SSD Roundup: Corsair F180 vs. Zalman S Series vs. Kingston SSDNow V+100

Noise

As solid state drives have no spinning platters or moving parts of any kind, they are effectively silent storage devices. It is possible that there could be a tiny bit of electronic noise (typically a high pitched squeal) being emitted, either intermittently depending on task, or continuously, but we have not encountered this phenomenon... until now.

The high frequency whine of the Zalman S Series is circled in green.

Our Corsair F180 and Kingston SSDNow V+100 samples were silent as were all the SSDs tested before them, but the Zalman S Series had a clearly audible whining sound whenever it was active. There is a remote possibility that this is related to the drive's built-in activity LED, but regardless of the cause, whenever the LED lit up, a high frequency spike (12~13 KHz) reared its ugly head.

[Editor's Note: Sharp-eyed readers will notice that the vertical scale of the frequency spectrum screen above seems a bit off. It is actually off by 20 dB; the entire scale should be scaled up by 20 dB so that the high frequency spike is at 5 dBA, not -15 dBA. Call it a minor operator error. The key question is whether this 5 dBA noise would be audible inside your PC. The answer, as usual, depends on what else is making noise inside your PC, how well your case is damped, and how much other noise is in your environment. For me, simple distance is enough: I cannot hear it unless my ear is within about a foot. Inside a PC, it's likely to be audible only to people with extremely sensitive hearing and very low ambient noise. A further question is whether this noise is typical of the model or specific to our sample.]

Drive Comparison Tables

As always we present to you our most recent vibration, noise, and power consumption tables for previously tested hard drives. Tested SSDs were not included as they generated no vibration or measurable noise. Use a perfect vibration score of '10' and our anechoic chamber's noise floor of 10~11 dBA@1m for acoustics if you want to compare any of the drives below to an SSD.