Recommended M.2 heatsinks?

Sumanji

Sumanji

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 28, 2018
Messages
144
I'm looking to rejig my SSD setup, and would like to add/update some heatsinks in the process.

Current setup:
  • 970 EVO Plus 2TB using an Asus heatsink that came with my mobo - temps are not great, around 55C idle
  • 970 EVO 500GB running naked - temps seem fine, 44C at idle
I'll be replacing the 970 EVO with a 990 Pro 4TB, and keeping the 970 EVO Plus as a data drive.

I'd like to have matching low-ish profile coolers for the drives. There are a flood of brands and models on sites like Amazon, and I'd like to make sure I get a model with a decent build and quality thermal pads. A double-sided structure would also be great, as I think this can minimize SSD flex? Some brands that seem decent include beQuiet, Sabrent, and Thermalright.

Do y'all have any reccomendations for a good make/model?

Thanks!

[Edit] Adding a link I found outlining some options, but not really making any recommendations: https://www.overclock.net/threads/m...o-hr-10-hr-09-pro-hr-09-tr-m-2-ab-ag.1805695/
 
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The EK ones are sweet. I have one in red and it looked 🔥on the older boards that didn't have a built in heatsink.
 
I ended up ordering both the Thermalright TR-M.2 and the BeQuiet MC1 Pro - will see which I prefer and return the others!
 
On Amazon search thermalright nvme.
Very affordable nvme heatsinks.
55C idle is quite high so low profile coolers might not meet your temperature goals, but decent improvement over stock mobo heatsink.
Get the biggest you can that will fit the top M.2 slot. Use the ASUS heatsink for the lower slot as temperatures will not be a concern.

My 970 Evo Plus is basically idling at 59 - 62C since I'm GPU folding. Can't fit a bigger heatsink due to CPU tower cooler.
 
trikat said:
55C idle is quite high so low profile coolers might not meet your temperature goals, but decent improvement over stock mobo heatsink.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think the heatsink that came with my motherboard is basically trash... just seems like a lump of metal with a thick thermal pad, that causes massive flex on the SSD (i.e., I suspect some parts are not making good contact).

I hope one of these newer "sandwich style" heatsinks will give better contact and reduce that flex.
 
Sumanji said:
Yeah I think the heatsink that came with my motherboard is basically trash... just seems like a lump of metal with a thick thermal pad, that causes massive flex on the SSD (i.e., I suspect some parts are not making good contact).

I hope one of these newer "sandwich style" heatsinks will give better contact and reduce that flex.
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I always put a very thin piece of thermal pad on the controller itself. That has ALWAYS been the cause of higher temps on all my NVME drives. The height of the memory is taller than the controller so the controller never gets good contact. I've seen 5 to 15 degrees improvements from just that trick.
 
Good tip, thank you! Guessing the position of the controller chip varies by drive and you just have to eyeball it?

Hopefully with these super toasty PCI-E gen 5 drives, we'll see more factory-installed heatsinks that make contact properly...
 
xDiVolatilX said:
I always put a very thin piece of thermal pad on the controller itself. That has ALWAYS been the cause of higher temps on all my NVME drives. The height of the memory is taller than the controller so the controller never gets good contact. I've seen 5 to 15 degrees improvements from just that trick.
Click to expand...

Hey dude, just looping back on this - what brand of thermal pads have you used?
 
Sumanji said:
Hey dude, just looping back on this - what brand of thermal pads have you used?
Click to expand...
I'll be completely honest. I looked for a multi pack on Amazon that had decent reviews (even though reviews are meaningless nowadays because half or all of them can be fake) and ordered a pack that 4 different sizes. From ultra thin to a little thicker and etc. I only use them for M.2 drives so I didn't care about name brand (although I normally always only go with trusted brands) but since it was only for a piece to go on the controller I took a chance and ordered it. Turns out it MASSIVELY decreased my temperatures on all 4 of my M.2 drives. I have 4 SN850X drives 2 of them are 1tb (both boot drives) and 2 of them are 4tb (both game drives) and I think I must have knocked off about 10* degrees lower give or take. My conclusion is that I doubt I would get much lower temperatures if any at that buying a more expensive thermal pad, so for that reason I saved the money getting this multipack cause I didn't want to faff around looking for these things and I'm almost certain I got 100% of the results I was looking to get.

