PCIE 4.0 M.2 NVMe Gen 4 Question - heating/cooling?

bagelnagel

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 2, 2013
Messages
96
So as I understand it, the newer Gen 4 NVMe run a bit hotter than previous generations. I've seen some on Amazon with an option to come with a heatsink, and my MSI Unify has 3 heatsink covers for the 3 M.2 slots.

But it seems (from what I've read) that cooling down these drives, or certain parts of it, is actually detrimental to the drive itself, the lifespan. So are there ways to properly cool down these drives without shortening the life span? Does it require a special type of heatsink or a single/double sided drive?
 
Here's the thing, most if not all x570 boards (which have PCIE 4) all come with active cooling. So I just removed the heatsink on the SSD (Inland Performance 2tb from Amazon. Great drive BTW!) and put it under the built in heatsink on the mobo. Works fine. I'd imagine it's as good or better since there's a fan on the mobo (active cooling) vs just a hunk of metal (passive) on the OEM heatsink that came with the drive.
 
Cooling just the controller is ideal in most cases, I say most because there are times when you want the controller to throttle (the NAND itself is fine with high temps, but adjacent components might not be happy), since it's what does the throttling. Cooling the NAND can be detrimental to endurance as it programs/writes better with temperature (and stores better with cold). However in general I do not consider it relevant for consumer use - basically, go for aesthetics, the chances of you pushing a drive enough to matter is small. That being said, the main advantage of current 4.0 drives is bursty, sequential performance - this is especially true with the giant SLC caches on these drives - so if you're using the drive as designed (that is to say, actually making use of its benefits, which is actually difficult in my opinion) then cooling the drive or controller probably is worthwhile. Although to be honest the write speeds are high enough (that is, workloads finish fast enough) that you'd have to try to get it hot unless your cooling is lackluster.
 
Back
Top