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  • shabby - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Lol tlc is now a pro model? Go home corsair you're drunk.
  • DigitalFreak - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Yep, and when quintuple-level cell (QQLC?) flash comes out, QLC will be their pro model
  • Wereweeb - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    PLC - Penta-Level Cell
  • Mr Perfect - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Samsung just did the same thing with their Pro line. MLC might just be for enterprise now.
  • Billy Tallis - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Enterprise abandoned MLC long ago. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any MLC product with NAND newer than the 64-layer generation. TLC's capacity is almost always more valuable than MLC's extra endurance and performance. And when it's not, there's Optane or special-purpose 3D SLC like Samsung Z-NAND and Kioxia XL-Flash.
  • PixyMisa - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Yes, we're running a bunch of Micron MLC SSDs, but the model we use is a couple of years old. Works great and still available, but not a recent design.
  • FunBunny2 - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    it's simply the case that enterprise *always* retires hardware at warranty, not later, so as long as some piece of kit (in whatever thousands stocked) lasts to warranty, it's all good. it matters not what's behind the curtain. there was a time when STEC spent months 'qualifying' their special sauce SSDs with enterprise customers. ah, those were the days.
  • antonkochubey - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Do you have a time machine to 2012 or so, when MLC SSDs were still being made?

    Enterprise / data-center SSDs have been TLC for years, it's fine, relax. Your Fortnite machine does not require more than a server rack does.
  • Silver5urfer - Sunday, January 31, 2021 - link

    Yep, we just are fit for consume. No questions nothing, just consume whatever they throw at the market.
  • Marlin1975 - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Phison E16? I thought there were other PCIe 4.0 chips out now that are easily available? The Phison E16 runs to hot. Price is to high for something that uses the E16.
  • Makaveli - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    I'm not sure who would buy the MP600 Core when the regular MP600 uses the same controller but with TLC instead of QLC.

    As for the E16 running hot its not that bad my MP600 is at 46c right now and when I push it hits about 50c.
  • at_clucks - Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - link

    Because it's substantially cheaper? (~30%)
  • Billy Tallis - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Phison E16 is still cheaper, on account of being a 28nm chip instead of 12nm. And for a QLC product, using E18 would be a bit of a waste, at least with current QLC NAND. At the moment, Phison isn't doing QLC+E18 reference designs.
  • Small Bison - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Looks like the M600 PRO Hydro X leaked onto the regular Pro below and got its M.2 connector all soggy!
  • DigitalFreak - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    lol
  • Billy Tallis - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Sorry about that. Corsair didn't send me links to the high-resolution pictures until after the post went live. I've replaced the potato-quality photos.
  • Small Bison - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Oh, I don't blame ya! For product announcements, you can only work with the photos the manufacturer gives you, after all.
  • DigitalFreak - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Water cooling an SSD... What's next, water cooling you audio chip?
  • Makaveli - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Generally just adding a heatsink is enough but I this was probably made to go nice with their Hydro X custom loop. Most people will be purchasing the standard model.
  • Operandi - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Water cool your water cooling. I have no idea what it means but I'm sure marketing can make it work if they throw enough RGBz at it.
  • Makaveli - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Yes sir RGB or no buy.

    Everyone knows it makes everything faster.
  • Beaver M. - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Watercooled RGB LEDs.

    I fear were giving them too many ideas here...
  • Tunnah - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Pro table says E16 not E18. Also Anandtech needs a "send corrections" link or something.
  • Billy Tallis - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out. You can always let us know by email: click the author's name, and there will be an email link above the list of all their articles.
  • Dug - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    You just threw out reliability when adding water, to what is essentially your most valuable commodity (your data).
  • edzieba - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Shame you can't buy them with the cosmetic heatsink pre-removed.
  • Makaveli - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Its easy to remove the Heatsink on the MP600 so should be the same on the MP600 Core and Pro model. Only the Hydro X version should not be removable.
  • Billy Tallis - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    The Hydro X water block is probably going to be just as easy to remove. It's clamped around the drive itself using the same mechanism as the heatsinks, and uses ordinary thermal pads to interface to the SSD's components.
  • Wereweeb - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Won't these heatsinks essentially heat up the controller with the heat of the NAND, unless you make sure to blow some heat on the darned thing?