Here is link

OwlTree 4 Pack Thermal Pad,100x100mm 0.5mm 1mm 1.5mm 2mm Highly Efficient Thermal Conductivity 6.0 W/mK,Heat Resistant Silicone Thermal Pads for Laptop Heatsink CPU GPU SSD IC LED Cooler https://a.co/d/gA21exA

I can confirm that these work and have almost 500 high reviews and come in handy in a pinch (re-padding an older graphics card or M.2 drives)

But I would NOT use them for my water blocked 4090s. For those I'll use the official EK branded ones with the correct sizes but for the M.2 you can go willy nilly and slap some thin pads on because that is a DIY project and you will get fantastic results if done properly for very cheap.

Also almost no one does this which is interesting to me. I thought this would be widespread across the forums everywhere but I might be one of the few. Prolly because I did this back when motherboards didn't have built in heatsinks. That's what made me start to do it in the first place.

However, even with the built in big ass plates heatsinks that new boards come with you still have the EXACT SAME problem lol. The controller is usually vertically shorter than the taller RAM chips so it only half ass contacts the controller. Even the height by adding the pad so when the heat plate presses over it with even pressure it will transfer all the heat to the plate properly and you will see a huge decrease in temps (if it wasn't making good contact depending on the pad used previously but for me all 4 needed this mod)
 
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Thanks for detailed info, very helpful!

xDiVolatilX said:
Also almost no one does this which is interesting to me. I thought this would be widespread across the forums everywhere but I might be one of the few. Prolly because I did this back when motherboards didn't have built in heatsinks. That's what made me start to do it in the first place.

However, even with the built in big ass plates heatsinks that new boards come with you still have the EXACT SAME problem lol. The controller is usually vertically shorter than the taller RAM chips so it only half ass contacts the controller. Even the height by adding the pad so when the heat plate presses over it with even pressure it will transfer all the heat to the plate properly and you will see a huge decrease in temps (if it wasn't making good contact depending on the pad used previously but for me all 4 needed this mod)
Click to expand...

Yeah agree, I think those of us who are grizzled PC vets still think of NVME drives as "hard drives" (i.e., mechanical things that you just plug in and forget about), when they are actually more like RAM/CPUs that need cooling to achieve and maintain a certain level of performance - if not before, then definitely now with these crazy hot gen 5 drives.

The other problem I've seen a ton on forums is the massive flex you get with SSDs using one sided heat spreaders that typically come with motherboards. It doesn't seem to affect drives (although long term remains to be seen?!), but it almost certainly exacerbates the sub-optimal contact points that you pointed out.

I took a look the 990 Pro and there is indeed a big height delta in the middle of the drive sticker. However, looking at the naked pic below, I think this is actually the DRAM cache rather than the controller chip. I'll still do the little trick you mentioned, but I suspect it won't have as big an impact on temps vs. the WD drives that you used, which have different chips on them?

1706500854391.jpeg


P.S. Are you British? Noticed you used the word "faff" :)
 
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Sumanji said:
Thanks for detailed info, very helpful!



Yeah agree, I think those of us who as grizzled vets still think of NVME drives as "hard drives" (i.e., mechanical things that you just plug in and forget about), when they are actually more like RAM/CPUs that need cooling to achieve and maintain a certain level of performance - if not before, then definitely now with these crazy hot gen 5 drives.

The other problem I've seen a ton on forums is the massive flex you get with SSDs using one sided heat spreaders that typically come with motherboards. It doesn't seem to affect drives (although long term remains to be seen?!), but it almost certainly exacerbates the sub-optimal contact points that you pointed out.

I took a look the 990 Pro and there is indeed a big height delta in the middle of the drive sticker. However, looking at the naked pic below, I think this is actually the DRAM cache rather than the controller chip. I'll still do the little trick you mentioned, but I suspect it won't have as big an impact on temps vs. the WD drives that you used, which have different chips on them?

