discussion Crucial M550 help

[Chris]

I ordered and received this Crucial M550 mSATA 256GB ssd. I plugged it into an adapter and connect it to my desktop usb port. After a little while, it becomes quite warm. If I hold it with my thumb on the ssd, it feels very hot, not burning hot, but enough to be uncomfortable and have to let go when the heat builds up on my thumb. This is a bare ssd, with no heat sink at all since it will go into my laptop. I have a OCZ vertex 2 50 GB SATA ssd drive. It has a casing, and it does not feel warm at all.

Is it normal for this ssd to be so hot?

Edit: found a post in Crucial user forum that M500 msata is hot at 52c idle, and it is rated at 70c. I wanted my laptop to be cool. So, this ssd defeats the purpose. Are all msata ssd hot like this one?

 

[AkG]

First thing I would do is talk to Crucial. Ask them if this is 'normal'. If it is...it is (thats higher than I would want to see...but it does come down to air movement so its not outside the realm of possible). If not they will replace it.

Secondly....thats maybe at worst 1-2 watts of heat inside your system - ie nothing to concern yourself about. In reality when idling its so little as to make no nevermind. IE yes its warm...but its on a small chip using very...very little power....your onboard ICs (audio, wireless NIC, etc) probably pumps out as much if not more heat. IF that sounds counterintuative...take a look at the M550's power consumption specs. Now imagine if 100% of that power is being converted to HEAT.

 

[Chris]

Thanks for your reply. I have installed it onto my laptop, so far so good. There is a vent where the ssd (or previous hdd) is installed, so there would be cold air circulating to cool it.