    Wouldn't the logical thing be to use a thermal pad on top of the controller and an insulant on top of the NAND flash? Or am I misinformed?
  • Wereweeb - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Blow some air*
  • Billy Tallis - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    It really depends on the SSD whether the controller or NAND is more prone to overheating. For a high-performance PCIe 4.0 drive it would definitely be counter-productive to thermally insulate the NAND, but on the MP600 CORE the E16 controller might be more in need of cooling than the NAND.
  • Beaver M. - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Very misinformed.
    The controller is always by far the hottest part on an SSD. Without cooler it can go to 100°C and more. NAND doesnt nearly get that hot.

    You should not insulate any of them, because then even the NAND will overheat.
    A simple heatsink (or tiny ones on each chip) with cheap double sided thermal tape will generally be enough, if there is surrounding air flow by the CPU fan or something. Better to point a small fan right onto it, if you want to be sure its staying cool and wont throttle.

    In the first years of NVMe drives (when there werent any coolers available) I put a Raspberry Pi cooler set on the chips, a 50mm fan on a DIY wire mount (which I screwed on the M.2 mount below it) and pointed it at the SSD. Then used the mainboards fan setting so that the fan only turns on when the mainboards temperature goes up. Worked perfectly and even when its running its impossible to hear.
  • Makaveli - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    That is good to know thank you sir.
  • edzieba - Friday, January 29, 2021 - link

    Ease of removal is not the point, the issue is it inflates the BOM cost for everyone. Nobody would accept if buying an SSD had a cinderblock zip-tied to it under the logic that 'it is easy to remove' and 'some customers consider it a value-add', it's just pure waste that has no reason to exist, like RAMsinks.

    If you look at Puget systems' comparative testing of an bare drive vs. a heatsinked drive (most reviews only test drive temperature and ignore any performance testing over time) - https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Samsung... - pay attention to the drive time vs. read/write rate before any throttling occurs, to see just how many continuous gigabytes you need to slam the drive with before any measurable performance change occurs. Along with the ineffectiveness of bar-heatsinks vs. just a small volume of airflow. If you need to read at 2.5GB/s for 120 seconds, that means in any case where you're reading a file smaller than 300GB your heatsink is doing nothing. Or for any random read/write scenario which is the key benefit of an SSD, additional cooling does nothing regardless of workload or duration. You basically need to be running a benchmark torture-test before you gain any 'benefit' from adding extra cooling hardware to your SSD, and if you are doing that it makes more sense to just make sure a case fan is blowing over it than to strap a heatsink to it. SSD heatsinks are bunk.
  • Beaver M. - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    I am really curious how the E18 SSDs will perform in real life tests.
    Running benchmark programs really are pointless on SSDs, because controllers are configured differently for different tasks, so it might perform better on some things, but worse on others. Real life tests show you where they are really good at.

    Even if you want to copy files around all the time, then you also only need to run a real life test moving files of different sizes and contents around for testing.

    And testers really should start testing many different (!!!) games how their loading times will differ with each SSD.
  • FunBunny2 - Friday, January 29, 2021 - link

    SLC/MLC/TLC/QLC conundrum. anyone old enough to remember when Bill Gates dismissed warnings about Windows: 'let the hardware fix it' same sort of thing here, except the SSD vendors are going to other way round - let the software demand extreme amounts of storage. without ever more bloated software, games mostly I'd guess, there'd be no need. streaming, that too.
  • xpclient - Saturday, January 30, 2021 - link

    I am curious - is there any standardization in form factor of PCIe Gen 4 SSDs with a heatsink to know quickly if they will fit in laptops - at least gaming ones if not the thin and light variety? Intel Tiger Lake for example support PCIe Gen 4 so while currently PCI 4.0 SSDs are on the pricier side, one could upgrade them later when they become affordable but assuming that they will actually fit with the heatsink.

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