View attachment 631096

P.S. Are you British? Noticed you used the word "faff" :)
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You're welcome 😃

My drives all now idle at about 40* degrees Celsius which I am very happy with. All 4 of them are at 40, just amazing lol.

My drives are the WD SN850x drives 2 are one sided and 2 are double sided. I don't remember the layout though.

I am not British quite literally the opposite lol an American living in California, los Angeles at that haha I love the word faff or faffle I don't know why hahaha😂
 
xDiVolatilX said:
These
EKWB EK-M.2 NVMe Heatsink, Black https://a.co/d/gk1Mtvh
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Sumanji...

I have 2 of these in my parts box (the red ones) that you can have for a few bucks to cover shipping.....1 is complete with the backplate & 2x clips, the other only has 1 clip & no back plate, but those should be easy to come by :)

I used them on 1TB WD 750x's back when I was into ATX rigs nottaproblemo, but not since then..

JLMK !
 
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Has anyone tried the Arctic provided ones? https://support.arctic.de/lf3-m2modif - apparently my mobo is partially incompatible with the intended Liquid Freezer III for one build, but Arctic will send you a low profile heatsink for M.2 to replace the big bulky one on your mobo. I wonder how much of a downgrade this will be cooling-wise?

Assuming use with a Samsung 990 Pro or 980 Pro on a Asus Crosshair X670E Extreme, are there any others here worth buying besides the EKWB Quantum ones mentioned and elsewhere in the thread? Also as far as thermal pads, I've heard good things about Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad Extreme ( but seemingly expensive; massively so compared to the older but still viable Minus Pad 8) with Arctic TP-3 being a high performance but more affordable option, in addition to more generic pads .
 
dogDAbone said:
Sumanji...

I have 2 of these in my parts box (the red ones) that you can have for a few bucks to cover shipping.....1 is complete with the backplate & 2x clips, the other only has 1 clip & no back plate, but those should be easy to come by :)

I used them on 1TB WD 750x's back when I was into ATX rigs nottaproblemo, but not since then..

JLMK !
Click to expand...

Thanks for the offer man! I had already ordered both the Thermalright TR-M.2 and the BeQuiet MC1 Pro - ended up liking the BeQuiet one's more, so kept those!
 
RanceJustice said:
Has anyone tried the Arctic provided ones? https://support.arctic.de/lf3-m2modif - apparently my mobo is partially incompatible with the intended Liquid Freezer III for one build, but Arctic will send you a low profile heatsink for M.2 to replace the big bulky one on your mobo. I wonder how much of a downgrade this will be cooling-wise?

Assuming use with a Samsung 990 Pro or 980 Pro on a Asus Crosshair X670E Extreme, are there any others here worth buying besides the EKWB Quantum ones mentioned and elsewhere in the thread? Also as far as thermal pads, I've heard good things about Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad Extreme ( but seemingly expensive; massively so compared to the older but still viable Minus Pad 8) with Arctic TP-3 being a high performance but more affordable option, in addition to more generic pads .
Click to expand...
Assuming contact is good with your particular drive, pretty much any heatsink is better than nothing. And will prevent throttling. Airflow can also make a drastic difference. Many drives which do throttle without a heatsink, are actually fine with some decent airflow and no heatsink. 980 pro would be one of those.

These are a good buy. I recently put one in my PS5, to make it more enticing to sell.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C4F3RHCC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If I need really low profile, I get the lowest ones from Be-Quiet. Although I have bought a similar, lower cost, generic one, and it was fine with a hotter than average drive.


Better thermal pads can make a pretty big difference-----are also a large additional cost. When the drive is already unlikely to throttle with the stock pads.

Thermalright's own after market pads are some of the best
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09DT534V8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

for really tight setups, keep in mind that the pad adds height. I had to use 0.5mm with a low profile Be Quiet heatsink, to fit between the backside of my ITX mobo and the side panel of the case.
 
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