Liquid Cooled SSD
- Thread starter Shadow Reaper
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Can't see it on Facebook, won't let me in, but have seen the concept done on LTT in 2020:
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lQmI5A27Iv8
I remember a number of years ago, when some people were attaching cooling blocks to their HDDs to help keep them cooler by way of the case fans blowing air from outside the case across the fins of the HDD cooler blocks. Granted, this was before SSDs became main stream & were crazy priced.
Since then, I've also seen some motherboards that seemed to have a sort of built in water cooling system for just about everything except for the graphics card & RAM, which would be able to also be water cooled by their own add-on hardware that could also be included into the overall loop.
Since then, I've also seen some motherboards that seemed to have a sort of built in water cooling system for just about everything except for the graphics card & RAM, which would be able to also be water cooled by their own add-on hardware that could also be included into the overall loop.
I’m not an expert but IIRC, clock speed is mostly limited by temperature. If you cool the entire system component by component, odds seem fair you can run them faster. They must have hit the thermal limit with their last SSD and decided this is what they need to run faster.
Since SC benefits so much from an SSD, one has to wonder whether this 20% boost in speed wouldn’t be noticeable.
Since SC benefits so much from an SSD, one has to wonder whether this 20% boost in speed wouldn’t be noticeable.
I cursory search into the subject suggest that it'd be theoretically possible to overclock an SSD, but access to those settings would pretty much need to be provided by the manufacturer. People are also suggesting this would likely increase the error rate by a lot.
I also figure that for efficient cooling, you'd need to have similar thermal conductivity on both sides, right? Like, if the source can only emit heat at 10 W/mK, as is the case for highly thermally conductive plastic, it wouldn't really help that much if on the other side you'd got like 100 W/mK. I mean, it wouldn't be entirely without an effect, the Watts being dependent on Kelvin, but but surely the cooling would work better if the source also conducted better.
That being said, I've got one M.2 I'd wish was running cooler. It's slowing down a bit at times due to heat, so for a situation like that, I think extra cooling would be useful. It's obviously also designed to run at the advertised capacity, so on the SSDs side it should be able to emit heat fast enough, it's just that it's near my GPU and that chokes it, the passive cooler it has on top of it obviously doesn't work that well as the temperature around it is higher.
I also figure that for efficient cooling, you'd need to have similar thermal conductivity on both sides, right? Like, if the source can only emit heat at 10 W/mK, as is the case for highly thermally conductive plastic, it wouldn't really help that much if on the other side you'd got like 100 W/mK. I mean, it wouldn't be entirely without an effect, the Watts being dependent on Kelvin, but but surely the cooling would work better if the source also conducted better.
That being said, I've got one M.2 I'd wish was running cooler. It's slowing down a bit at times due to heat, so for a situation like that, I think extra cooling would be useful. It's obviously also designed to run at the advertised capacity, so on the SSDs side it should be able to emit heat fast enough, it's just that it's near my GPU and that chokes it, the passive cooler it has on top of it obviously doesn't work that well as the temperature around it is higher.
I got pretty decent ssds but never had issues with cooling. I guess that's what you get when you do water cooled vs all air, not enough airflow so components that the manufacturer never really expected to to get hot, get hot.
If you are getting into xtreme bullshit levels of cooling like with liquid nitrogen, then sure, you might actually need to cool the ssd via fluids, otherwise I don't see how you could get any gains. Your avarage ssd is already faster than your io can handle, so I call bs on any real world gains.
@FZD said it all, it's basically pointless unless you already have issues with stock speeds, but for that I'd suggest just looking at your airflow. See if somethings blocking the air over the ssd, add a better fan if you can instead of messing around with water. Loose the fancy branded (heat)retaining ssd plate that comes with the mobo, you dont need it, add a heatsink on the ssd instead and let it breath! Most of em come with one that works, at least mine did.
If you are getting into xtreme bullshit levels of cooling like with liquid nitrogen, then sure, you might actually need to cool the ssd via fluids, otherwise I don't see how you could get any gains. Your avarage ssd is already faster than your io can handle, so I call bs on any real world gains.
@FZD said it all, it's basically pointless unless you already have issues with stock speeds, but for that I'd suggest just looking at your airflow. See if somethings blocking the air over the ssd, add a better fan if you can instead of messing around with water. Loose the fancy branded (heat)retaining ssd plate that comes with the mobo, you dont need it, add a heatsink on the ssd instead and let it breath! Most of em come with one that works, at least mine did.
Assuming energy consumption isn't a factor, I'd just get some U.2 or U.3 2.5" drives for my system instead these days. They've come down quite a lot in price.
You'd have two options:
1. Connect them via cables to motherboard connectors or bifurcation/switch-chip PCIe cards or
2. use a PCIe bifurcation adapter card where you can directly mount them to (50$ iirc).
If your motherboard slot doesn't support bifurcation, then you can only attach one drive per slot or you have to get a PCIe card with a switch chip on it, but they are expensive.
The drives come in 2.5" format and you can, if you use cables, mount them in HDD/SSD slots of your pc case in front of case fans. Just ensure that they have proper cooling, i.e. there is enough space between drives or the fans have enough static pressure, and you're good.
If you mount them on the adapter card, make sure a case fan is blowing alongside their surfaces.
Sometimes I can get them for lower prices than their Desktop M.2 counterparts, which have much lower endurance, no powerloss protection, less sustained performance, etc.
One downside: They don't have deep energy saving power states, because latency is all that matters for that kind of hardware, meaning they'll use 5-10 Watts idle and under load up to 25-30 Watts. This is the reason why you need adequate cooling.
Also this is the only way I know of that you can get the full sustained read/write potential of SSDs, because even with a good heatsink, you can never remove that kind of heat from the chips fast enough if mounted on the motherboard.
