The Sundarban
Published Feb 1, 2026, 4:30 PM EST
Sydney Butler is a technology creator with over two decades of expertise as a freelance PC technician and machine builder and over a decade as a talented creator. He is labored for greater than a decade in user education. On How-To Geek, he writes commerce remark, guides, opinions, and focuses on bettering hardware and reducing edge technology articles.
Sydney started working as a freelance computer technician around the age of 13, sooner than which he became to blame of running the computer middle for his college. (He also ran LAN gaming tournaments when the lecturers weren’t taking a peep!) His interests consist of VR, PC, Mac, gaming, 3D printing, user electronics, the web, and privateness.
He holds a Master of Arts stage in Analysis Psychology with a minor in media and technology analysis. His masters dissertation examined the doable for social media to spread misinformation.
Outside of How-To Geek, he hosts the On-line Tech Pointers YouTube Channel, and writes for On-line Tech Pointers, Switching to Mac, and Helpdesk Geek. Sydney also writes for Expert Opinions UK.
He also has bylines at 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, Tom’s Hardware, MakeTechEasier, and Laptop Mag.
I lately misplaced my gaming laptop’s secondary SSD, and the most likely cause became sustained overheating and throttling. Meaning that I became now in the market for a new power, and in difference to sooner than, I became now keenly responsive to the thermal situation when it got right here to my SSDs.
Now, as many of you rightly identified in that popular article I construct no longer possess any definitive methodology to describe that warmth namely became the perpetrator. I factual deduced this from the drives very untimely death, indicators of performance issues I stupidly uncared for, and a favorable error in my set up when it got right here to cooling. This time, I’m doing it honest.
Why I needed to peek precise temperatures, no longer factual specs
The most attention-grabbing cause I will not definitively speak my used power didn’t die of heat is because I by no components checked how sizzling the power got underneath load. After getting my new power and installing it, my literal first issue of switch became to test the power’s temperature readings.
By stressing it out, and subjecting it to my customary utilization that this will face on a day-to-day basis going ahead, I will test that the power is staying inner spec. What are those specs? In the case of my explicit Teamgroup 1TB SSD, that maximum is 70C. If the power does no longer exceed this temperature, then it might maybe most likely also peaceful reach its rated lifespan and there wants to be no throttling.
The tool I’m the utilization of to test the power’s temperature is CrystalDiskInfo which reveals you masses of valuable stats, but additionally the latest temperature of your drives.
Using CrystalDiskMark to power sustained load
The other tool I could be the utilization of is CrystalDiskMark, which is used to test the reading and writing speeds of your drives. Not most attention-grabbing will this reward me if my new power is performing as advertised, it is a upright methodology to stress the power and peek how worthy it heats up.
If you speed the paunchy test suite, the power will most seemingly be subjected to smaller and smaller, more randomized reads and writes. Chances are high you’ll presumably be in a position to also amplify the dimension of the test file to construct the test last longer. For me, I most attention-grabbing ran the customary test battery at the beginning, to picture what medium-length burst of peak power exercise would enact, but it surely’s a upright recommendation to strive greater test file sizes to give your power a precise thrashing while you wish to possess to be definite.
Colossal file copies describe thermal behavior benchmarks miss
After the utilization of CrytalDiskMark to speed the power by artificial benchmarks and verifying that it did no longer in fact soften, my next step became to launch a substantial, high-inch file transfer. Steam video games are the most attention-grabbing candidate right here, and so I used the Steam storage online page underneath settings to transfer 500GB of sport facts from my main SSD to my new secondary SSD. My main SSD is a worthy faster power, so it totally saturated the new SSD, and it took a couple of minutes to transfer all that facts.
My reasoning is that I could no longer often ever be filling 50% of the power in a single copy operation at maximum inch, so if the power would now not overheat throughout a sustained copy treasure this, it is presumably OK.
Gaming reveals how the SSD behaves in customary use
This SSD is intended for gaming, and so the most attention-grabbing precise-world test of temperature and performance is to in fact play some video games! In CrystalDiskInfo, you would maybe presumably area the maximum real temperature on a per-power basis, and then in case your power reaches that temperature there’s an audible apprehension letting you realize. Chances are high you’ll presumably be in a position to also factual speed the app on a second display, or play your sport windowed.
Credit: CD Projekt Crimson
So, all I had to enact became load up a sport treasure Cyberpunk 2077 or any smartly-liked mammoth open-world sport for latest-generation consoles, and play for a couple of hours. These styles of video games are continually streaming in resources as you traverse the world, which consistently stresses your SSD. Other styles of sport might maybe presumably well most attention-grabbing load facts in chunks and then, once it is in RAM, the power goes slothful. That can conceal thermal issues, because the power is by no components stressed long ample to in fact warmth up.
So, I had to battle by the “chore” of playing my licensed open-world video games for a couple of hours to peek if my new SSD reached its real restrict.
What I discovered about my SSD’s cooling and bounds
The upright news is that,
