• Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Well, 3.5" SSDs are certainly possible, but 2.5" (or in fact m.2) might just be a better form factor for SSDs. The thing is, an SSD is just a bunch of chips on a PCB, so they really don’t need the extra height afforded to them by a 3.5" bay.

    You could probably fit 2 pcbs one on top of the other within a 3.5" drive, but that would probably need a third PCB to connect the two which would be more complicated to manufacture and be worse for cooling than using two individual 3.5" or m.2 cards.

    Also, for a bunch of reasons smaller is usually better. Generally, it tends to be cheaper to use a few large capacity chips on a small board than it is to use a lot of lower capacity chips on a larger board. Of course fewer parts also means fewer potential points of failure, so better for quality control. And again, smaller cards are better for case airflow and cooling.