Energy consumption
Finally we measured energy consumption with a clip ammeter. Energy consumption was taken at idle and in one of the most intensive SSD loads, sequential writes.
At idle, the Falcon II, an older generation SSD, is the most economical, at just 0.4 Watts, whereas the Vertex 3 240 draws the most (1.65 Watts)! Remember, the Vertex 3 240 is a preseries model and its firmware doesn’t include the energy economy modes during inactivity, unlike the 120. The scores for the two Vertex 3s in their final versions should be pretty similar.
During sequential writes, the Corsair F120 and the Intel SSD 320 120 draw the least power. They are however also among the lowest performance solutions in this domain, in contrast to the SSD 510 250 and Vertex 3 240 which draw over 4W. The C300 256 GB also consumes over 4W, but the M4 256 manages to be a good deal more economical in spite of its high performance with sequential writes. Whatever the SSD used however, they’re more economical than standard 3"1/2 drives by far. Standard HDDs struggle to manage anything under 3W at idle and can go as high as 8W in load (the 1 TB versions for example).
