What's our industry rule of thumb when it comes to double sided NVMe drive? avoid it? if not, how do you cool the back side?

[Happy Hopping]

does most brand only c/w single side NVMe ? even the 4TB ver.? or does the industry still make double sided? as I'm at Crucial for e.g., they don't show photo of the back up , so how does anyone what's the back side?

regardless, how do you fix the lack of heat sink on the back side of any double sided NVMe? do we just avoid buying double sided? what does most people do? or is double sided NVME a thing of the past?

 

[Okatis]

The Western Digital SN850X 4TB I bought recently was double sided, despite the articles and user posts I'd read stating it was single sided. I just have some air flowing across it and so far has stayed in a reasonable temp range (idle: high 30s, copying for 10 min continuously: low 40s).

 

[michalrz]

The double-sided ones do and will pop up. And yes, they heat up. But, like Okatis said, you simply have to take care to get airflow going.

 

[NattyKathy]

I've never had thermal issues with double-sided NVMe, and I've used / am currently using a number of double-sided drives. They're still common for larger capacities and having lots of NAND chips is good bc it means more parallelism and higher performance.

Keep in mind that the controller, not the NAND, is the main component with heat issues. And every double-sided drive I've seen has the controller on the top where it can get direct heatspreader/heatsink contact.

If you're worried about the NAND on the bottom of the drive, you could drop in a thermal pad under the NVMe to sink some heat into the mainboard but I don't think that's really necessary. NAND chips don't get terribly hot, as long as the controller is cooled the drive should be fine.

 

[pendragon1]

Keep in mind that the controller, not the NAND, is the main component with heat issues. And every double-sided drive I've seen has the controller on the top where it can get direct heatspreader/heatsink contact.

this ^^^ and all you need is a little airflow

 

[Happy Hopping]

that's good to know. On my PC, air flow should be very good, I have 3 front fan x 120mm, 2 top fan + 2 bottom fan x 140mm, + 1 rear at 120mm, and it's a semi open frame

On an off topic, I have no faith on any product from Western Digital. Too many failure on the ones I've seen. Although they do have a pro ext. SSD that c/w 5 yr. warranty. Anything else, I'll pass.

 

[NattyKathy]

that's good to know. On my PC, air flow should be very good, I have 3 front fan x 120mm, 2 top fan + 2 bottom fan x 140mm, + 1 rear at 120mm, and it's a semi open frame

It'll definitely be fine. I've used double-sided drives in low-airflow scenarios (tucked under GPU, in laptops etc) with no problem. Just make sure the controller is cooled.

On an off topic, I have no faith on any product from Western Digital. Too many failure on the ones I've seen. Although they do have a pro ext. SSD that c/w 5 yr. warranty. Anything else, I'll pass.

FWIW I've been using an SN750 for 3+ years and an SN850x for abt 6 mos, no problems at all. Personally I'm more adverse to Samsung with their firmware issues. But warranty duration isn't ever a deciding factor for my HW purchases so YMMV.

 

[learners permit]

Most of the heat generated is from the controller that resides on the top side of the drive so not much to cool on the underside of the drive anyway unless massively large writes are a regular occurrence.

 

[Bankie]

Keep in mind that the controller, not the NAND, is the main component with heat issues. And every double-sided drive I've seen has the controller on the top where it can get direct heatspreader/heatsink contact.

From what I remember, it's actually good for performance for the controller to run "hot" and the NAND to run cool. I'm not sure if it really has an impact; I just remember it being talked about in the early days of NVMe.

 

[philb2]

From what I remember, it's actually good for performance for the controller to run "hot" and the NAND to run cool. I'm not sure if it really has an impact; I just remember it being talked about in the early days of NVMe.

That's interesting, because it runs counter to the conventional wisdom that heat can cause an NVMe drive to throttle down performance. Do you have a source for that discussion?

 

[Bankie]

I do not; it's just what I remember being discussed years ago when they were new on the scene. They didn't need to be hot but it was something about them running better at like 50-70C than at 40C. Could have just been for a certain controller as well.

 

[dogDAbone]

Just for the record: #WD4ME4EVA#....

I have been using their drives since way back when their 1st 7200 rpm & 10k Raptors first came out, and more recently their 2.5" blue & black SSD's & m.2's, neveranottaproblem !
This includes the last batch of 87x 4TB SN 850x's, which are running in multiple client & personal rigs right now

But I always ensure that they have proper airflow and/or heatsinks/strips too, so there's that !

so to summarize:

Computer stuff + HOT (>60c) = BAD/DOOMED to fail
Computer stuff + mildly warm (35-55c) = GOOD/OK

 

[Nobu]

I do not; it's just what I remember being discussed years ago when they were new on the scene. They didn't need to be hot but it was something about them running better at like 50-70C than at 40C. Could have just been for a certain controller as well.

I also read that, don't remember if it was the memory or the controller though. It would make more sense for the controller than the memory, I guess.

 

[Happy Hopping]

I also read that, don't remember if it was the memory or the controller though. It would make more sense for the controller than the memory, I guess.

but what the 2 of you are saying is against the law of physics. We want everything to run cool, the hotter it gets, the faster it fails. Right now, my 3 NVMe is running at 42 deg. C to 45 deg. C. But if they can get down to 35 deg. C, hey, that would be fantastic.

The other thing is, these NVMe all has a heatsink on top, and the heatsink is uniform, so it should dissipate heat thru out and keep the same temperature thru out whatever chips is underneath. At least that what these heatsink advertising shows before I bought it

 

[Nobu]

but what the 2 of you are saying is against the law of physics. We want everything to run cool, the hotter it gets, the faster it fails. Right now, my 3 NVMe is running at 42 deg. C to 45 deg. C. But if they can get down to 35 deg. C, hey, that would be fantastic.

The other thing is, these NVMe all has a heatsink on top, and the heatsink is uniform, so it should dissipate heat thru out and keep the same temperature thru out whatever chips is underneath. At least that what these heatsink advertising shows before I bought it

Actually physics states that things which are hotter have more energy, and can change states more easily. This is why memory can degrade faster when it's hot, but it's also why some processors are unstable when they are cold, but run perfectly stable when they are operating at normal temperature (not above limits).