This post has been back-dated to keep it off the front page of my blog.
Performance and Cooler Testing
I ran a performance benchmark on the system just to test what’s going on and to make sure the cooler was working properly:
Hard Drive Storage Connection
In addition to the 2 M.2 NVME 1TB SSDs on the motherboard, the system now has three additional drives, mostly from the point of view of cabling. One of the drives will go with the system, but the other two are place holders. The drives are:
- 60GB SanDisk SSD – 2.5″ SATA form factor. Placeholder for a larger SSD in this form factor.
- 300GB Seagate 3.5″ 7200 rpm drive. Placeholder for a larger modern drive.
- 2TB Western Digital 3.5″ Green drive.
On the left, the Seagate drive is at the top and the WD Green drive is at bottom. I’ve ordered black plastic sheets that I’ll cut and over the circuits on these boards.
Storage Expansion Options
The Motherboard has 8 SATA connections and there are places in the case for two 2.5″ and two 3.5″ drives. The power connections are in place for all the drives. If 2 2.5″ drives are desired, then one more SATA cable needs to be run to the drive holder. The drive holders are “Tool-less” to insert the drive, but a screw driver is required to clamp the plastic holder in place on the case frame.
Hard Drive Performance
CrystalDiskMark was used to test the drive performance.
The read performance of the WD Green drive seems very low. Even the many years old Seagate drive is over twice as fast in read as the Green drive.
For comparison, here are performance numbers for a couple of WD “Black” drives from a couple of years ago – contemporary with the WD “Green” drive.
Here are the specs for the Black and Green drives.
I can’t explain why the WD Green Drive is so slow, but it does have 2TB of storage and so it should be useful for a while until replaced at some point with a faster drive. As you can see it’s not that much cheaper per GB than much larger and faster drives.
The system is working fine.
:ww
Windy Weather 