Agreed, the first gen MX500 with M3CR023 fw proved IMHO to be the second most reliable SATA SSD 2.5" form factor with the Samsung 860 range SSDs (860 Evo / Pro).
Sadly, the MX500 is now difficult to find in western europe. Only lower grade BX500, still quite reliable but not as fast as the MX500 with cache + DRAM.
Had quite a lot of controller issues (become sluggish for periods of time) with the sandisk/WD ones like green/blue and SSD plus.
Huh, I've had the opposite experience with the BX500. Hit a bit hard on them and the SSD drops off the bus. Or fill them up to 80% and witness them crawl to a stop. Dirt cheap drives, but don't ask too much of them.
Oh I never said you wrote it's better, your message is quite clear :)
Just that I would not really compare the two. The BX500 is the only Crucial SSD I've ever had troubles with and kinda eroded my trust in the brand. My >10 years old M4 is still working like a champ, so does my MX200.
DRAM-less SSDs are a plague that is very hard to avoid, as it's never mentioned in the spec sheets.
Very sad news.
Crucial Micron is (soon "was") an great brand for computer assembly and upgrade. It is sad to see the brand rushing to the "easy money" stream. This won't be forgotten when the current bubble will evenually pop and they might meet the same fate as the now forgotten Elpida (who bought Qimonda wich also failed).
The MX500 1st gen (fw M3CR023) was the second best SATA SSD range with the kings the Samsung 860 Evo and Pro. P3 and P3+ were very good drives with great princing for some time, not comparable to the Samsung 970 Evo and Evo+ though.
Never had a failure on about 500 units of crucial MX300/500/P1/P3/P3+/P5. Always updated their firmwares, though.
Comparatively, had lot of sluggish controllers on Sandisk/WD green/blue SATA SSD, and some BX500. But a lot better than any entry level generic Phison S3111 based SSD.
Also very few failures with DDR3/4 DIMMs and SODIMMs. Less than with Kinston and Corsair modules. About the same as Samsung OEM modules from HP/Dell.
Now let's just hope Samsung will not follow in their tracks. I don't see WD-Sandisk going corporate only since they do not make DRAMs modules.
Have seen hundred of chinese ones fail. More than half failed between 1 and 3 years.
As stated by others, issues are mainly and very commonly with the power stage / power management of the mainboard. Also, soldering quality issues leading to failures.
Far less issues with good brands like Dell and HP (had a few hundred of desktop mini g2/3/4). Even tinys from Lenovo do perform quite well compared to their entry level laptops (also quite bad). Industrial computers form factor are also generally quite good but quite expensive, even second hand ones.
Currently don't have enough feddback on the Asus ones nor enough volume to draw conclusions, but so far they performed well with minimal issue, even with models back from i3/i5 8th gen series.
I have the opposite experience as you. I have seena lot of failed Dell and HP mini desktops, but all the Beelinks and Minisforum PCs have been very reliable.
The inf update indeed almost didn't do anything beside renaming lots of PCI 8086:xxxx peripherals and I/O spaces.
To really wreak havoc, play a bit with Intel Dynamic Platform & Thermal Framework Chipset Participant on 6th/7th gen CPU, by installing optional drivers updates pushed by Windows 10's WU on many laptops (like HP's probook).
I have a work assigned HP Elitebook. Worst laptop I've ever had to use.
Here are some highlights, though I know probably some are from the insane bloatware/crapware/"security" software and Windows group policies IT setup:
- If I leave it with the lid open, and come back to it several hours later, it's fairly cool, but:
- If I leave it with the lid closed, and come back to it several hours later, it's blowing it's fans at maximum speed and the entire thing is uncomfortably hot
There are multiple causes/symptoms:
- Poor thermal design, causing the heat to build up faster than it can vent it even at maximum fan speed (several of the vents blow directly at the bottom of the screen, so when the lid is closed that air has no where to go)
- Occasionally simply closing the lid even when its been cool has caused the fans to hit maximum speed immediately even if its still cool
- Poor firmware controlling the whole cooling system
- Poor IT mandated software running amuck in the background
That last point is one of the worst parts when combined with the "air vents are blocked when the lid is closed" design.
At seemingly random times during the night, with the closed laptop, and even if the laptop was in standby or hibernate OR shut down fully, it's managed to turn itself back on, start up the IT bloatware, causing very high CPU usage and thus once again maximum speed fans.
