where power tests??

no efficiency tests??

I apologize for the pedantry but there is a difference between a heat spreader and a heat sink and care should be taken not to conflate the two terms. A heat spreader is an intermediary between a heat producing source and a heat dispersing sink. Think of how a modern CPU is cooled: heat moves from processor die → thermal interface material → heat spreader → thermal interface material → heat sink. If there is no secondary heat exchanging device present then it would be not correct to refer to something as a heat spreader.

The cooling devices that attach to NVMe drives should be referred to as heat sinks and not heat spreaders since they are directly exposed to air and do not pass along heat to another heat exchanger.

"We're going to test this without any cooling devices", even though gen 4 drive controllers lose their brains and throttle like hell once they heat up, making this entire exercise worthless.

Did this ever be a good source of valid information?

At the transfer rate, if it can sustain for a couple of minutes is quite good. Most users likely won't load the drive at max speed for this long.

It looks like each cycle takes longer to dissipate the heat enough to ramp back up, though the test cuts off just to soon to tell if the pattern continues. I wonder if it's getting hotter each time, if the case circulation isn't good enough causing the system temp to warm up, making it harder to move the heat away, or if it's something with the throttling algorithm. You said the maximum temp was 93C, which I assume means that's the max throughout the entire test, or was it just the max before it throttled the first time?

Also, while I agree with testing it without a heat spreader since that's how it comes, it should have been tested with one as well to see how it would perform if someone were to add one.

Personally, considering you'll rarely benefit from these crazy speeds, I'd much rather see increases in density/capacity and cheaper prices. I figured they'd be pushing 200+ layers by now, especially since I'm pretty sure I saw something about Samsung hitting the high 200's soon.