Caution! 50% Performance on M.2 SSD's and ITX Boards

[DWN]

I'm sure most SSD controller manufacturers are implementing something similar to Samsung's "Dynamic Thermal Guard". This monitors temperature of the drive and throttles performance under heavy loads. What defines a heavy load? 62 seconds of data transfer Review Here

ITX boards with M.2 slots don't have room on the top of the board so they place the slot on the bottom. This sandwiches the drive against the motherboard tray. Unless your case has an open vent directly where the M.2 slot is, I suspect poor performance to crop up much faster than 62 seconds on these ITX M.2 configurations without adequate airflow. I don't see how you could attach a heat sink or thermal solution in the space between your motherboard and the tray.

The only solutions I can think of - selecting a case that has a hole around the M.2 or modding the motherboard tray. Anyone know of an ITX case that accommodates the M.2 thermal issue?

High temperatures can cause a number of issues with NAND, from lower write endurance to bit errors.

Example board placement of the M.2 slot

 

[CaptNumbNutz]

I'm sure most SSD controller manufacturers are implementing something similar to Samsung's "Dynamic Thermal Guard". This monitors temperature of the drive and throttles performance under heavy loads. What defines a heavy load? 62 seconds of data transfer Review Here

ITX boards with M.2 slots don't have room on the top of the board so they place the slot on the bottom. This sandwiches the drive against the motherboard tray. Unless your case has an open vent directly where the M.2 slot is, I suspect poor performance to crop up much faster than 62 seconds on these ITX M.2 configurations without adequate airflow. I don't see how you could attach a heat sink or thermal solution in the space between your motherboard and the tray.

The only solutions I can think of - selecting a case that has a hole around the M.2 or modding the motherboard tray. Anyone know of an ITX case that accommodates the M.2 thermal issue?

High temperatures can cause a number of issues with NAND, from lower write endurance to bit errors.

Example board placement of the M.2 slot

Interesting. Never knew that about what they defined as "heavy load".

Regarding the heat issue and placement. This can easily be fixed with modding depending on the case type. If the case has a motherboard tray separate from the frame of the case, then there should be room between the tray and the case panel for routing wires. You can easily cut a hole in the tray where the M2 drive sits and mount a slim 40mm fan (10mm thickness) to the back of the motherboard tray where the cutout is to circulate air. If the case has the motherboard mounted directly to the case frame you may have to get a little more creative. You could also use these to help facilitate cooling.

Something like this or this should work without being absurdly loud.

 

[Wizzard]

Why not just use thermal pads (the thick, squishy kind) to thermally attach the m.2 SSD to both the case and/or the motherboard? That might keep it cooler.

 

[CaptNumbNutz]

Why not just use thermal pads (the thick, squishy kind) to thermally attach the m.2 SSD to both the case and/or the motherboard? That might keep it cooler.

That could be a good idea if the motherboard mounts directly to the side or bottom of the case, assuming the distance isn't too large. Keep in mind thermal pad efficiency will drop if you have to stack multiple ones to meet the distance, but it is better than nothing I guess. Most thermal pads are around 0.5-1mm thick, but you can get 3mm, 5mm, and 7.5mm thick. Most motherboard standoffs are around 6mm or 0.25 inches.

The only downside to this idea is the potential for the pad to be too sticky, potentially stressing or breaking components when you replaced the motherboard.

 

[Phuncz]

Do realise that 62 seconds at over 2GB/s is more than 120GB.

Because only four or more SATA SSDs in RAID 0 or another high-end PCIe SSD can achieve the same throughput speed, the chances of this happening in real situations (ie. not benchmarking) is basically zero. Unless you have 128GB of RAM and often need to copy this amount or more of continuous data, you somehow have the the fringe use-case that makes these SSDs throttle.

So please ask for a title-edit that reads: "Caution! 50% Performance on M.2 SSD's while doing extended benchmarking".

 

[DWN]

The reduction in speed doesn't come @ 120GB transfered but at temps over 70c which is likely to happen against the tray or say, in a laptop?

