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Does an SSD (Samsung XP941) heatsink need to actually touch the chips?

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raventy

Member
Joined
Jul 26, 2002
Location
NJ
Hey guys,

I just got a Samsung XP941 M.2 SSD which I installed into a bplus M.2 to PCIe adapter. The adapter comes with a heatsink to help cool the very hot drive however, I noticed when installing it, the heatsink doesn't actually touch the SSD. There is a very small gap between the ssd and the heatsink itself. Its not huge.. but still.. there is a gap. Think that's normal?
 
Air is a good insulator. Even a small gap is enough to negate any usefulness a h/s would have on a semiconductor.

That being said, I'm not sure anything on a SSD would get hot enough to really need a h/s in a home PC in the first place. So long as there is adequate air transfer between the outside and inside of the PC case, it should be fine sans h/s. If you're that worried, you can get some thermal tape to remove the gap, attach the h/s to the drive, and actually transfer heat from the drive to the h/s.
 
Wow. That's kinda funny, actually. Seems like wasted BOM for samsung-- the heatsink doesn't even do anything. But you can use some thermal paste to get it working right.

And..... Mpegger, that used to be true, but things are changing. Take a look at these reviews.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226459

See? That's with the old sandforce 2281 chip doing the processing. It's overheating, and then throttling, making the drive very slow.
The m2 ssd doesn't have a body to use as a heatsink. It's on it's own, as far as the controller is concerned. It's rather likely that it will overheat, and then throttle with normal usage.

You should get the heatsink attached, moomax. It will probably make the drive run faster by avoiding throttling.
 
I wonder if we'll be seeing aftermarket heatsinks for SSD devices now? Maybe even fansinks? :p
 
I wonder if we'll be seeing aftermarket heatsinks for SSD devices now? Maybe even fansinks? :p
Lol, no.

I'm incredibly surprised at the need for such a thing. I haven't felt an SSD ever get warm to the touch... Benchmarking or sending over dozens of Gb.

My usb sticks don't get warm either...and that one linked is insulated...

I guess I'm surprised that if these were actually needed, that all drives don't come with...I'm wondering if it was your adapter causing it, hence the need for that heatsink.

Is there a problem here though? I didn't see the op mention throttling...
 
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^Keep in mind that thing looks encased in rubber..


I have a 50GB STEC Mach16 iops that has a beefy aluminum enclosure that gets very warm to the touch. Its for server use, and its old, but SSDs can apparently get hot, although this is the only one I've seen.

Edit: Opened it up and found out why:
IMG_20141028_173520_zpsfee2d1c0.jpg

Thats two 6 farad capacitors with real thermal pads touching them, the controller, and each dram chip on the back. I've seen caps used in servers before to keep the power supplied in the event of an outage, but..


Edit Edit: Device is a WD HGST STEC M16ISD2-UCU
 
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Actually, ED, ssds are only gonna get harder to cool, as their speed keeps increasing. I've even heard talk (from intel, of all people) that they're going to allow overclocking of the ssds in the future! Not that I'd want to do that myself :D

And those caps are actually going to be the norm as well, but they will get smaller and cooler as tech progresses. They are there to safeguard against a power outage. Sometimes the SSD only has the data in it's on-board DRAM chip, which is a problem if somebody trips on the power cable.


EDIT: ED, do you live somewhere where it's cold? Almost every USB stick I've used gets really warm when it's doing a sustained read or write, and my ssds all are warm to the touch even at idle.
 
Odie, check out any of our SSD reviews, they do not have any caps like that in there.

None of my SSD's are warm at idle, nope. This is even back to the OCZ Summit in 2010 in fact.

No USB stick I have gets warm, even the banging fast 64GB USB3 one I have (Kingston). Ambient is 20C or so, give or take 1-2.
 
