Overclocking CPU, RAM, and GPU can all provide additional performance. I believe many people must also be curious, can SSD also be overclocked to obtain faster reading and writing performance? Regarding this point, some brave people abroad have recently tried it, and the results show that it does work and achieves significant performance improvements. However, overclocking SSD is not recommended because it is likely to change the data in the hard drive, which is prone to failure and even loss.
SSDs can be overclocked too!Foreign YouTuber achieved significant performance improvement after trying overclocking, but it may become more prone to failure
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Recently, foreign YouTube channel Gabriel Ferraz shared a video of his overclocking SSD process. He did this out of pure curiosity. Like many hardware players, he hopes to understand the limits of each hardware and whether it can break through the original factory limitations.
He used an unknown RZX Pro 240GB DRAM-Less SATA SSD for testing. He did not use NVMe because this type of SSD has already achieved its best performance, and overclocking may not improve it significantly. The controller used by this SSD is Silicon Motion SM2259XT2, which has a 32-bit single-core ARC CPU and a maximum clock speed of 550MHz, but the original factory settings lower it to 425MHz:
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He uses a tool called MP Tools (Mass Production Tools), which is a tool used by many producers. In addition, a designated firmware version is downloaded, allowing him to make detailed adjustments. Then there are constant attempts at various settings, trial and error, etc. to ensure that the SSD is stable while improving performance. In the end, the controller’s clock was successfully stabilized at 500MHz, which means that compared with the factory, it increased by 17.6, and the NAND also increased to 400MHz, an increase of 106%:
Then we started running benchmark tests, using CrystalDisk Mark, 3DMark and PCMark 10 software. The random read and write performance measured by CrystalDisk Mark increased by 27% and 10%:
The same goes for 3DMark. After overclocking, the hard drive test score increased by 200 points:
PCMark 10 improved by about 100 points:
However, after entering the actual use test, the performance improvement is not so noticeable. For example, Adobe Premiere Pro 2021 tested reading a 4K 60FPS video. The file capacity was 16.5GB, and the reading speed before overclocking was the same:
The loading time of Final Fantasy XIV game is also the same, almost the same before and after overclocking:
Transferring a 26GB file is indeed a little faster after overclocking and is completed 5 seconds earlier, but from a physical perspective, it may not feel like it was the first time:
Although the performance has been greatly improved after overclocking, the temperature has also been much higher, from the factory 40 degrees to 45 degrees, and the power consumption has also increased a lot:
More importantly, after converting the efficiency, it can be said to drop significantly after overclocking, almost half of it. Therefore, overclocking the SSD will not actually bring much real help, and will only make it worse. And after a series of tests, the SSD suddenly failed and could not be used:
In any case, Gabriel Ferraz has at least proven one thing: anything with clock speeds can basically be overclocked. But for products like SSD, getting that extra bit of performance may bring the risk of data loss, which is completely uneconomical, so don’t try it.
Full video:
