Clever Pun: Ceramic SSD's.

[Trik'Stari]

Couldn't come up with a clever pun for the title.

 

Apparently ceramic cooled SSD's are a thing now?

 

Quote

Team Group is laying claim to offering the first SSD made with ceramic composite cooling materials, which sounds like an odd bragging point, but might have some actual merit. Hey, it's worked out well for pots and pans, so why not SSDs, right?

 

Unlike pots and pans, however, the goal with heatsinks on SSDs is not to cook anything (CPUs are better for cooking pancakes), but to keep the NAND flash memory chips underneath cool. This is especially important on those fancy new PCI Express 4.0 models that push faster sequential read and write speeds in the neighborhood of 5,000MB/s (and beyond). When things get too hot, performance throttles.

Source

 

I'm not sure what to make of this. I know some ceramics are ludicrously good at insulating against heat.

 

I look forward to the next edition of "Sh*t Manufacturers Say".

[eeeee1]

Yes!!!

[bob345]

I mean sure??? As long as its not a beryllium oxide ceramic lol. This honestly seems like more of a marketing gimmick than an actual problem being solved. Sure its better, but is the likely very small benefit really worth the extra cost? Probably not. This stuff was developed and is mostly used in high performance rf and microwave electronics mainly for its dielectric properties iirc. The marginal improvement in thermal performance isn't going to be worth the increase in cost for an ssd.

[WelshFruitSnacks]

Idk about cooling but you are more resistant to radiation bit flipping that way if you make sure the ceramic itself has less radioactive materials.

[Doobeedoo]

I'd like to see this vs regular copper sheet on same drive tested. 

[Dabombinable]

So a similar material to some mobo heatsinks.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

9 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

you know, my first intel system had a motherboard with ceramic VRM heatsinks

It was a staple of Asus Sabertooth motherboards (x58, 990FX, maybe others).

[porina]

Does flash need cooling as stated in the quote? I don't know if things have moved on, but my understanding is still only that the controller is the part that runs hot and can lead to throttling. Flash doesn't mind being somewhat warm, as long as you don't do what I did with the M.2 drive under a GPU 24/7 folding. It did not like that at all.

[S w a t s o n]

38 minutes ago, porina said:

Does flash need cooling as stated in the quote? I don't know if things have moved on, but my understanding is still only that the controller is the part that runs hot and can lead to throttling. Flash doesn't mind being somewhat warm, as long as you don't do what I did with the M.2 drive under a GPU 24/7 folding. It did not like that at all.

Flash hasnt changed, this is just crappy marketing

[Techstorm970]

Might be cool for themed builds, but the ceramic means nothing.

 

Edit: inb4 toilet-themed PC builds

[RejZoR]

Ceramic use in pans and pots is for non stick properties. Last time I checked, ceramics are highly scratch and heat resistant as in "resisting damage". I never heard of ceramics being particularly good at transporting or releasing heat...

[LyondellBasell]

On 7/1/2020 at 9:50 PM, Trik'Stari said:

I'm not sure what to make of this. I know some ceramics are ludicrously good at insulating against heat.

Probably a marketing gimmick more than anything, BUT, I'd just like to point out, that whatever ceramics they're using would be optimised for conducting heat rather than insulating.

The last thing you'd want to do is trap/reflect the heat of the controller against itself.

I don't know how well ceramic works relative to standard copper heatsinks, but they'll definitely be using it to leach heat off the small hot parts and spread it into something with more mass.

[Vishera]

15 hours ago, porina said:

Does flash need cooling as stated in the quote? I don't know if things have moved on, but my understanding is still only that the controller is the part that runs hot and can lead to throttling. Flash doesn't mind being somewhat warm, as long as you don't do what I did with the M.2 drive under a GPU 24/7 folding. It did not like that at all.

As matter of fact cooling the NAND flash module can reduce it's lifespan,it's better to let the NAND flash modules be warm at an optimal temperature range.

[Trik'Stari]

3 hours ago, LyondellBasell said:

Probably a marketing gimmick more than anything, BUT, I'd just like to point out, that whatever ceramics they're using would be optimised for conducting heat rather than insulating.

The last thing you'd want to do is trap/reflect the heat of the controller against itself.

I don't know how well ceramic works relative to standard copper heatsinks, but they'll definitely be using it to leach heat off the small hot parts and spread it into something with more mass.

I didn't know if they had ceramics designed specifically for that. I know ceramic bakeware has a reputation for heating very evenly.

 

2 hours ago, Vishera said:

As matter of fact cooling the NAND flash module can reduce it's lifespan,it's better to let the NAND flash modules be warm at an optimal temperature range.

I don't understand that from a physical level.

[Drama Lama]

Who needs ceramics if you have chewing gum

[Vishera]

8 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

I don't understand that from a physical level.

And for that we have tech Jesus:

 

[Trik'Stari]

6 minutes ago, Vishera said:

And for that we have tech Jesus:

-snip

I should have known he would hold the answers.

 

So a ceramic heatsink for the controller, with ceramic insulators for the nand would be preferable.

 

I wonder if the sheer volume of air movement in my case could cause issues with my single NVME drive.

[Vishera]

Just now, Trik'Stari said:

with ceramic insulators for the nand would be preferable.

Ceramics only insulate electricity,they are excellent at conducting heat.

So using ceramics will still pull the heat from the NAND,I would just let the NAND run without it.

[PlayStation 2]

On 7/2/2020 at 1:24 PM, Techstorm970 said:

Edit: inb4 toilet-themed PC builds

Noctua builds cover the brown part of the toilet, so there's that

[StDragon]

For a long time, there's been extensive R&D into ceramic coating the crowns of piston heads. Because ceramic is both a thermal insulator and good at reflecting thermal energy, it drastically reduces energy from the combustion phase at TDC (top dead center) from being absorbed through the piston. This means an engine can run more efficiently. The big problem however is longevity of the coating which is why you don't see it mass-produced in your average vehicle. So, still very much experimental with a limited lifespan. It's a non-issue for racing where it will be torn down and rebuilt at some point anyways.

[Trik'Stari]

25 minutes ago, StDragon said:

For a long time, there's been extensive R&D into ceramic coating the crowns of piston heads. Because ceramic is both a thermal insulator and good at reflecting thermal energy, it drastically reduces energy from the combustion phase at TDC (top dead center) from being absorbed through the piston. This means an engine can run more efficiently. The big problem however is longevity of the coating which is why you don't see it mass-produced in your average vehicle. So, still very much experimental with a limited lifespan. It's a non-issue for racing where it will be torn down and rebuilt at some point anyways.

I did not know that. Kind of awesome.