 

[zaniix]

I would agree that these need more real world tests, what temps do they hit under normal use. If I just have one of those for my OS and gaming will it get hot enough to cause issues?

 

[_CiPHER_]

This is no issue for normal desktop usage other than benchmarking. When not used the SSD will return to a very low power state (DIPM/HIPM) and consume about 0.1 watts. This will allow the SSD to cool down.

Furthermore, the placement of the M.2 underneath the motherboard will limit heat dissipation even more. This is a bad design choice since placing the M.2 up front is much better since the SSD will not be trapped in between a tight space of the backplate and the motherboard with very little air flow.

And the issue is compounded by a thermal insulator: the sticker that covers the controllerchip. That also is a bad design choice. You can have a sticker on the NAND but the controller should have a mini-heatsink instead to aid in heat dissipation so its thermal throttling is triggered less often.

But even with all these handicaps, the heat issue is no real issue with normal usage. Though for sequential writing, it can become an issue with some workloads. If you are a video editing user that writes lots of data to your SSD for extended periods of time, this might be a real-life issue. So only specific workloads would be affected. Normal desktop usage, gaming, etc will not be a problem and the SSD will work at full speed for those tasks.

 

[SomeGuy133]

get some thermal take and a small copper heatsink or get a small 40mm fan.

 

[Phuncz]

Furthermore, the placement of the M.2 underneath the motherboard will limit heat dissipation even more. This is a bad design choice since placing the M.2 up front is much better since the SSD will not be trapped in between a tight space of the backplate and the motherboard with very little air flow.

And the issue is compounded by a thermal insulator: the sticker that covers the controllerchip. That also is a bad design choice. You can have a sticker on the NAND but the controller should have a mini-heatsink instead to aid in heat dissipation so its thermal throttling is triggered less often.

Some have suggested placing a piece of thermal padding on the controller chip if you have a solid backplate, although it might require more than a few millimeters of thickness.

They could have easily placed the sticker on the back, I don't know why they didn't:

This could have allowed PCIe card kits with heatsink (example) to be a solution if you regularly hit the thermal limit because of load.

 

[SomeGuy133]

Some have suggested placing a piece of thermal padding on the controller chip if you have a solid backplate, although it might require more than a few millimeters of thickness.

They could have easily placed the sticker on the back, I don't know why they didn't:

This could have allowed PCIe card kits with heatsink (example) to be a solution if you regularly hit the thermal limit because of load.

you can still apply it over it but it will fuck up the sticker so yea....stupid.

 

[Aircoookie]

Or just remove that stupid sticker... too bad it voids your warranty which is a bit of a PITA on a $380 drive.

 

[zaniix]

Or just remove that stupid sticker... too bad it voids your warranty which is a bit of a PITA on a $380 drive.

Not to mention the PITA of taking out everything in your tiny ITX case just so you can RMA the drive or replace it.

I would have to cut out a spot so I could get access to it from the back, maybe even mount a fan there if I felt it was needed.

 

[calanthe]

What is the temperature threshold to be cautious of, with M.2 SSDs?

 

[sverreerik]

The Asus ROG Impact VI had it's M2 slots raised with a daughter card, if you had a top down CPU cooler the ssd would get airflow.

I don't think that slot had as much bandwidth though as more recent M2 implementations.

 

[LanceDiamond]

+

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00637X42A?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00

Using the heatsinks on my SM951s - they fit perfectly on top of the chips and have sticky thermal tape on them already. Did have to remove warranty stickers. Normal size mobo so I didn't have to do any cutting. I have done case cutting before with a Dremel and it really isn't hard, just go REALLY slow.

Edit: I removed the sticker with a razor blade carefully and completely intact and saved them. If one of them drops dead in warranty, I'll remove the heatsinks, replace the sticker and try my luck. Yes, I risk having no warranty - but I'm betting on my SSD not dropping dead before warranty is up anyway - I'm running them in RAID0, I've doubled down! I did run the system for a week or so before doing this and did a bunch of testing and burn in to make damn sure it wasn't going to drop dead early on.