SSDs and battery life, pointless ?

Let's talk a little a bout ssds power consumption. the more i read reviews about them, the more it seems ssds don't consume less than mechanical hard drives.

Here's a power consumption chart about modern ssds :
AnandTech | MyDigitalSSD BP4 2.5" & mSATA (240GB) Review

And now one from momentus xt hdd review which also includes a scorpio blue 5400 rpm and a classic 7200rpm seagate :
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5160/seagate-2nd-generation-momentus-xt-750gb-hybrid-hdd-review/6

Seems to me that power consumption is not that better on ssds either at idle state or load. I mean HDDs idle at around 0,9 W and the scorpio blue barely breaks 3W in sequential write while some ssds break 4W+.

So, letting performance boost aside, upgrading for a ssd to improve battery life seems pretty pointless. That said i guess the job is done faster with sdds so less power consumption in the long run.

Your thoughts ?

 

On my 2.5"-equipped laptop I used 240GB SF-1200 based SSD and I think that battery life was slightly better than 750GB 7200rpm HDD (WD Black) during average load tasks. It's probably because SSD is fast to complete small random transfers and idles most of the time. All IO-intensive tasks were also performed much faster with perhaps higher peak power consumption, but if you consider power/performance ratio then SSD wins hands down.

But either way, the difference was small!

 

I know from experience an SSD does in fact improve battery life. It also depends on the SSD. I've used Samsung SSD's for the past few years and I notice the system temperature is cooler and has about 30+ minutes of extra battery life. Depending on what you use your laptop for, 30 minutes can be a lot or very little. It's not like you put an SSD in your system and see 3 hours of additional use...

 

Definitely depends on the SSD and laptop. It's all relative. The newer Samsung 840 and 840 Pro SSD's idle at a fraction of a Watt. Some drain more than your standard HDD. Just need to check out the power drain, and not necessarily manufacturer's numbers, but actual measured numbers from a review.

It depends on the laptop too. If your system draws 20W idle or low use, then saving 1-1.5W won't help much (~ 7%). And a higher power laptop likely only gets 3 hours to begin with on battery, so result is only 15 mins extra. But if your system drains 7-8W normally at idle or low use, that 1-1.5W reduction is pretty significant (~ 20%), and if it gets 6 hours normally on battery, that would mean 7 hrs+ life.

 

also don't forget that the real ace as to why SSDs save battery life is because they complete tasks quickly and return to idle. This means that a majority of the SSD's time is spent idling, this saves a lot of power considering the higher peak power consumption.

 

While 'race to idle' is the goal and the marketing spin SSD manufacturer's use to 'prove' better battery life, the reality is that if you're using the performance of an SSD (like I do) continuously and to it's limit's the battery life is WORSE than a HDD - for not much more than ~1%-3% better performance in real world workloads (not all: I'm speaking about RAW image converting/editing).

When all is said and done, what I have previously said (over 2 or 3 years ago now...) is still the same: to get better performance than a HDD, SSD's need to burn (battery) power - no if, and or buts about it.

Thankfully, they're still efficient enough to be used in notebooks!!!

What I still want to see though is what can be built for a desktop (with no power and much less heat/cooling constraints) in an SSD package... we should easily be able to get 5-10 SSD's worth of performance in a single 3.5" 'package' - and I don't care what the power consumption numbers look like. Then we might see real world performance (not just boot/snap and program loading) increase beyond the laughable 3% level vs. vRaptors when converting RAW image files (~200MB > 1.4GB files), for example.

 

You might be interested in the Intel DC S3700, which was designed to give high and consistent steady-state performance.

Of course, if you're using a desktop or server, you can simply switch form factor and get a PCI Express SSD by Fusion iO (or others) with a million IOPS or more.

 

Idle power consumption is not a trivial thing. Most operations that stress the IO system continuously are also those you don't want to do on battery. The lower idle power consumption is in part due to the SSD itself (controller, number of NAND cells etc) but mostly due to the fact that the SSD can utilize DIPM/HIPM and other power saving technologies with less latency than a HDD. While I agree HDD manufacturers tend to hype the power efficiency, the drop in power draw for most consumer workloads is noticeable.

Part of the reason I don't think SSD manufacturers have done the enthusiast 3.5 packages is the return on investment, Laptops stand to gain most from an SSD upgrade and they are now somewhat more popular than desktops. Additionally, the enterprise market prefers the smaller footprint of the 2.5 inch drives or if high performance is required, then multiple 2.5 inch drive arrays can be compacted to a single PCIe drive.

 

And again I will point out that you are not representative of most of the computing population, so your anecdotal evidence means nothing in the grand scheme.

 

Modern SSDs draw much less power than HDDs, with typical idle draw under 0.1W and active draw under 1W. On the extreme end for example the Samsung 840 pro is speced is 54 mW idle and 79 mW active. This is about 40-50x less power use than a harddrive.

The numbers that Anandtech publish aren't accurate since they disable DIPM for the tests [1], and I reckon most reviewers do the same. If you keep DIPM enabled you should get closer to the spec power draw, which is much less than HDD power draw.

[1] SSD power usage discrepancy - AnandTech Forums

 

Thanks for your answers guys.

I just checked the HDD that came in my z500 and it's a samsung/seagate spinpoint m8 1TB. And according to reviews, it's the 5400rpm HDD that apparently has the lowest power consumption. Idling at 0,58W and tops at 2,6W at load.

