WEBVTT 00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:07.040 holy smokes that's hot this thing's running at 00:00:04.040 --> 00:00:09.760 105 degrees that can't be right 00:00:07.040 --> 00:00:14.639 ow dang it that cannot be good for it ssds are supposed to have three major 00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:19.520 benefits over mechanical hard drives performance longevity and of course 00:00:17.840 --> 00:00:26.800 efficiency so how is it that we've come to this 00:00:22.480 --> 00:00:28.880 a water-cooled SSD only the next 00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:31.760 15 minutes can tell us the answer and it's brought to you by ifixit do you 00:00:30.320 --> 00:00:37.200 like repairing your own electronics instead of spending hundreds on expensive replacement or repair services 00:00:35.120 --> 00:00:43.640 use ifixit and learn more about ifixit's essential electronics tool kit at the 00:00:39.040 --> 00:00:43.640 link below or at the end of this video 00:00:50.320 --> 00:00:56.000 i guess step one is to open this thing up and see what the heck is going on 00:00:54.640 --> 00:01:01.920 here you know what's funny is the thing is we actually did water cool and SSD 00:00:59.359 --> 00:01:07.040 coincidentally one of corsairs about a year ago with fascinating results what's 00:01:05.199 --> 00:01:11.119 most fascinating about those results is that Corsair presumably watched that 00:01:08.880 --> 00:01:16.560 video and then came out with this this is the mp600 pro not only does it 00:01:14.560 --> 00:01:20.720 feature water cooling but it can actually be plumbed into your custom 00:01:19.040 --> 00:01:27.360 liquid cooling loop meaning that this thing should be the coolest SSD on the market 00:01:24.720 --> 00:01:31.200 there we go thermal pad nice copper block you won't get any corrosion from 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:37.119 adding aluminum parts to your loop no actual fins or anything on the inside 00:01:35.360 --> 00:01:41.040 surface of the block i can i can see in there uh you've got a faison e18 00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:47.040 controller it's a nice high-end controller pci express gen4 you've got 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:48.360 presumably what about two gigs probably 00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:55.880 of ddr3 memory and then two terabytes of 3d 00:01:52.479 --> 00:01:59.360 tlc nan that's rated for 00:01:55.880 --> 00:02:02.079 3600 terabytes written so very high-end 00:01:59.360 --> 00:02:06.000 SSD here's a funny thing the heat spreader that goes on the bottom side of 00:02:04.159 --> 00:02:10.959 the drive okay so it's got thermal pad there too for the RAM chip and then four 00:02:09.039 --> 00:02:15.760 yep four nand packages that are back there that one doesn't actually connect 00:02:13.280 --> 00:02:19.040 to the water cooling thermally in any way but there could be a good 00:02:17.440 --> 00:02:23.840 engineering reason for that you see there's conflicting evidence out there 00:02:21.280 --> 00:02:28.319 as to whether or not cooling the nand flash is actually beneficial the old 00:02:26.720 --> 00:02:32.959 wisdom back when we made our original video was actually that cooling it could 00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:36.879 make it not last as long but then there's new research that seems to 00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:41.440 indicate that going too hot could increase errors and basically just the 00:02:38.959 --> 00:02:45.280 cooler the better may be true like with pretty much any other integrated 00:02:42.720 --> 00:02:50.160 circuits of course though even if cooling the nand is good the hottest 00:02:47.200 --> 00:02:55.280 component on this device is absolutely this controller and that's the one that 00:02:52.640 --> 00:02:59.840 if it goes too hot is going to affect our performance so that's what the water 00:02:57.920 --> 00:03:04.000 blocks attach to let's go ahead and reattach it shall we now this is a 00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:07.840 little awkward in order to install our water cooled SSD we actually have to 00:03:06.720 --> 00:03:12.959 remove this chunky heat sink with sexy RGB on 00:03:10.800 --> 00:03:15.200 it and this thermal pad and put them 00:03:14.319 --> 00:03:21.040 here so that we can have this here oh crap i 