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Cooling a HOT M2 NVMe drive

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Nebulous

Nebulous

Dreadnought Class Senior
​
Joined
Oct 11, 2002
Location
The Empire State
I posted Stereo555 and I got the PNY CS2030 240GB M2. NVMe drive and noticed these suckers run hot as hell. Mine idled @ 60-ish and under activity ramped up to 72-74c without any type of cooling. Added a 60mm fan which dropped temps to within the mid 40's. Stereo555's drive ran even hotter exceeding it's max safe operational temps ( 85c+) :eek:

So he had some old school memory heatsinks from Thermaltake, which btw were the perfect size for the M2 drive, and with some thermal tape and zipties (that I suggested he use to attach the sink) attached the sink to the M2 drive. His temps dropped dramatically (50-ish). I shopped around on flebay and found the same exact heatsinks ( in my favorite color ;)) and along with thermal tape (courtesy of Stereo555) and zipties I hooked up my M2 drive. As an added bonus I had a 60mm fan in my box-o-junk I attached to the side of the M2 having the fan blow downwards and across the sink.

Needless to say the results are fantastic. Current temps on my M2 drive are: Idle = 29c and active temps are 33c :D

Total cost was under $20 :)
 

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Thought about doing something like that with my 950 Pro but Samsung put a sticker on it and not wanting to void warranty just yet lol.
 
The heat of the PNY made the sticker peel itself off. I just helped it along. I did notice there was a smaller sticker (3rd pic) that was stuck under the larger sticker. I peeled them apart and restuck the smaller (white) sticker back. I called PNY and asked them if the main carbon fiber sticker came off would it void the warranty. They stated it would not, but wanted a picture of the main sticker off. Guess they wanted to see if the small white sticker was still inplace, which is the one that shows "Warranty void if removed".
 
This SSD looks and performs almost the same as Patriot Hellfire. I mean there are even the same components and the same PCB design. Somehow my Hellfire is keeping lower temps while work. Idle is ~50+ but max is no more than ~75 without additional cooling. Consumer memory components should be safe up to 85°C 24/7 work and some even higher. Hard to say how long it will live at 85+. Of course if it makes you feel better then use additional cooling.
New boards have often M.2 heatsinks but depends on design it's sometimes helping and sometimes not much.
My new X299 TUF has one vertical M.2 socket ... this is really dumb idea, like they couldn't install it on the back of the PCB. The same is on other ASUS X299 boards. Somehow competition found place for 2-3 sockets between PCIE slots and ASUS not. At least board was cheap comparing to everything else.

Samsungs are generally heating up more. Btw if you don't want to damage the sticker then use thermalpads without glue and install heatsinks like in 1st post.
 
I noticed with this drive it will throttle once it gets close to 80C. According to PNY's site:

Operating Temperature - 0°C ~ 65°C
Storage Temperature -40°C ~ 85°C

Stereo555's unit runs hotter than mine and I purchased both at the same time. This is why we decided to find a way to get some sort of active cooling on them.
 
nice job guys! ill check mine out once i get my rig back together to compare but i dont think mine was a hot one. well just looked at it and its almost directly under my 2nd gpu. i dont think i could help it if it needed more cooling!
 
maxfly said:
nice job guys! ill check mine out once i get my rig back together to compare but i dont think mine was a hot one. well just looked at it and its almost directly under my 2nd gpu. i dont think i could help it if it needed more cooling!
Click to expand...

Nice! So long as it's cool temp wise, it should be ok and won't throttle.
 
Hate to think how hot one of those would run on a mini itx board where the nvme mount is on the under side the motherboard.
 
I can only imagine it'll get toasty since there's very little to no airflow in the back. Unless you mod the case & mobo tray so there's a thin fan blowing in that area.
 
Nebulous said:
I can only imagine it'll get toasty since there's very little to no airflow in the back. Unless you mod the case & mobo tray so there's a thin fan blowing in that area.
Click to expand...

On my Coolermaster mini itx there is no motherboard tray per se. The standoffs are screwed directly into the case bottom. And there wouldn't be enough clearance to put a fan on the bottom side of the case unless you modded the feet.
 
trents said:
On my Coolermaster mini itx there is no motherboard tray per se. The standoffs are screwed directly into the case bottom. And there wouldn't be enough clearance to put a fan on the bottom side of the case unless you modded the feet.
Click to expand...

Dam that sux. If you decided to go with an M2 drive, I would think you'll have throttling issues because of temp issues. Eventually you'll either:

A) Remove the drive and go back to a regular SSD
or
B) Try it, use it until it fried. Then you'll go to plan A
 
Good thread Neb. I rechecked the temps on my 960 after reading it. My MB has a shield which apparently is working well enough, temps @ 39°C. Anyone that doesn't have a heat sink of some sort should keep this in mind. The RD400 on Unit 2 is quite a bit warmer, no shield.
 
That's great news Robert! I'm glad yours isn't frying ;) Right now my drive's temp is 31C and super cool to the touch. I'm happy I added the sink and fan to it.
 
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