Compares Asus motherboard "heatsink" vs. Gigabyte motherboard Heatsink

Happy Hopping

Happy Hopping

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https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z790I-AORUS-ULTRA-rev-10#kf

so at the Gigabyte high end motherboard series, they have this technology called M.2 thermal Guard III, which appears to be a multi layer of fin. The standard for M.2 heatsink.

https://rog.asus.com/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-z790-h-gaming-wifi-model/spec/

now, w/ our friend Asus, according to their manual, they called it "heatsink", but it's just a metal plate, there is no fin. How do they dissipate heat w/o fin?

it seems better if we were to remove these metal plate, and install a m.2 SSD w/ our own heatsink.

is there anyone who's happy w/ asus motherboard "heatsink", do you people remove the metal plate and insert your own heatsink?
 
It's all about surface area and airflow. Things with fins sometimes have more surface area to dissipate more heat than things without, but it's not strictly a requirement. Fins are really just stacked plates. Without airflow, nothing matters.

For PCIe3/4 consumer NVMe drives, it doesn't take much, if anything, to keep a drive cool enough to prevent throttling. My own high end board from Gigabyte just has a simple metal bar with a thermal pad and PCIe cards hanging over it. Works great. So does the giant ass-heatsink on my Optane AIC which uses a lot of power. Both are in the path of moving air from the front of the case.

PCIe 5 drives running at PCIe5 (which you can't do on most Intel boards) use more power and benefit from larger heatsinks, sometimes with built in fans. Running at PCIe 4, they should do just fine under a stock setup, maybe. I can't find a review comparing such things in my brief search, so I could be wrong, but it would be a sad state of affairs that a newer controller on a smaller node needs more power for previous gen speed...

If a drive is throttling under the stock plate, something you can see by temp and results in a benchmark like CrystalDiskMark, first check airflow, then look at getting a beefier heatsink to replace the stock one. If a drive comes with a heatsink already attached, it's generally a wise choice to use that one, particularly because it's easy to physically destroy the drive while removing it. On the other hand, if a heatsink interferes with the rest of the hardware installation, creativity may be required.
 
How much heatsink do you really need just to cool the drive controller? The flash memory itself actually prefers hotter temperatures, so it's just the controller that benefits from additional cooling. Even then, most of these drives are designed to work fine when installed in a laptop with no heatsink and zero airflow. It would seem to me that any heatsink at all is basically a bonus.
 
GotNoRice said:
How much heatsink do you really need just to cool the drive controller? The flash memory itself actually prefers hotter temperatures, so it's just the controller that benefits from additional cooling. Even then, most of these drives are designed to work fine when installed in a laptop with no heatsink and zero airflow. It would seem to me that any heatsink at all is basically a bonus.
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why would flash memory prefer hotter temperature?

as to laptop w/ NVMe, how long do you expect to last? laptop c/w 1 yr. warranty, desktop NVMe is 3 to 5 yr.
 
Grebuloner said:
If a drive is throttling under the stock plate, something you can see by temp and results in a benchmark like CrystalDiskMark, first check airflow, then look at getting a beefier heatsink to replace the stock one. If a drive comes with a heatsink already attached, it's generally a wise choice to use that one, particularly because it's easy to physically destroy the drive while removing it. On the other hand, if a heatsink interferes with the rest of the hardware installation, creativity may be required.
Click to expand...
in the case of Crucial, their drive c/w heatsink option, and you can also buy the bare drive w/o any heatsink
 
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