NVME Cooler Install advice

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SpongeBob

The Contraceptive Under the Sea
Joined
Jan 15, 2011
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So I've never owned a NVME SSD before. My MSI B550 Gaming Plus comes with a NVME heatsink on it. The SSD that I bought is a Kingston KC3000 which has some sort of black cover on it already. So do I install the heatsink to it's heatsink? I don't want to void the warranty so should I not install the heatsink? Or am I supposed to remove the black strip and install the mobo heatsink? This was expensive where I live so I really don't want to f it up.

Image for reference:
kingston-ssd-kc3000-front-531x531.jpg
 
You don't need to remove the label (and it's better not to in case you make a warranty claim), but you also don't need to use the heat sink that came with the motherboard. It's totally optional.
 
Luke M said:
You don't need to remove the label (and it's better not to in case you make a warranty claim), but you also don't need to use the heat sink that came with the motherboard. It's totally optional.
Click to expand...

Does that heatsink actually improve performance or add to the longevity of the drive? I ask because I think of it the chips kinda like ram on these things and there's a lot of ram in hot cases that do just fine for decades. But this may be entirely different and the heatsink that came on the mobo may make temps worse and is there just for aesthetics. I have no clue.
 
The SSD won't self destruct; it will throttle if it overheats. Which it probably won't.
 
SpongeBob said:
So I've never owned a NVME SSD before. My MSI B550 Gaming Plus comes with a NVME heatsink on it. The SSD that I bought is a Kingston KC3000 which has some sort of black cover on it already. So do I install the heatsink to it's heatsink? I don't want to void the warranty so should I not install the heatsink? Or am I supposed to remove the black strip and install the mobo heatsink? This was expensive where I live so I really don't want to f it up.

Image for reference:
View attachment 539694
Click to expand...
The KC3000 throttles badly after about 90 seconds sustained write, if there is no airflow. With a fan blowing on it, it was fine, as are most of the hotter drives.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/kingston-kc3000/7.html

You can remove the black heat foil, but not the white label on the opposite side. If you are going to do some pretty long writes, I would test it in your case at stock, with a long write, and see what the temps are. If they are bad and/or performance mimmicks what TPU found, I would remove that black foil thing and use your Motherboard's heatsink.
 
Luke M said:
Yeah but you're talking about writing 500GB at max speed. For me that would be a rare event.
Click to expand...
chameleoneel said:
The KC3000 throttles badly after about 90 seconds sustained write, if there is no airflow. With a fan blowing on it, it was fine, as are most of the hotter drives.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/kingston-kc3000/7.html
Click to expand...
You can remove the black heat foil, but not the white label on the opposite side. If you are going to do some pretty long writes, I would test it in your case at stock, with a long write, and see what the temps are. If they are bad and/or performance mimmicks what TPU found, I would remove that black foil thing and use your Motherboard's heatsink.
 
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Luke M said:
Yeah but you're talking about writing 500GB at max speed. For me that would be a rare event.
Click to expand...
This makes me reweigh fussing with the heatsink when you say it like that lol hrmm...
 
I've used those $5 mass produced under 100 different name aluminum heatsinks that are held together by rubber bands on multiple NVME drives and they work great.
Screenshot_20230117-210832.png


The ones that look like this.
 
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