I'll say that again to emphasise it. Even when fully turned off, it can turn back on. This is actually pretty scary and dangerous, because it's totally unpredictable. I cannot leave it in my laptop bag overnight, for example, in case it decides to turn on and start cooking itself.
I have on several occasions purposely let the battery drain just to stop it being able to turn on by itself.
It has on multiple occasions woken me up in the middle of the night from the fan noise too.
Sounds like Windows is doing its updates. It knows whether lid is closed. It likes to do that in the middle of the night, yes, sometimes even playing a notification sound. Hopefully you don't leave volume at max.
Also known as the "CPU strangler" for how much it gimps an otherwise decently-fast system. Fortunately it's simple to uninstall and then block from being installed again:
I believe the Oracle 8 SQL Server we used at school in the starting of the '2000 was running on a RS/6000 system on AIX.
Nice system, had a good memory from it performance-wise. MySQL was not a serious competitor at that time.
The machine had often overheating issues starting from the beginning of june when ambiant temp rose above 24/25°. We did not have CVAC in the building.
Chuckles.
Intel and AMD provide ME/AMT/SPS and PSP respectively on their whole x86-64 CPU range, which are embedded SOC : a CPU (based on quark for intel) and basic OS (said to be from Minix 3 for intel as well), nested within the CPU in the way they cannot be disabled as they are serialized to logical CPU init, "microcode style". Add obfuscated code modules, cannot be completely removed whatever everyone could do up to now. It can access to the network stack and has an "always on" behavior once the system is simply plugged to the power.
If you're security concerned, the OS stack is quite a... secondary issue to you.
You will have to consider switching to an open RISC architecture (Risc-V someone ? Strangely enough or not, EU seems quite fan of this on-the-rise-again architecture) AND a linux distribution.
For sure, for sensitive applications, having a cheap, secure and versatile architecture would be better than making DSPs or issuing hardly scalable and pricy FPGA solutions (well, lots of communication equipements' mainboards still uses them)
I recovered a post apo novel written like 30 years ago by a friend last year.
Patient : Miniscribe 8425SA 20 MB SCSI hard disk from an Apple Hard Disk 20SC (external SCSI enclosure with a HDD). Hoped the disk was still in working condition after more than a decade stored (HDD was built in '88 and a sticker mentioned a repair in '99), the enclosure power supply was presumed dead (no power on) and the mac itself was shorting mains power in a few little minutes, probably from the screen high voltage converter dying and shorting.
I simply extracted the hard disk from the enclosure. This full height 3.5" disk has an "external" mechanical actuator : a stepper motor visible from outside drives the arm with the head(s) inside the disk, protected by a bellows. It gives a cool sort of a floppy drive sound when random access occurs.
I simply plugged it on a SCSI chain on my vintage Advansys SCSI PCI Card and ribbons.
Read the HFS partition with an old recovery software I could find on the recovery computer, quickly found the files (very simple file system and hierarchy), recovered them on the PC. Encountered just one bad sector.
Then looked the content of the file as raw shaking and ajusted the recovered text format for use with Windows PC/Word from the old word processor software - I think they were Corel Wordperfect files.
Very few correction to make to the raw text. Layout will have to be more thoroughly restored beyond EOL. Mainly accented characters and a few other replacements to do. I thought it would be more of an chore from an vintage apple system and third party software.
Overall, it was far easier than expected. Took me less than 2 hours. But am a ex data recovery guy with some ressources.
Quite pleased the miniscribe acted almost like a charm after 10 years or so of (warm, indoor) storage and not a single power on. Feared the HDD motor's ball bearing were totaly stuck !
WDDM 1.0 (Windows Display Driver Model) introduced with Vista, indeed came with TDR (Timeout Detection and Recovery) function for the video adapter, enabling a soft reset when possible.
A lot of BSOD were also caused by generic and low quality DRAM sticks, unstable individually (failed addresses) or becoming unstable when paired in dual channel setup, especially with 2 pairs of dual rank, dual sided sticks. Had very often this issue with Corsair Value sticks, or with a XMP (Intel spec) RAM kit used with 1/2/3th gen Ryzen, manually setup to match the 1.35V XMP profile (for DDR4). EXPO does this much better now.
Diag tools like Quicktech Pro then Memtest86+ from Passmark Software and the free one were born on this 'lost era'.
Or even worse : Maxio