Surface Temperature

We monitored the surface temperature of six solid state drives, together with a low-powered hard disk drive for comparison, during their benchmark runs. The following chart shows their operating temperature range, from idle to maximum load. Please note that instead of giving you the absolute numbers, we are showing the temperature delta, which is the difference between the actual temperature and the ambient room temperature.

The WD SiliconEdge Blue 256 GB was pretty cool while idling, but its operating temperature ramped up real high under heavy workloads. Its peak surface temperature was 8.4 °C above ambient temperature. That's 5.6 °C higher than the 60 GB OCZ Agility 2 (E), the coolest-running SSD at full load.

The thermal output of solid state drives is dependent on the number of flash memory chips used, thus it isn't surprising to see how hot the SiliconEdge Blue runs - this SSD packs a whopping 256 GB of storage capacity! Despite having 60% more storage capacity, the 256 GB SiliconEdge Blue SSD is just 0.6 °C hotter than the 160 GB Intel X25-M G2 SSD.

Transfer Rate Profile

Unlike hard disk drives, solid state drives do not have to deal with areal density. Hence, an almost completely flat transfer rate profile across the entire capacity. The Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue SSD delivered a read throughput of around 248 MB/s, which is just 0.8% below the maximum read speed of 250 MB/s but 46% higher than the rated sustained read speed of 170 MB/s.

Support Tech ARP!

If you like our work, you can help support out work by visiting our sponsors, participate in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donate to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!