One thing that I have noticed for sure is that running HWMonitor greatly increases NAND writes. I run HWMonitor when launching a game for the first time to check temperatures. HWMonitor is stored and run from my secondary traditional drive and yet the impact is undeniable.
before:
host: 320.13
NAND: 1085
after ~1 hour of Farcry 4 with HWMonitor running:
host: 320.44: 0.31GB more
NAND: 1092: 7GB more
Write amplification: 22.6
after ~1 hour more of Farcry4 without HWMonitor:
host: 320.47: 0.03GB more
NAND: 1094: 2GB more
Write amplification: 66.7
Now you can see that there were more host writes during the first run, but I can't see how that would be due to HWMonitor as I have all logging disabled. Also, resource monitor does not show any writes from HWMonitor. The system may well have been doing other writes for any number of reasons, but looking just at the NAND writes I can tell you that this massive increase when running HWMonitor occurs every single time. I have no idea how this could be so since, again, HWMonitor is not an installed application but simply an .exe stored and launched on a secondary drive with all logging features disabled.
Now I realize that the write amplification for the second test without HWMonitor is actually far greater, but since the goal is fewer NAND writes the point and mystery remains. I don't know, the real problem is the write amplification under all conditions, but maybe there is a clue here somewhere.