00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:25.280 put the water block on upside down up till this point in the video we may have 00:03:22.879 --> 00:03:30.080 actually been very unfair to Corsair something neither you nor i considered 00:03:27.519 --> 00:03:35.040 is that on most motherboards the highest performance m.2 slot is actually 00:03:32.560 --> 00:03:40.000 extremely close to the CPU socket because it has to be connected directly 00:03:36.879 --> 00:03:42.400 to CPU PCIe lanes what that means is 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:47.840 that it also happens to be directly behind the super hot backplate of your 00:03:45.200 --> 00:03:53.599 graphics card this thing might need water cooling more than we thought no 00:03:50.959 --> 00:03:59.040 well no you know what let's give it one one fan let's give it a try let's give 00:03:56.080 --> 00:04:04.799 it a try so we're gonna run a control okay with just the SSD with just the 00:04:02.239 --> 00:04:08.720 heatsink on it and see if it slows down under a stress test ready 00:04:07.200 --> 00:04:11.519 go it's going now hey there it goes all 00:04:10.480 --> 00:04:17.120 right we got total activity a hundred percent on our 00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:22.960 drive he's ramping up boys wait holy 00:04:18.959 --> 00:04:27.680 it balls we have a core i9 11 900 k 00:04:22.960 --> 00:04:30.400 pegged at 90 percent usage just 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:36.240 sharding data onto and then reading it off of this drive 00:04:32.080 --> 00:04:38.639 oh yeah the test that i made up slams it 00:04:36.240 --> 00:04:43.199 this is not what we expected to happen you can see this red line here is from 00:04:40.800 --> 00:04:48.400 yesterday the drive went whoa it's so hot in here and thermal 00:04:45.040 --> 00:04:50.320 throttled and today thanks to our 00:04:48.400 --> 00:04:54.000 magnificently you're welcome air conditioned 00:04:51.919 --> 00:04:58.400 warehouse workspace the drive did not actually reach the 70 00:04:56.880 --> 00:05:03.120 degree thermal throttling point making it only to 00:05:00.560 --> 00:05:06.960 68. that's not nice remember how i mentioned before that one of the 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:10.880 challenges for an SSD sitting right there between the CPU and GPU is that 00:05:09.280 --> 00:05:15.919 when you're gaming or doing anything else intensive it could heat up even 00:05:13.759 --> 00:05:20.560 more than it otherwise would well we're just gonna run fur mark and we're gonna 00:05:18.240 --> 00:05:24.080 try this again good luck everyone something to note is our curve might 00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:27.759 look a little bit different this time because we didn't let it cool all the 00:05:25.280 --> 00:05:31.360 way down because we're trying to thermal throttling that's the whole point 00:05:32.560 --> 00:05:39.039 well that's just great we peaked at 79 degrees and definitely thermal throttled 00:05:38.080 --> 00:05:44.320 but with thermal throttle like to hell and 00:05:41.600 --> 00:05:50.560 back we went from almost two gigabytes a second to one Gigabyte a second reads 00:05:47.120 --> 00:05:52.400 that's good hypothesis proved that GPU 00:05:50.560 --> 00:05:56.479 being nearby is bad and it can thermal throttle all right 00:05:54.400 --> 00:06:00.400 well let's add water cooling of course depending who you ask there's a lot of 00:05:57.919 --> 00:06:04.960 different ways that you can water cool a product remember back when i got that 00:06:02.479 --> 00:06:09.039 water-cooled kit of memory that just had water in it but it wasn't actually 00:06:07.039 --> 00:06:13.280 circulating well i have a theory that we could actually 00:06:11.280 --> 00:06:18.960 get away with doing something similar here just filling the SSD 00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:22.400 with water and then sealing it up in a nutshell what we're doing by throwing 00:06:20.800 --> 00:06:26.800 water in here is we're adding kind of thermal inertia we're making it so that when the 00:06:25.360 --> 00:06:30.960 drive is under heavy load let's say we're editing 12k video or something 00:06:29.280 --> 00:06:36.319 like that it takes a lot of thermal energy for that water to actually change 00:06:33.840 --> 00:06:40.319 its own temperature because water's awesome thank you water you're amazing 00:06:38.720 --> 00:06:44.319 then what