The only thing that matters is heat and throttling. I have a nvme drive in an adapter and it gets too hot to touch (over 80 degrees) after 15 minutes of heavy use. I bought an Adata basic external SSD and it throttled to 30 MB/s after 10 minutes also.
If the Crucial X8 can run continuously at full power with sufficient cooling for an hour, that's a win. Same with the new Sata based one, some of those throttle also. I really wish we had testing of all external SSDs and their after 30 minute write speed and temperature. Nobody seems to be testing them. Something Anandtech should do.
I’ve never had an m.2 based SSD get that hot. My 970 evo with no heatsink topped out at 75C after over an hour of heavy continuous load. With a proper heatsink, my SSDs stay under 50C most of the time with spikes into to mid 70s during heavy use.
Note that an EVO, EVO Plus, and a Sabrent were tested.
my point was cheap USB drives are too hot, and I don't know about the Crucial X8, and also the Sabrent will also hit 80 degrees in a external case most likely (like Pluggable etc.) under very heavy use
An hour of use is not as stressful as continuous writes to 90% capacity [ and if you are doing writes to 90% capacity again and again for a hour, then, a portable SSD is not what you are after :) ]
From the image at the top it looks like a plastic case. I have various 2.5" SSDs and I've never seen them get hot. Most 2.5" SSDs now are just a tiny inch-long chipboard inside a mostly empty 2.5" case that does nothing except store air and cost more.
My m.2 SSDs do get hot. I have a plastic m.2 external enclosure that is fine for transporting files or short-term use. For sustained use, definitely a metal enclosure is needed, or a metal heatsink to radiate heat. It's not a big problem. m.2 SSDs can cope with 70c or 80c no problem.
I have a Macbook Air / Macbook Pro where I've replaced the Apple OEM PCIe SSDs with m.2 SSDs (for a 3x speed up and 5x capacity). The aluminium laptop case does heat up around the SSD area under heavy use, which it didn't do with the Apple OEM SSDs. Again, that's fine, working as intended.
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TinyOilot - Tuesday, August 25, 2020 - link
I think it will be just cheaper to buy £100 nvme drive and add adapter.Alistair - Tuesday, August 25, 2020 - link
The only thing that matters is heat and throttling. I have a nvme drive in an adapter and it gets too hot to touch (over 80 degrees) after 15 minutes of heavy use. I bought an Adata basic external SSD and it throttled to 30 MB/s after 10 minutes also.If the Crucial X8 can run continuously at full power with sufficient cooling for an hour, that's a win. Same with the new Sata based one, some of those throttle also. I really wish we had testing of all external SSDs and their after 30 minute write speed and temperature. Nobody seems to be testing them. Something Anandtech should do.
eek2121 - Tuesday, August 25, 2020 - link
I’ve never had an m.2 based SSD get that hot. My 970 evo with no heatsink topped out at 75C after over an hour of heavy continuous load. With a proper heatsink, my SSDs stay under 50C most of the time with spikes into to mid 70s during heavy use.Note that an EVO, EVO Plus, and a Sabrent were tested.
Alistair - Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - link
my point was cheap USB drives are too hot, and I don't know about the Crucial X8, and also the Sabrent will also hit 80 degrees in a external case most likely (like Pluggable etc.) under very heavy useganeshts - Tuesday, August 25, 2020 - link
Please take a look at the 'sequential write to 90% capacity' graphs along with temperature measurements (if supported) here:https://www.anandtech.com/show/14661/usb32-g2-port...
An hour of use is not as stressful as continuous writes to 90% capacity [ and if you are doing writes to 90% capacity again and again for a hour, then, a portable SSD is not what you are after :) ]
Tomatotech - Thursday, August 27, 2020 - link
From the image at the top it looks like a plastic case. I have various 2.5" SSDs and I've never seen them get hot. Most 2.5" SSDs now are just a tiny inch-long chipboard inside a mostly empty 2.5" case that does nothing except store air and cost more.My m.2 SSDs do get hot. I have a plastic m.2 external enclosure that is fine for transporting files or short-term use. For sustained use, definitely a metal enclosure is needed, or a metal heatsink to radiate heat. It's not a big problem. m.2 SSDs can cope with 70c or 80c no problem.
I have a Macbook Air / Macbook Pro where I've replaced the Apple OEM PCIe SSDs with m.2 SSDs (for a 3x speed up and 5x capacity). The aluminium laptop case does heat up around the SSD area under heavy use, which it didn't do with the Apple OEM SSDs. Again, that's fine, working as intended.