mSATA SSD running hot?

Hello everyone,

I have bought a Crucial M550 128GB mSATA SSD a few days ago and made it a system drive in my Acer V5-573G. I was led to believe that SSDs produce less heat than HDDs, but mine constantly sits at 50+ degrees Celsius, even though it's effectively idle. Is this normal?



Also, I was expecting boot times of about 10-20 seconds, but a cold boot (power button -> idle desktop) takes about 50 according to BootRacer. However, this could be a misconception about what people mean when they talk about boot time (cold boot vs. how long it takes Windows to load), or simply a rather slow CPU (i5-4200U). Again, is this the expected performance?

I'm looking forward to your responses

CrystalDiskInfo has confirmed the SpeedFan temps.

As for the boot time, thanks for the reassurance.

I know it's well within its operation temp range, but it still seems weird that the component of my laptop, which is supposed to be the coolest is actually the hottest.

I have downloaded the AS-SSD benchmark, here are the results:



One weird thing (that is, unfortunately, not visible in this picture) is that when I first ran the benchmark, the 4k-64Thrd test returned a read speed of over 600MB/s, which, if I am not mistaken, should not be possible over the SATAIII interface. The temperature rose by 1 degree while benchmarking.

As for the other things: my BIOS is set to AHCI and the only thing I have connected via USB is my ASUS GX950 mouse.

I was considering a Samsung 840 EVO, but one of my buddies with background in IT told me that the other brands are just as good as Samsung and they're all cheaper. Crucial has a good rep, so I went with them instead. I can still get a full refund on this one, though, so if the performance isn't what it's supposed to be, I might return it.

As a side note, I really like your profile picture. Legion is awesome
Edited by Ysquanir - 5/10/14 at 1:28pm

I've done one reboot before installing the RST software and I've noticed the boot was much faster (24s with a ton of stuff like Origin, Steam, etc.). Then I've realized that in my battle to get Win8 to obey me I had to reinstall it several times yesterday and looking back at CrystalDiskInfo, that process has written nearly 160GB of data. Is it possible that the boot time was slow, because TRIM hadn't managed to tidy the drive up before? The temperatures remained the same, so I still might replace it with the Samsung SSD in the end.

As for the laptop, I don't have it long enough to really comment on reliability (10 days). My first impressions are really good, though. I bought it mainly because I needed a lighter and more compact replacement for my ASUS G74SX.
The display is much better than the G74SX – it's FullHD, matte and uses IPS technology. It was one of the main reasons why I went for this one, since I work with graphic and web design a lot.
Both the CPU and GPU are slower than what the previous one had (i7-2630QM and GTX560M – mainly faster because of a wider 192bit bus), but they're sufficient for the programs I use and lighter gaming. They're also much more power-efficient, which helps with the portability.
The keyboard is okay, I don't think it has missed out on a key-press, yet. There is a bit of flexing at the center, however, and it seems to have issues with ghosting in certain games (I've only noticed it in Jets'N'Guns so far, though I haven't played a lot of games on it so far).
Heat doesn't seem to be much of a problem, it idles lower than the G74SX and both light and heavy load temperatures are similar.
The only problem which I have is that one of its fans is making a quiet whirring noise that's driving me crazy. I've actually got a thread about this issue over at http://community.acer.com/t5/Ultra-Thin/V5-573G-Noisy-right-fan/m-p/244920#U244920. If it turns out it can't be fixed, I think I will need to return this laptop, because that noise is enough to crush my already weak concentration. And that would be a damned shame

Anyway, thanks for your help and advice, guys