Samsung EVO 840 vs Corsair M550 - which is the most silent?

I've never owned an SSD, but I'm reading that some of them make whirring noises.

I'm planninng on getting the 500gb version of either the EVO 840 or the Corsair M550.

Any advice?

Thanks.

 

Not whirring; more like high pitched whistling/squelching.

Do you want advice for a drive that makes the noise or no...


Both those would be a good choice depending on your intended workflow for the drives.

So, what will you use your system to do?


The M550 is a Crucial product, btw.

 

If your notebook is built properly you shouldnt hear any SSD noise what so ever.

My EVO is completely silent in my AW18. Can`t hear a damn thing

 

Has nothing to do with the notebook (although a certain chassis may mask the noise somewhat) - it is the SSD itself that may whine under varying loads and the OP's hearing sensitivity that matter.

 

I've had three different 840 EVOs, and I've never heard any electronic whine.

 

Yeah, I want no noise, lol.

I'm going to put Windows 8.1 on it do basic stuff like web browsing and a few games (Starcraft II mainly).

 

Are the prices the same? I would go with the EVO for your intended use if you could get it cheaper, are able to leave ~30% unallocated (~325GB usable capacity) and don't move huge files and/or directories and/or do game installs regularly.

If you do need to do the more stressful storage stuff: the Crucial may be a better fit - but I would ultimately recommend the Sandisk Extreme II 480GB model for performance without compromise (no matter how you use the system).


See:
AnandTech | Crucial M550 Review: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB Models Tested

 

It was very clear that I meant that SSDs make so little electronic noise that you will easily damp that sound to unaudible levels with a proper built notebook.
I use my notebooks many times in a dead silent room and I couldnt hear my SSD in my Asus G75, my MSI GT70 or my AW18. Had 3 different SSDs too.

Those ultrabooks with less than 1cm thickness, perhaps you can maybe rarely hear some sounds from underneath, but why bother when your mouse click are way higher, when you type on the keyboard it makes much more noise. Oh well, whatever floats your duck I guess

 

If you can hear the SSD above your fans, well umm hats off to your hearing and/or cooling system.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot that one

 

I've easily owned 30 different SSDs across all brands/controllers (Intel, Samsung, Crucial, OCZ, Corsair) and never once did I ever hear an SSD whine. Your laptop fans are going to be the ones that generate the noise.

 

I`m starting to wonder if tiller even have used a SSD before lol

 

And I'm almost certain that tiller has never used a modern laptop

 

If you place an ear, on top of where it's supposed to be, you'll hear it. My M4 mSATA was pretty audible with the fans off and it was very annoying. I would much rather take loud fan than this noise. It wasn't loud, once the fan kicks, you can barely tell that it's there. It's like someone is sending Morse code all day every day. My current M500 is silent, unless you do the ear thing So to give you something like an answer - everyone and their mother can swear that their's are super silent, but if you are "lucky" you my come across bad batch and then you'll be getting messages from all over the world (if you know Morse that is)

 

Well if you have to stick your ear on top of where it's supposed to be to hear it, that doesn't count does it. I mean I can hear the whirring of my HDD if I press my ear up against it, but otherwise it's completely silent during normal daily usage.

 

Strangely, I've had one SSD that used to whine a little and that was the Intel 320. I suspect its due to the internal powerloss capacitor doing its thing.

 

I use and abuse every component I buy for my multiple systems - and the ones I don't kill I donate away.



Btw; 'completely silent' is false as others are now starting to acknowledge - you cannot make those statements and then also want to insult (me) for trying to correct/clarify your inaccuracies.

Complete statements, in English without swearing will go a long way towards making yourself understood as you want to be.

 

We can argue semantics all day, but the bottom line is that if you can't hear the SSD during normal daily usage, then by all accounts it is functionally silent. True it might not be "completely silent" and you may still be able to pick up the electronic whining if you put your ear against the SSD, but that's irrelevant in the context of normal daily usage.

Like I said before I can hear the whirring of my HDD if I press my ear against the HDD bay, but if I sit at what's considered a normal distance for your average person, I cannot hear the HDD noise at all. Does this mean the HDD is "completely" silent? Well if we're going to get hung up on semantics, then sure the HDD by itself is not "completely" silent. But here's the important part: in the context of normal daily usage, I cannot hear the HDD noise at all, so in the relevant real-life context, the HDD is "completely" silent to me.