ED, I'm pretty sure that most quality drives use caps to flush the DRAM cache to the nand in the event of a power loss. I know that Intel drives do, and I think many of the smaller makers have them as well. I'll go dig around for sources.
But the caps are much smaller.

As far as the temperature..... I've got nothing, man. We've got the exact opposite experience here, and I don't know why :-/I've got really cold hands normally, so maybe that makes a difference? Huh.

Which drive is that kingston? I'd like to check the controller, and see if it's one of the fast ones like Muskin is using now.
 
EDIT: Woah, we're talking real-time here.

I was wrong about the caps being a normal thing. I went and checked anandtech for some info, and found that only their enterprise level drives have big caps. You can even see them in the picture here: http://www.anandtech.com/print/7803/intel-ssd-730-480gb-review

Which is disappointing. I could have sworn they had some tiny ones, but I can't find what I'm remembering. Which probably means I'm crazy :( Oh well.
 
It may be normal on enterprise drives, just not for what we do here and have tested not being enterprise level consumers (on here, though I am in my 'real job').

But yeah, not sure why we are experienced different things. In all the drives I reviewed, they were 'free air' and during any benchmarking they never got warm. Granted, I didn't stuff the drive full or anything, but its beat on in several ways and with varying lengths of time.
 
There, now I feel sane again. Here's what I was remembering: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7864/crucial-m550-review-128gb-256gb-512gb-and-1tb-models-tested

It has power loss caps, but small ones. Obviously not standard for all drives, so I'm still wrong in that regard :p


Do you feel the warmth from normal hard drives? I wonder if the airflow in your room is better than mine. My drives are also out in the open, but tucked away underneath a table. They actually look pretty silly, in all honesty.


I'd love to see if you thought that mushkin flash drive was warm to the touch. How beefy are your hands? I wonder if that's the source of the difference, because my hands are skeletal and small.
 
Yep... I know they have caps, but not huge 'old school' white ones was my point. :)

Normal HDD's are warm, when they are spun up and idle, yes. Maybe my SSDs get

I can just about palm a basketball and have skinny hands (not sausages).
 
Right 'o! I'm thinking that there's no good way to resolve this puzzling dissonance for now. It was a good discussion, though :) I'm off to do my daily tasks. Later ED.
 
My XP works great with out any heatsinks, just plugged it into the M.2 slot

If this product needed a cooling solution Samsung would provide one.
 
haha yea. I also went and just added a thicker thermal pad to close the gap between the controller chip and heatsink. So now it'll stay cool either way!
 
Actually the XP941 can get to a boiling point if you're doing lots of work to it. Now I am wondering what are the best double sided adhesive thermal pads in the market and where can I find colored heatsinks that can fit nicely on the dimensions of the M.2 2280 form factor (XP941).



6372_68_samsung_sp941_512gb_m_2_pcie_ssd_review.png


Until now, the highest temperature we've recorded on a SSD controller was 84C. The Samsung achieved a whopping 114.2C measurement in the same test and ran under the same conditions. We recommend you use an adapter bracket with a heat sink whenever possible or, at the very least, provide good air cooling to the XP941.

In the image above, we see the idle (top) and 10 minute 4k load (bottom) thermal images. At idle and even under light use, the drive stays cool, but under a high workload, it could boil water.

The controller temperature also increases the temperature of the other components, and the edge of the NAND flash closest to the controller reached nearly 80C. Flash endurance is directly tied to temperature. With the NAND hot, each single write could be like 3 or more writes, so keeping everything cool is important for the long term health of the SSD. The Samsung XP941 is an enthusiast product--at least the price and performance tell us so--and enthusiasts already know a thing or two about keeping system components cool.

We reached out to Samsung to ask about any thermal throttles but have yet to hear back. - TweakTown

Source


Edit: I found these heat sinks and thermal pads that were the closest fit I can find for the XP941 and look nice with the build. Will they stick together without falling when the MB is installed sideways and what do I do with the sticker on the XP941?
 
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