out later it was rated at 1 Watt idle, and 6.4 Watts (!) active. However, the idle power may even be several watts under certain conditions:

http://www.hardcoreware.net/mid-range-ssd-comparison-2011/9/

So, I returned it and got the Kingston V+100 instead. Suddenly my MacBook Pro had uber long battery life, much better than with the previous stock 5400 rpm hard drive, and much, much, much better than with the V100. The V+100 is rated at 0.05 Watt (!) idle, and 3.6 Watt active. Apparently in real world usage the idle is indeed low, although these guys measured it at 0.2 Watts idle to 2.4 Watts active:

http://www.storagereview.com/kingston_ssdnow_v100_review_96gb

I recently got an Intel 330. By non-scientific feel with my hand, it seemed to run a bit warm, and indeed, it does require more power. It's rated at 0.65 Watts idle and 0.85 Watts active, but requires closer to 0.85 Watts idle and 2.7 Watts active:

http://www.storagereview.com/intel_ssd_330_review

So, I ended up keeping the V+100 in the MacBook Pro and put the Intel 330 in my SFF Atom desktop machine instead, despite the fact I use the MBP much more and the Intel is much faster. The other reason is the V+100 has the same Toshiba controller that Apple uses, and has very aggressive garbage collection so you don't even have to hack OS X to turn on TRIM if you don't want to.

What other drives sip power like the V+100? Personally, I think that for SSDs in laptops, power characteristics in some ways are more important than performance.

 

[Hellhammer]

Marvell based SSDs in general are quite power efficient. For example Plextor's M3 Pro is one of the most power efficient SSDs we have tested: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD/305

Keep in mind that the faster the drive is, the less time it will be active. Hence performance does actually affect power consumption as well.

 

[jwilliams4200]

Behardware has an excellent review of many 128GB SSDs that includes power efficiency:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/860-23/ssd-2012-roundup-sixteen-120-and-128-gb-sata-6g-ssds.html

It looks like the Plextors are the best overall. But Samsung 830 also does very well, and for a Mac, it may have the edge over the Plextors since Apple uses Samsung SSDs in some of its Macbooks.

The best 3 for lowest idle power are:
Samsung 830
Corsair Performance Pro
Plextor M3 & Crucial m4 (tie)

The top 3 for write energy efficiency (MB/s per Watt) are:
Plextor M3P
Plextor M3
Samsung 830

The top 3 for read energy efficiency (MB/s per Watt) are:
Intel 510
Plextor M3P
Plextor M3

 

[slugg]

But Samsung 830 also does very well, and for a Mac, it may have the edge over the Plextors since Apple uses Samsung SSDs in some of its Macbooks.

Why is that an advantage?

 

[jwilliams4200]

Why is that an advantage?

Because it means that Apple has tested them for compatibility.

 

[sm625]

I dont get why these things arent 75mW at idle.

 

[Eug]

Behardware has an excellent review of many 128GB SSDs that includes power efficiency:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/860-23/ssd-2012-roundup-sixteen-120-and-128-gb-sata-6g-ssds.html

Nice. However, it seems to indicate that drives aren't improving much in terms of power utilization, especially since the one I have in my MacBook Pro has idle power that is half of the lowest power SSD on that list (which is the Samsung 830 at 400 mW idle).

I think the companies should start focusing more on power utilization.

I don't give a chit if my drive pumps through 350 MB/s sequential or if it pumps through 550 MB/s. Random access time and random read/writes are important, but I think power consumption is at least as important. Maximum sequential transfer speed is nowhere near as important IMO for most users.

BTW, there's also Anand's review, but it's old:

The V+100 doesn't have great power characteristics at load...

However, since most of the time on a laptop is at idle, at least for me, I think that isn't quite as important as the idle power.

And like I said, once I put this drive in suddenly I started getting longer battery life. I didn't actually measure it, but it was obvious nonetheless. In the past I used to always bring my laptop charger with me if I was going to spend a day at work using the laptop on and off. Now I usually don't, because I don't have to.

I dont get why these things arent 75mW at idle.

Or at least why they aren't much lower than they are on average, considering that low power ones already exist.

Mine's spec'd at 50 mW, but measured at about 200 mW. My 4K random read/write speeds are low, admittedly, but then again it still feels very fast in daily OS usage, which is what I consider most important.

I'd like to see a class of SSDs with < 200 mW idle power and < 1000 mW active power, with moderate speed. I'd buy that in a heartbeat over some screaming 550 MB/s drive. It would be a no-brainer choice for me, for a laptop.

 

[frostedflakes]

ssdreview.com is an excellent resource for this, they have power measurements for many different SSDs.

 

[ALIVE]

well if it was not for ocz i could suggest for ocz nocti?

 

[Eug]

Yeah, but as you suspected, we are averse to OCZ.