Team Group Joins PCIe 4.0 SSD Race with Cardea Zero Z440 Drives

28 Comments

View All Comments

• HollyDOL - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link

  Now I would love to see your reaction if this actually gets reviewed and verified to do what it is advertised for.
  Having strong words about something without any evidence to support it is a bit stupid tbh.
  Though I agree with your expectation that the magic sticker won't turn to be a magic cooler.

• PeachNCream - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link

  Hopefully Anandtech gets access to one and has some other sticker available to slap on it for testing. I'd like AT to apply an aluminum sticker as a comparative measure in particular. It would be great to see if Team Group's claims can be supported in a third party run test under controlled conditions. If that sort of test does yield meaningful results in favor of the sticker than I'll happily retract my statements regarding doubt about the sticker's proclaimed performance benefits.

• bugnguts - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link

  There is no need to be snide and belittle others. This is especially true when some of your statements and understanding are incorrect. For example mass does not play a roll in heat transfer. You will not find mass in equations for conductive, convective, or black body radiation heat transfer.
  The article states, "Meanwhile, according to Team Group, the graphene copper foil heat dissipation sticker reduces controller’s temperature from 61.8°C to 56.5°C when compared to the lack of any heat spreader." A 5.3°C decrease seems reasonable. These controllers generate far less heat than a CPU or GPU.
  Graphen's conductive heat transfer coefficient is an order of magnitude greater than copper. Team Group does not disclose how much of the 1mm thick sticker is graphene and how much is copper, but in the worst case the sticker is all copper. A 1mm X 20mm copper sheet should provide sufficient cross-sectional area to move the heat way from this type of controller. Heat transfer then is convective limited.
  The surface area of heat spreader is larger than the controller since it covers both the controller and NAND flash dies. This greater surface area improves convective heat transfer. Which means the heat spreader or sticker will lower the temperature of the controller compared the controller without the spreader.
  The proof is in the pudding. If Team Group's testing shows a 5.1°C drop in between an SSD with and without the spreader, given the same environment, than their heat spreader improves cooling while staying within the form factor limits imposed by laptops. If the test were performed in a laptop with internal air temperature between 30°C to 50°C and airflow near around the SSD is limited, as is the case with my Gigabyte Aero 15x, than the heat spreader is effective. If the test was performed at 20°C to 25°C in a desktop with good airflow than the heat spreader is more of a gimmick.

• PeachNCream - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link

  You may want to do a little research ahead of time. The rate of heat transfer is not the only factor to consider. Isolating that alone to justify quoting the article without consideration for the testing conditions or even the limited disclaimer coverage Team Group attempted to build into the statemetn that did end up in the article doesn't exactly help your case. Presumptions about the effectiveness of graphene and how its used in this circumstance ignores implementation in favor of simply believing a certain material tossed in the ingredients list will impart all of the properties of that material automatically.
  
  On a more upbeat note, you might be part of the target market for this SSD. Buy one and enjoy it if that's your thing. Feel absolutely free to presume the sticker is making some sort of functioanl difference while it's in your system.

• FullmetalTitan - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link

  Only one who made blind assumptions about use cases was you. The result was in the article, a delta of 5.1 C is significant under identical test conditions. You repeatedly show off your ignorance on subjects outside your scope and then counter-punch when someone schools you. It would probably be in your own best interest to check Wikipedia or something before spouting off about a WELL understood area of physics/engineering like heat transfer.

• PeachNCream - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link

  Lego fans unite!

• JanW1 - Friday, October 11, 2019 - link

  "You will not find mass in equations for conductive, convective, or black body radiation heat transfer."
  
  That is only correct if you look at the steady state heat transfer exclusively, which is not realistic for the application at hand. Here we will have bursts of heat production in many real-world use cases, and the absolute heat capacity of the sticker (in J/K) will matter, and that is specific heat capacity * mass. A low-weight sticker can't smooth out temperature peaks as well as a larger heatsink. Obviously, whether steady-state or dynamic heat transfer are more important will depend on the application and environment, but simply ignoring the dynamic properties of the system seems clearly flawed.
  
  So I would argue that your statements and understanding in this matter are incorrect as well.

• peevee - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link

  "It doesn't have significant mass or substantially increase the surface area which are both helpful in dissipating heat "
  
  1. Totally false about the mass - heat transfer resistance is proportional to thickness, higher mass comes with higher thickness. Physics (Fourier’s law of heat conduction).
  
  2. Area compared to what? That only chip which heats up significantly - the controller? The sticker is quite a bit bigger.

• PeachNCream - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link

  Why bother with mass or fins at all then? Why do processor heat sinks have all that weight and size?

• NGneer - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link

  Just curious what you technically don't like about a graphene-copper composite for heat spreading?