Example:
Micron 7400 PRO - 1DWPD Read Intensive 3.84TB, 512B, U.3
270€, new, incl. 19% VAT (newer model with somewhat better values is available, but the differences would be irrelevant to me)
Reading: 6600MB/s
Writing: 3500MB/s
IOPS 4K read/write: 800k/150k
Endurance: 7PB (standard/mixed write workload) or 25.7PB (sequential writing)
Notes:
I would never run any of these enterprise drives, even if they sometimes come in M.2 format and you attach a heatsink and have fans blowing on it, as M.2 unless you have the kind of airflow that is typical of enterprise rack servers. They just get too hot.
If you compare the stats above to M.2 desktop drives remember that the values advertised are quite different. When they say 3500MB/s write speed, then they mean that it can be sustained more or less indefinitely for the entire drive. These are not the inflated burst speeds of desktop SSDs, where the performance tanks when the cache is exceeded.
They switched the pins from U.2 to U.3 standard. You can plug U.2 and U.3 drives into U.2 slots, but you can't plug U.2 drives into U.3 slots.
You'd have two options:
1. Connect them via cables to motherboard connectors or bifurcation/switch-chip PCIe cards or
2. use a PCIe bifurcation adapter card where you can directly mount them to (50$ iirc).
If your motherboard slot doesn't support bifurcation, then you can only attach one drive per slot or you have to get a PCIe card with a switch chip on it, but they are expensive.
The drives come in 2.5" format and you can, if you use cables, mount them in HDD/SSD slots of your pc case in front of case fans. Just ensure that they have proper cooling, i.e. there is enough space between drives or the fans have enough static pressure, and you're good.
If you mount them on the adapter card, make sure a case fan is blowing alongside their surfaces.
Sometimes I can get them for lower prices than their Desktop M.2 counterparts, which have much lower endurance, no powerloss protection, less sustained performance, etc.
One downside: They don't have deep energy saving power states, because latency is all that matters for that kind of hardware, meaning they'll use 5-10 Watts idle and under load up to 25-30 Watts. This is the reason why you need adequate cooling.
Also this is the only way I know of that you can get the full sustained read/write potential of SSDs, because even with a good heatsink, you can never remove that kind of heat from the chips fast enough if mounted on the motherboard.
Example:
Micron 7400 PRO - 1DWPD Read Intensive 3.84TB, 512B, U.3
270€, new, incl. 19% VAT (newer model with somewhat better values is available, but the differences would be irrelevant to me)
Reading: 6600MB/s
Writing: 3500MB/s
IOPS 4K read/write: 800k/150k
Endurance: 7PB (standard/mixed write workload) or 25.7PB (sequential writing)
Notes:
I would never run any of these enterprise drives, even if they sometimes come in M.2 format and you attach a heatsink and have fans blowing on it, as M.2 unless you have the kind of airflow that is typical of enterprise rack servers. They just get too hot.
If you compare the stats above to M.2 desktop drives remember that the values advertised are quite different. When they say 3500MB/s write speed, then they mean that it can be sustained more or less indefinitely for the entire drive. These are not the inflated burst speeds of desktop SSDs, where the performance tanks when the cache is exceeded.
They switched the pins from U.2 to U.3 standard. You can plug U.2 and U.3 drives into U.2 slots, but you can't plug U.2 drives into U.3 slots.
PC cooling solutions assume the thermal conductivity of the processor’s plastic case is sufficient, but that may not be true with all possible overclocking. Because engineers assume this is true, we never see active refrigeration on home systems. In theory, a Freon or other gas expansion system could cool components below room temperature and thus suck heat out faster than the thermal limits would normally allow. In fact, if you want to earn some cash, designing a tiny Freon system for home computers isn’t a terrible idea.
Problem with below ambient cooling is you get shedloads of condensation all over your nice shiny i9 9800millionK and 4090 super gti extra card which makes them go fry fry and boom boom which makes you go waa waa cry cry.
It's basically unworkable for a normal/average system.
You can use fish tank chillers to cool down things to ambient (or one or 2 degrees below ambient) and that gets you some extra voltage and thus some extra scope for extra frames. I've done it - in the end it wasn't really worth the 5% performance boost over standard high end watercooling.
It's basically unworkable for a normal/average system.
You can use fish tank chillers to cool down things to ambient (or one or 2 degrees below ambient) and that gets you some extra voltage and thus some extra scope for extra frames. I've done it - in the end it wasn't really worth the 5% performance boost over standard high end watercooling.
LTT did a bunch of episodes on diy and extreme cooling solutions, from inhouse designed and produced cpu blocks to including AC refrigeration and a bunch of other fun stuff like 200mph wind machines and such. Some of them were actually answering real questions, like does adding more fans on either side of the cooler matter or not, the rest was just really entertaining, worth a watch imo.
It's fun and all but proves the point that no, you are indeed not smarter than 50 years of experience by the worlds top-end engineers combined.
It's fun and all but proves the point that no, you are indeed not smarter than 50 years of experience by the worlds top-end engineers combined.
I used to think that a good way to liquid cool a PC's components while preventing condensation was to have the PC set inside a non-electrically conductive fluid. I forget the official term. Yes, LTT has done a few vids based on this. My thinking was that if you have it dunked in something (they used mineral oil), while having all of the components that you want to cool as much as possible, you'd prevent the condensation. Unfortunately, all of the vids that I've seen based on this, the vids showed that the fluids caused issues to things like the plastic & rubber components. I guess it still might do well if using it for short term liquid nitrogen competing, as long as you don't mind the mess, but I've been left at a loss otherwise.
Quantum computers use ultra cold, but normal ones too. I know because I saw it in TimeCop. It was on the internet so it must be true.