will happen is we will stop doing what we're doing and it will be 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:48.880 able to dissipate that heat so it's really great for absorbing bursty loads 00:06:46.319 --> 00:06:52.240 but maybe not as good for long sustained ones now if there weren't thermal 00:06:50.319 --> 00:06:56.240 protections built into this product i would never recommend doing something 00:06:54.479 --> 00:06:58.880 like this because the drive cannot exceed 70 degrees 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:04.560 it's probably fine but if you had something that could get to boiling temperature 00:07:03.199 --> 00:07:10.000 you could create a lot of pressure in there and like blow a gasket and water everywhere now 00:07:08.720 --> 00:07:14.479 actually seems like a really good time to explain the test that we're using to 00:07:12.479 --> 00:07:18.960 thermal throttle our SSD we're using a tool called iometer which was developed 00:07:16.560 --> 00:07:21.759 by Intel back in the 90s and then open sourced in the 2000s 00:07:20.800 --> 00:07:27.120 it's not particularly user friendly but what 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:29.039 it is is extremely customizable so the 00:07:27.120 --> 00:07:34.000 way we've got it configured here is we've set our maximum disk size to 40 00:07:31.680 --> 00:07:36.960 million sectors which means basically we're 00:07:34.880 --> 00:07:41.199 working with a 20 Gigabyte file it's important that this is more than the 00:07:38.960 --> 00:07:45.919 amount of system memory we have then in terms of our access specifications we're 00:07:43.280 --> 00:07:48.879 hitting it with four kibi-byte accesses which is not quite the same as a 00:07:47.039 --> 00:07:55.120 kilobyte but don't worry about it and they are 50 reads 50 rights and it's all 00:07:52.639 --> 00:07:58.319 sequential so we are just slamming this thing one other really important thing 00:07:56.720 --> 00:08:03.039 we had to do is change the results display update frequency to two seconds 00:08:00.800 --> 00:08:07.759 otherwise this drive is so fast that it would actually just 00:08:04.720 --> 00:08:10.720 throttle at the CPU level if we tried to 00:08:07.759 --> 00:08:14.240 update more often than that so fascinating results the red is without 00:08:13.120 --> 00:08:20.720 water cooling and the green is well filling up 00:08:17.520 --> 00:08:23.039 our block with water so as expected the 00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:27.759 green one takes quite a bit longer to reach that 80 degree thermal throttle 00:08:25.120 --> 00:08:33.120 point but then what we didn't expect is that it doesn't throttle all the way 00:08:30.319 --> 00:08:38.000 back to 70 degrees and doesn't tank the performance to nearly the same degree 00:08:35.599 --> 00:08:42.880 although the performance gets extremely inconsistent so this is the actual drive 00:08:41.120 --> 00:08:49.040 right performance isn't that fascinating all right let's 00:08:45.760 --> 00:08:51.760 do it properly now oh ah hot oh wow 00:08:49.040 --> 00:08:56.000 that's hot water oh man this is just it feels wrong you 00:08:54.399 --> 00:09:00.560 know here we go water cooled SSD ladies and 00:08:58.640 --> 00:09:05.360 gentlemen we mocked it at the start of this video but it could be necessary nay 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:11.680 essential for your gaming enjoyment what the heck is this 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:17.040 going on it's having a little i've never seen that having a little freak out here 00:09:14.800 --> 00:09:22.240 no i know what it is there's no freaking restriction in the loop 00:09:19.279 --> 00:09:26.480 that block is basically just a u-turn like it's not there's no micro fins or 00:09:24.800 --> 00:09:31.040 anything like that you could get really high flow rates through a single 00:09:29.040 --> 00:09:35.279 component loop but these days everything cpus gpus they've got these like 00:09:33.279 --> 00:09:38.880 impingement jet things these little micro fins that are hard for the water 00:09:37.120 --> 00:09:44.160 to get through so you never see stuff like this anymore i hadn't i hadn't seen 00:09:41.360 --> 00:09:48.480 anything go like this in years well that's great for cooling it means our 00:09:45.760 --> 00:09:55.360 flow rate is going to be terrific check this out our drive is at 19 degrees 00:09:53.040 --> 00:09:59.839 