The original question was asked in the context of whether the noise is going to be an annoyance for daily usage, not "I want something that's like 0 dB silent so that when I go hunting for noise I won't even be able to hear it".

 

If a tree falls in a forest...

 

Sigh... you guys read whatever you want to read. Try again.

The first three posts are the facts - not the chest beating afterwards.


What? You guys don't want me giving the correct answer first (or at all)?


What's the deal here?

 

Considering the ambient noise of most settings, whatever sound comes from an SSD is negligible. In that case, avoid a laptop altogether and use a pen and paper, but that pen scribbling sound might exhibit more dB than the SSD.

 

Fact: An HDD is on average (much) noisier than an SSD
Fact: In a properly designed laptop the HDD noise is inaudible assuming you don't put your ear up against the HDD bay
Conclusion: In a well designed laptop, the SSD is unlikely to be of any concern noise-wise, even though it might not be 100%, "completely" silent according to you.

Does that make sense now?

And for what it's worth, I feel the need to point out that of the 3 SSDs I've used -- 840 Pro, 840 Evo, SanDisk Extreme II, none of them exhibited any electrical whine whatsoever even under sustained real-life workloads of moving close to 200GB of data at one time. And this was using the SSD outside of the laptop connected via an eSATA cable no less.

 

And yet the irrelevant chest beating continues...

Fact: none of your facts negates the statements I've made previously.

And if you can't hear an SSD working, you've been lucky with the parts or unfortunately your hearing is not at the level of others - either way; the statements stand.

 

You seem to keep missing the point, and that is it does NOT matter if an SSD is completely silent or not, because in a properly designed laptop you won't even hear the HDD noise during routine use. So an SSD, which is much quieter than an HDD, will not be of any concern noise-wise for daily use. Period.

For the benefit of the OP, I did some testing earlier with all 4 SSDs I had -- 2x 840 Pro 512GB, 1x 840 Evo 500GB, 1x SanDisk Extreme II 480GB. The test involved transfer of roughly 20GB worth of movies from an internal laptop SSD to the test SSD which is connected to the laptop via an eSATA cable. (transfer time roughly 10-15 minutes each)

With my double paned windows fully shut and all doors closed, the ambient noise in my room is around 34 dB. Sitting approximately 2 feet away from the laptop registers a noise of about 35.5 dB, mainly due to the cooling fans.

At a normal viewing distance from the laptop (2 feet), at no point during the entire transfer process did I pick up on anything resembling an electrical whine. In fact, the only way I could "hear [my] SSD working" was if I pressed my ear against the SSD hard. Even moving my ear 2 inches away from the SSD resulted in whatever electrical noise I heard disappearing completely. It's also worth mentioning that playing movies and music or opening documents did NOT result in this electrical noise (yes I muted the speaker before you ask). This electrical noise was only present during sustained load on the SSD, either from transfers of large files, or via benchmarking software such as CrystalDiskMark. As expected, the noise from the cooling fans drowned out whatever other noise was present.

I don't claim to have the most sensitive hearing in the world, but if I am unable to detect the noise coming from a working SSD that's outside the laptop simply by moving 2 inches away from it, I think it's quite reasonable to say that an SSD inside the laptop is extremely unlikely to ever present a problem.

Or maybe I am going deaf and lucked out 4 times. You decide...

 

No, all SSD's are not quieter than all HDD's - you seem to conveniently skip that part (or maybe you really believe Solid State equipment is noiseless...).

And again: whether it is of any concern will depend on the individuals hearing sensitivity (period).

 

Maybe not all SSDs are quieter than HDDs, but the vast majority certainly are. Unless you can prove otherwise.

As for hearing sensitivity, read on...

In my previous observations, there's a reason I noted the minimum distance required for the electrical noise to disappear completely. There's a reason I didn't say "the noise disappeared as soon as I moved my ear off the SSD". The noise was still audible, but fainter as soon as I lifted my ear off the SSD. At a distance of 1 inch the noise was still audible, but very faint, and I had to focus to hear the noise. At a distance of 2 inches the noise was completely gone regardless of hard I tried to look for the noise and tune everything else out.