"""Surprisingly, power consumption from the M8 is very low, even approaching SSD territory when idle (disk heads parked). At 0.58W, this is among the lowest of most modern 5400RPM hard drives (most nowadays tend to idle at 0.7W). Under load, power usage increases to 2.6W which is normal for most 5400RPM drives. Just to put this into perspective, the 7200RPM Hybrid Momentus XT (First Generation) idles at 0.7 and peaks at 3.3W under load, while the Corsair Force Series 3 120GB idles at 0.52W and peaks at 2.2W under heavy load."""

Knowing that my z500 idles at 14-15W, i will probably see no benefit at all in battery life if i switch for a ssd.

I was among the first ssd lovers but damn it's good to have 1TB storage. Not to mention windows 8 boots fast even on a good old HDD. So i'll pass on ssd this time.

 

Very interesting. i'll give a look.

 

Just in case someone don't know, a firmware update back in last Autumn claims to have improved power consumption of the Crucial M4 by disabling HIPM...

 

Go with a Samsung 840 or 840 Pro. Idle power consumption is half the spinpoint (~ 0.3W) and under load about 3W, and keep in mind that an SSD will complete most tasks ten times faster than a traditional 5400RPM spinner. Plus you can have the SSD turn off after a few minutes because it turns on instantly unlike an hdd that has to spin up. It's not only for power but the performance advantage is so incredible. I can't use any machine now without an SSD.

 

It is pointless as you said. It is just a fraction and neglegible.
Even if they'd performed worse compare to HDDs, I still would have gone for SSDs.
The whole idea is it is way better than HDDs not that they draw less power.
That is not an attribute of SSDs
newer and faster GPUs draws much more power and generates more heat.
But still people go for the performance and don't care about the power consumption.

 

On modern notebooks even half a watt has a non negligible effect on battery life. If mobility is the focus, it's worth getting the less power hungry (Samsung 840).

 

Why buy Ferrari if you care about fuel consumption?

I just checked my laptop with a watt meter and it draws 40 watts.
Half a watt is neglegible ~.01%.

Again power consumption is not the main attribute of SSD's while considering buying one and choosing amongst other SSD's.
That is reviewers' to find something different for comparison.

 

Of course we don't buy ssd to save power. But consider that when you are on battery the power draw is far lesser than what you see at the wall plug. My Lenovo draws 20+ watts out of the wall plug, while only 6-7 watts from the battery. Both measured at idle.
Giving a 0,3watt difference between one ssd and another, it means 0.3/6 watt = 5% = 15 minutes on a 5 hours battery. Not so big of a difference but not negligible either.

 

That's it. 40W from the wall is likely with high performance and battery charging. Any machine that draws 40W is just a power hog or a high end machine without nVidia Optimus or AMD Enduro. Even my Sager NP9150 with GTX 680m with Optimus draws ~ 15-18W while on battery at balanced performance.

 

and your point is? or you just wonder around to fill up your daily quota for number of messages.
Oh just remembered you and thessreview (who has no idea about SSDs but has SSD review site)
were mates.
keep playing hockey nice game.

 

Eh? I'm not sure I follow your response. My point is that power draw from the wall is not the same as power draw on battery. Power saving measures are taken into account automatically by the machine so you don't blow up your battery.

I have no affiliation with thessdreview at all.

And yes, I will keep playing and watching hockey, thanks.

 

Agreed, most Li Ion batteries cannot take the kinds of currents that can be drawn from a wall socket without issues with longevity. Plus, there are so many low level optimizations that take place when the BIOS detects the machine is in battery operation that you simply cannot compare the power draw accurately.

@everyone else
Actually, I do think most SSDs improve battery life, one simply only has to look at the idle power draw which is better than most HDDs. Whether the extra 15 minutes or so is worth the trouble is dependent on the the individual values but its there. To those still doubting, I suggest looking at the Tweaktown SSD reviews, one of the few that actually chucks the SSD in a laptop and measures the battery life. You'd be surprised that even the 840 pro is not the most power efficient in that scenario unlike what 90% of other reviewers say.

 

What is your point dude? Have a look at the topic title and share your opinion if you've got one.
Or you're still worried about filling up your daily quota?

On your Laptop? unless the world slows down over there?

 

When comparing HDDs to SSDs there will be an improvement in power consumption.
Again power draw is not the main attribute of SSDs while choosing amongst them. You'll see or in better words
you will not feel it that is because it will only be pin .

So the bottom line is while buying and choosing amongst them, no need to look at how much power they draw as it goes with
MTBF (another marketing gimmick that most of consumers have no idea what that is).

 

I would refer to the Tom's Hardware charts for comparative information collected under standardised testing conditions.

For example, HD Video playback as representing moderate usage: 2.5" HDDs - 0.8 to 2.1W and SSDs - 0.16 to 1.35W

Idle usage: 2.5" HDDs - 0.3 to 1.90W and SSDs - 0.03 to 1.23W

Maximum write performance: 2.5" HDDs - 2.1 to 3.9W and SSDs - 1.05 to 6.02W

There are other charts, including performance per watt. I would note that while the charts are called "2012", some of the drives listed have been superseded.

Personally, I would consider the likely usage of a notebook running on battery to be somewhere between idle and the HD video playback: A drive will have some idle time but there's a lot going on in the background with writing of log files, etc. As already noted, the significance of the power consumption difference depends on the overall notebook power consumption usage.

John

 

I've shared my opinion and have also shared actual battery test results, here's one off hand: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...marks-brands-news-advice-965.html#post7564213

 

Great site! And you are right, when I read on that site I was surprised the 840 pro was not the most power efficient!

 

Ferrari drivers worried about the fuel drips.
Keep the blinkers on, it may help while playing hockey on expensive machines.

 

Lay off the hockey and smart alec responses already will you, he's only trying to help you.

 

+1 on all of that!

 

Big big plus for posting useful stuff like this!!!