Low power M.2 NVMe help

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muhfugen

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Dec 5, 2016
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I'm working on a personal project for an embedded application using a Nvidia Jetson Nano and a Seeed Studio A206 carrier. I need to select a M.2 2280 NVMe SSD to use for this, as it is limited to 16GB of on board storage, and I need a large disk to store high resolution images/video on. I've been looking around at low end consumer class disks as performance and data durability isnt a large concern but power consumption and capacity are. The application will ultimately be battery powered, but even at this development stage, i'm rather power limited with the 24 watt PSU to the point of Seeed Studio recommending disks to be 512GB or less as size generally correlates to power consumption.

Unfortunately most consumer class disks have horrible datasheets which dont list much more than peak bandwidth and maybe QD32 IOPS. The best disk i've ran in to so far are Seagate Barracuda Q5 2TB disks at a supposed 3.3 watts "average" power. For comparison disks like Samsung 980 Pro 2TBs are 6.1 watts average/7.2 watts peak.

Has anyone ever had to embark on a similar search and have any recommendations? I'm open to used enterprise class disks if they're available on eBay for relatively cheap, but am not really looking to drop a ton of money on this project. Thanks.
 
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heavyarms2112

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Feb 11, 2022
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muhfugen said:
Better than the Seagate Q5 at 3.3 watts "average" for 2TB if any such disks exist.
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Doubt you'd get a lot better than that. In the above charts the P31 also did ~3.3W. Maybe you can run same benchmark and get a comparison on Q5. To be noted that Q5 is a QLC drive while P31 is a TLC.
 
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heavyarms2112

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Feb 11, 2022
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The Blue SN550 1TB's rated power consumption of 20mW low power, 4.9W peak power, and 5mW sleep is very efficient. It would also depend on the density of the drive you're looking for. is 2TB the size?
 
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heavyarms2112

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Feb 11, 2022
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Also is the goal to reduce energy consumption or peak wattage?
The energy consumption goal is impacted by how long the drive takes to perform those tasks so simply going by a peak power rating isn't the way to go.
 
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muhfugen

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Dec 5, 2016
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heavyarms2112 said:
It would also depend on the density of the drive you're looking for. is 2TB the size?
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The larger the better, at this point in time, I dont have a strong understanding of how much space i'll need, so i'm opting for a larger drive to play things safe.

heavyarms2112 said:
Doubt you'd get a lot better than that. In the above charts the P31 also did ~3.3W. Maybe you can run same benchmark and get a comparison on Q5. To be noted that Q5 is a QLC drive while P31 is a TLC.
Click to expand...
Yeah I saw those charts for the P31, although I am a bit scared of the difference between them and their peak claims in the data sheet. Sleep/low power states aren't particularly applicable here since i'll be streaming h.265 video to disk, and the 4GB RAM of the Jetson Nano will prevent me from buffering too much before writes occur. Toms Hardware doesnt seem to have any data for the Q5, but we can probably extrapolate it. They do have data on the Seagate Barracuda 510 512GB, which they measured at 2.52 watts for a 50GB copy, whereas the datasheet claims 4.2 watts "average" for the 510. I'm assuming if Toms were to run the same tests on the Q5, they would probably read 1.98 watts as the datasheet claims 3.3 watts "average" for the Q5.

And I did notice the difference between QLC/TLC, which I would assume would give the Q5 an advantage in regards to power consumption.


heavyarms2112 said:
Also is the goal to reduce energy consumption or peak wattage? The energy consumption goal is impacted by how long the drive takes to perform those tasks so simply going by a peak power rating isn't the way to go.
Click to expand...
I'm mostly scared of over loading the PSU and having the system crash, and Seeed Studio hasnt been able to get back to me with any recommendations regarding the power envelope, and I doubt Seagate will be able to provide me with a real datasheet with peak power consumption. Energy consumption is a secondary goal.
 
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heavyarms2112

Member
Feb 11, 2022
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Yeah if peak power rating is primary criteria selecting a QLC drive might help you to reduce that metric.
You should also look into disabling ASPT states on the drive. Maybe, you can disable the highest powered state.
 
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