The average person who uses the SSD in a daily setting will not have the SSD outside of the laptop. Since viewing distance is variable, let's simplify this and go with what manufacturer's recommend for HDTVs. Taking the most stringent 1.2 x diagonal screen size, we end up with the following "minimal viewing distances":

13.92" for an 11.6" screen
15.96" for a 13.3" screen
18.72" for a 15.6" screen
20.76" for a 17.3" screen

Sound wave propagation obeys the inverse square law. For the sake of argument let's assume the SSD makes a noise of 36 dB at a distance of 1 inch or 2.54 cm/0.0254 m. (it has to be louder than my fans for me to hear my SSD right? my fans were merrily whirling away at 35.5 dB). Then at a distance of 13.92 inches (35.36 cm/0.3536 m), the calculator in the link predicts that 36 dB of noise at a distance of 1 inch becomes 13.126 dB at a distance of 13.92 inches. The noise difference is 22.874 dB.

Decibel runs on a logarithmic scale, so that difference of 22.874 dB translates into a power/intensity difference factor of 193.82 using the following equation:


Functionally, what this means is that at a viewing distance of 13.92 inches for an 11.6" laptop, your hearing sensitivity has to be 194 times that of mine in order to hear that 36 dB of SSD noise I heard at a distance of 1 inch. And all of this is a worst case scenario based on minimum recommended viewing distance with a bare drive outside of an 11.6" laptop. Bear in mind that the decibel difference increases as we go to larger screen sizes due to increase in minimal viewing distance, and the laptop chassis also significantly dampens any sounds.

 

Well said n=1.

I can maybe hear some CPU whine if I put my ear down on my laptop too, but I won`t, I will use my notebook normally so its a non issue for me.
tilleroftheearth, you complicate things way too much man. This and your crucade against TLC because it is technically worse than MLC but practically most users won`t notice it, hence its a non issue just like the SSD noise, its just getting way out of hand.

I ask again, have you ever used a SSD or do you just skim through reviews and articles and post things on this forum that doesnt matter? Because it seems you have very little experience with SSDs.
And your previous hate against SSDs because HDDs was so much more reliable and was the only drives that could cut it for your "workload", and your defence that HDDs make just as little or even less noise than SSD (haha seriously you are delusional if you believe this), it just seems like you are maybe still using a notebook/desktop with HDD.

 

Why the heck are you guys arguing with him so much? Some people are more sensitive to higher frequencies. He isn't saying he is more sensitive to quieter noises, he is saying he literally hears a frequency you are incapable of hearing. That is NOT that unusual. I've had the same issue with some hardware in the past and if you're the user you really don't care if 90% of people can't hear it since you're the one that has to put up with it.

Try Hearing Test - Can You Hear This?

 

Lol I can't hear anything above 14Khz, always wondered why nails down a chalkboard didn't bother me....one of the consequences of drilling teeth all day

 

If that was the case, a simple statement to that effect would've cleared it up from the very beginning. The fact of matter is that it was neither explicitly stated nor implied anywhere in this thread. If anything I was led to believe it was a loudness (ie amplitude) argument based on the responses in this thread. And if that was indeed the case, then this thread is pointless, because the only way to know for sure would be to go into a shop and test the specific models you want to buy, and see if you can hear an audible whine. Because like you said, if *you* can hear it while the other 90% can't, that still doesn't count for anything.

However, I have shown if it's amplitude (ie "loudness") that the OP is worried about, then that's a non-issue.

 

Well, given that a quick google search shows quite a few reports of a high pitched whine on the EVO I'd say he doesn't have to go into a shop to test. Maybe its only a bad batch of them, but I think we can say for certain that its a known issue with a decent percentage of them.

 

You get the same results if you replace 840 Evo with Corsair or SanDisk or Intel or Crucial.

I've done my part and shown loudness isn't likely to be an issue. Sensitivity to frequency that's something OP will have to figure out himself. Bottom line is, short of going into a shop and testing the models himself the OP will never have a 100% concrete answer.

Oh and if it makes any difference I can hear up to 17kHz, which apparently is already 2kHz above what the average >25 year old can hear according to that website you linked to.

 

Yeah, the average is apparently pretty horrible. The only people I've met under 40 with hearing that bad were folks who liked to blast their headphones at max volume.

However, I do notice a huge drop off from when I tested my hearing 5 years ago! I could easily hear the 21kHz and now I barely hear the 18kHz. Not sure if I should be disappointed or happy that the mosquito ringtone is that much less annoying.