19 degrees ladies and gentlemen 60 minutes sure okay 00:09:57.360 --> 00:10:03.040 what do you think is it gonna throttle there it goes 00:10:01.279 --> 00:10:06.560 it went up by a degree two degrees 00:10:05.120 --> 00:10:10.839 we're back and this is amazing we managed to reach 00:10:08.880 --> 00:10:18.160 a maximum of 29 degrees over the course of a full 00:10:14.160 --> 00:10:20.079 hour long test and our performance 00:10:18.160 --> 00:10:25.040 basically still got some of that inconsistency although that's probably 00:10:22.160 --> 00:10:27.920 more down to drive garbage collection and 00:10:25.760 --> 00:10:31.839 like nand write speed limits more than anything else but it did stay higher 00:10:30.079 --> 00:10:38.079 than any of our other tests so in conclusion water cooling your SSD 00:10:34.880 --> 00:10:41.120 is completely unnecessary and we've even 00:10:38.079 --> 00:10:43.680 done the math to prove it the thing is 00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:49.839 under normal circumstances it is conceivable that your CPU or your 00:10:46.560 --> 00:10:51.920 graphics card could be 100 loaded for 00:10:49.839 --> 00:10:57.040 extended periods of time whether you're gaming or running some kind of render or 00:10:55.120 --> 00:11:00.800 simulation so when we test those components 00:10:58.160 --> 00:11:05.680 that's why we hit them so hard to ensure that they won't thermal throttle under 00:11:02.640 --> 00:11:07.839 those conditions but with an SSD 00:11:05.680 --> 00:11:12.000 you normally only hit it with very short bursty loads at a time and when i say 00:11:10.160 --> 00:11:19.360 normally i mean almost always outside of industrial or 00:11:16.160 --> 00:11:21.680 server applications so get this 00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:26.320 at the speed of this drive which it's writing at about two gigabytes a second 00:11:24.160 --> 00:11:29.600 this entire time it would manage to write over the course of an hour 00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:34.160 actually you can see it hardware info has done the math for us it has written 00:11:31.519 --> 00:11:39.440 a total of 22.8 gigabytes just running this benchmark to 00:11:37.440 --> 00:11:46.000 put that in perspective because of the performance of this drive at its 1400 00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:51.920 terabytes rated right endurance it would actually burn itself out in a span of 00:11:48.800 --> 00:11:54.320 somewhere between three and four days 00:11:51.920 --> 00:11:58.639 now obviously Corsair doesn't expect anyone to actually use the drive like 00:11:56.160 --> 00:12:03.600 this because they estimate it would take about 280 years to fully utilize the 00:12:01.839 --> 00:12:07.680 right endurance of this drive because they think you'd probably do about 32 00:12:05.600 --> 00:12:11.200 gigabytes a day i would say their estimate is actually probably on the 00:12:09.519 --> 00:12:14.720 high side in terms of how much you'd write a day so this thing should last 00:12:12.880 --> 00:12:19.279 for a really freaking long time unless of course you are stupid enough to run 00:12:17.040 --> 00:12:24.320 benchmarks like this that could actually cause it to thermal throttle because 00:12:21.279 --> 00:12:27.839 then check this out we managed to use 00:12:24.320 --> 00:12:30.000 two percent of our drive endurance just 00:12:27.839 --> 00:12:34.399 sitting here benchmarking it to make this video so is water cooling good for 00:12:32.480 --> 00:12:39.760 your SSD maybe but only if you were going to kill it in 00:12:37.279 --> 00:12:47.360 some other way the one saving grace for this product is that the price of the 00:12:42.760 --> 00:12:49.920 mp600 pro air cooled version is 450 some 00:12:47.360 --> 00:12:55.040 odd dollars and the price for the water cooled version is actually 00:12:52.839 --> 00:12:57.920 469 dollars so 00:12:56.000 --> 00:13:02.560 at least it's not really costing you any extra assuming that you already had a 00:13:00.639 --> 00:13:07.680 water cooled system and it certainly does run cooler especially in that slot 00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:12.639 that's got all these heat generating components around it that is a very 00:13:10.480 --> 00:13:17.760 mangled conclusion almost as mangled as the segway to our 00:13:14.880 --> 00:13:22.399 sponsor ifixit sponsored 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