SSD for laptop has more power consumption? Save to put in? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Maister
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2016, 06:25:15 pm
content: HelloI just bought an SSD for my laptop and the lable on it says: 5V 2A. However my old HDD has a rating of 5V 0.55A.I did not know that SSDs do need so much more power. Is it save to have it running in my laptop?I am afraid of overloading the internal DC/DC converter for the 5V rail inside the laptop.Thanks for your replies.

author: Wirehead
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2016, 07:37:50 pm
content: What type of SSD is it? Maybe a peak inrush current when loading it's capacitors. Should be lower than a regular HDD in average.

author: Maister
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2016, 07:53:09 pm
content: I dont know, if there are diffent types of SSDs.I bought this one:Crucial BX200 240GB SATA 2,5 Zoll interne Solid State Drive - CT240BX200SSD1http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B016JREGAC?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00I have searched the web for power consumption of SSDs and I found some articles about SSDs lowering your laptop battery life. Some computer hardware magazines have tested the power consumption of several units (SSDs) in comparison to regular HDDs and found out that SSDs consume more power on avrage!So I think that the avrage comsumption of my SSD might be at least more than the 0.55A (which was the maximum of my old HDD).

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2016, 08:10:44 pm
content: I install one to 5 ssd in computers every working day for a year and a halfand I never had a defective computer after installing one ssd inside.I've got some 6 defectives ssd quite immediately or the next day after installbut yes they seems to consume more power than hdd

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2016, 08:15:33 pm
content: Be rather surprised if the standard in use current of the SSD was higher. I've put SSDs in several laptops now, no real noticeable change in battery life but it sure makes a performance difference. Even my desktops now all have SSD. I think you will be safe installing the SSD and it won't burn out anything.

author: PA0PBZ
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2016, 08:16:59 pm
content: I find different specs: Power consumption: 4.2W (operation), 0.65W (idle), so that would be under 1A.And maybe the old HDD also needs 12V?

author: Maister
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2016, 08:28:40 pm
content: Thank you all for your help!I am confident that it might be save to have it in the laptop running.I also found an article about this SSD:http://www.storagereview.com/crucial_bx200_ssd_reviewIt says there is an ultra low power mode (DevSlp) in which the device will draw 115mW. I am not sure though wheather or not I have to enable this manually.However on this site:http://www.anandtech.com/show/9756/the-crucial-bx200-480gb-960gb-ssd-review-crucials-first-tlc-nand-ssd/10is said: "The BX200 joins the club of drives than are very poor at managing power without DevSlp support. Its active power consumption and poor efficiency are enough to exclude it from being useful for laptops, so idle power isn't as important, but it's another disapointment."So yeah... I might have to see how to enable the DevSlp, I guess.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2016, 08:42:40 pm
content: Quote from: PA0PBZ on January 07, 2016, 08:16:59 pm2.5" laptop HDDs only use 5V.

author: Chalcogenide
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2016, 08:19:54 am
content: I only had a problem of too high current draw on an old Transcend 240GB SSD when installed in a crappy netbook. All the new SSDs work just fine. The peak current shouldn't be any higher than the spin-up current of an HDD, so the laptop should have no problem supplying power.DevSlp is just an enhanced "idle" mode, where power consumption is reduced when the disk is not in use - if it's available, it will be enabled by dafault; otherwise, don't bother - idle power is still lower than an HDD.However, if you are still able to replace the drive, I would replace it with a BX100. The previous generation uses MLC cells compared to TLC for the BX200, and this results in significantly higher performance - it also uses less power, given the Anandtech review.About the higher power consumption of the SSDs: if you start a storage stress test, it's pretty obvious that the SSDs will lose in terms of power consumption, as their peak power consumption is higher and also the computer will be more busy managing 10000+ IOPS vs 100 for a typical HDD; this however is very far from a typical workload.

author: con-f-use
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 08, 2016, 11:22:25 am
content: Like USB the standard that is used for SATA drives in laptops has specifications. All 2.5" SATA SSDs meet that standard or they have to use a different connector.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2016, 11:56:42 am
content: If a crucial (pun intended) component like an ssd which has the main OS on it isn't supplied sufficient current, then your computer will most likely crash. This is often the case when trying to run power hungry gpus and overclocked cpus on a puny or crappy psu.Your laptop should have current limiting circuitry to prevent anything from being "overloaded".Honestly you shouldn't have any problems as designing a laptop with only 2w of headroom would be idiotic.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2016, 11:57:43 am
content: Quote from: Chalcogenide on January 08, 2016, 08:19:54 amOn the other hand, things like file copies will take much shorter time, so overall energy use (which is what really matters for battery life) could be lower.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2016, 12:08:28 pm
content: Ssds don't always consume more power than hdds. And it's not the other way around either. Some ssds barely exceed 1w. My Intel 750 is spec'd to 12w...the higher capacity model goes up to 22w.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2016, 03:12:41 pm
content: Yes, there is always that - not all SSDs are identical. There are enough review sites that get into technical details that you can do some research and get a pretty good idea of what the differences are. Like anything else, you have to decide which features and specs matter the most, since seldom is there one product that has the absolute best specs across the board.I've been using Samsung drives lately. My old 830 is still running great after several years, and my new 850s have been solid as well. Never had an 840 so I haven't had any of the issues that some have had with that series.

author: Chalcogenide
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2016, 11:22:07 am
content: Quote from: amyk on January 08, 2016, 11:57:43 amYeah I didn't explain myself well. SSDs will draw less power on average, and this leads to higher battery life as well (sometimes almost nothing, sometimes a few percent).

author: Srbel
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2016, 01:24:21 pm
content: Crutial BX200 power consumption:Idle: 45 mW4K random write: 2,7 W1MB sequential write: 3,2 Whttp://us.hardware.info/reviews/6387/18/crucial-bx200-240gb--480gb-review-new-budget-ssd-power-consumption

author: encryptededdy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 02:08:35 am
content: I know this is a bit late, but for anyone else reading: The BX200 is a pretty bad choice for a SSD. Some aspects of it's performance are even worse than Crucial's first gen SATA 3 SSD, the C300, which was released back in 2010.The previous gen BX100, PNY XLR8, heck even the Kingston V300are way faster and are the same price/ not that much more expensive. The Samsung 850 EVO, Crucial MX200 and SanDisk Ultra drives are also good choice, abeit at higher prices.You can check the storagereview, tomshardware and anandtech reviews for this drive and they all state that this drive is a bad choice.It has really, really bad random I/O performance (still faster than a HDD, but still horrible vs other SSDs, even the last gen BX100)Performance is also very sporadicThe drive also has high latency (low latency should be a advantage of SSDs).Quoting tomshardware;"(the drive has)sequential write performance that is half of a modern mechanical drive.""Just for fun, we went back to the company's C300, the first SATA 6Gb/s solid-state drive to hit the market, as a comparison point.It surfaced in 2010 and obliterated the BX200 in every test we ran. Even the BX100, the BX200's predecessor, is superior in every way.".So yeah, for anyone else looking for a SSD,don't buy the BX200 unless it's significantly cheaper than the competition.

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 08:52:07 am
content: Grab a Samsung 840/850 pro. We've bought about 100 of them and zero problems in the last 3 years.Also peak power consumption of an SSD is higher while sequential writing but at other times you're not burning energy keeping a physical disk spinning. A finger in the air estimate for me is that I gained perhaps 20% in battery life and about 300% more productive!

author: nidlaX
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2016, 12:18:00 am
content: Quote from: MrSlack on January 27, 2016, 08:52:07 amAnother vote for the Samsung drives, they are a reliable and energy efficient option for laptops.