m.2 questions... lots of questions.

[TimoneX]

According to Asus: "With x4 PCI Express 3.0/2.0 bandwidth, TUF X299 Mark 2's dual M.2 supports up to 32Gbps data-transfer speeds." I know, the key words are up to, but from what reviews I read it sounds like these Asus X299 boards allow a full 4 lanes on the PCIe 3.0 bus.

Ok, I have the m.2 mounted and I found a heatsink that will work. Should I center the sink or crowd one end or the other?

Sounds like you should be good to go with dual drives at full bandwidth then.

Ideally you want to sink only the controller, but without seeing exactly what you're working with it's difficult to say. For my own drives I put 4 small sinks, one on each corner of the phison chip.

 

[batboy]

Thanks for the link. It's funny, but if you look at my build thread in general hardware, you'll see that I had found the same Thermaltake RAM sinks to be ideal. I had already used the thermal tape. But, Neb took it one step farther with the zip ties. Classic old school! I shall copy him! DIY rules.

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That's the same exact Thermaltake sink that Nebulous used on his PNY m.2 and he claims it helped a lot.

 

[batboy]

According to the thermal image I just now saw in a Guru3D article, the real hot spot is close to where the connector plugs in. Perhaps that is the controller you mentioned?

 

[ihrsetrdr]

Great thread! I don't get into the Storage forum much, but was pondering the purchase of a new drive. Originally considering an HHD for storage, I decided after reading this thread to re purpose a platter drive for storage, and replace it with an SSD serve the OS instead.

 

[EarthDog]

According to the thermal image I just now saw in a Guru3D article, the real hot spot is close to where the connector plugs in. Perhaps that is the controller you mentioned?

Correct.

 

[TimoneX]

Thanks for the link. It's funny, but if you look at my build thread in general hardware, you'll see that I had found the same Thermaltake RAM sinks to be ideal. I had already used the thermal tape. But, Neb took it one step farther with the zip ties. Classic old school! I shall copy him! DIY rules.

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That's the same exact Thermaltake sink that Nebulous used on his PNY m.2 and he claims it helped a lot.

That's very...pretty.

You can see how motherboard makers are attempting to address the issue. I don't know if this approach is 100% marketing or if it actually provides the little bit of cooling some of these drives need to avoid throttling. I mean to find out real soon though...that's the board currently making its way to me. Looks like the drive will get squished between thick thermal pads. Presumably the door mechanism is aluminum...would suck if it were plastic. lol




...sorry for cutting your hands off Steve.

Here's my solution for the BPX-480:



That's all it took to prevent any throttling, though to be fair it's not right next to a video card or some other hot gadget that blocks airflow. Some desktop boards put their m.2 slots in some pretty dreadful spots...from a cooling perspective at least. According to the manufacturer the warranty is not void, so I removed the sticker that covered all the important parts when I got it.

 

[batboy]

I did leave the sticker on my 960 Pro. It seemed to be well adhered and this dang thing was a bit expensive and they do fail from time to time. My new motherboard has two m.2 ports, but it might as well be one because the other socket's location sucks, plus it mounts the m.2 vertically (requires the addition of a brace/bracket that does come in the box, but will get lost within six months and will only be found again once you no longer own the motherboard).

 

[Sentential]

I did leave the sticker on my 960 Pro. It seemed to be well adhered and this dang thing was a bit expensive and they do fail from time to time. My new motherboard has two m.2 ports, but it might as well be one because the other socket's location sucks, plus it mounts the m.2 vertically (requires the addition of a brace/bracket that does come in the box, but will get lost within six months and will only be found again once you no longer own the motherboard).

Lame...

Finally found a suitable nvme drive for the laptop I think. The pair and pads should be here tomorrow along with my recovery media.

Tried a dry run last night and good god I’ve forgotten how awful Windows was. After testing to make sure all the recovery software worked (it didn’t) doing a test drive recovery it bricked the OS.

This of course led to a 1.5hr argument with Dell about why their image recovery media wouldn’t work and why I needed a hard key or a location to get the right one.

But hey at least I finally got one after switching between RAID and AHCI about a dozen times and arguing about why I couldn’t do a clean install because I didn’t have raid drivers to which of course I was told laptops don’t have raid controllers...lol

Aaaaaannnnnnyway at least this is a great opportunity to try nvme out

 

[Max0r]

On my motherboard the m.2 slot is between the CPU socket and upper-most x16 slot, and is raised very high so it avoid trapping heat underneath. This is good because with the Dark Rock Top Flow, the dual 135mm fans on the CPU heatsink are blowing straight down onto it. However, even at full blast they seem rather wimpy, silent 25 mm fans... yuck. I plan to put a 120x38mm tri-blade or something on top in the near future. Also, the sticker on top of the Evo doesn't seem to have copper; only the one on the bottom does.

I haven't had a chance to test anything as I became narcoleptic as soon as I verified that my new system would run without exploding, but I did notice that it is indeed that chip nearest the m.2 port which is where the heat comes from. At relative idle, or just while installing windows from a slow USB stick, it sometimes felt hot enough that I wouldn't want to keep my finger pressed on it for more than a second or two.

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Actually the system has been sitting there idling for hours and now I feel almost no discernible heat coming from the SSD. I will put it through its paces later. HEY WHERE'S THAT SMOKE COMING FROM

 

[Sentential]

Success! Finally got RAID working on a pair of Adata XPG 8000, had to pick a lower powered controller for the laptop, temps showing 42/43C with the thermal pad so I think I'm good. Ran a benchmark and the numbers while not EVO/PRO great are pretty damn good for a laptop!
Read: 2437mb/s
Write: 1357mb/s

 

[Robert17]

Yes it is.

 

[Nebulous]

Yes it is.

I concur!

 

[batboy]

I got my new rig up and running. With a fresh Win 10 install, the drive seems very zippy. The m.2 drive was super easy to setup on this new Asus TUF X299 Mark II. The BIOS figured out everything on it's own. I need to go through this thread again to make sure I got the right settings.

What is Rapid Storage Technology? The tiny bit I read sounded like voodoo magic.

Is there a common and hopefully quick benchmark to use for drive performance? Back in the old days, if I remember correctly, we used Sandra.

 

[EarthDog]

Atto, crystal disk mark, As ssd...

 

[Sentential]

Yes it is.

I concur!

Aaaaand they’re dead. Couple minutes after posing that I started getting smart errors and the RAID failed. Looked at the smart records after breaking the array and they were all for overtemp.

Pulled a single drive and it was pegged at the maximum of 70c* within 5 minutes of boot sitting at the desktop. Boxed em both up and sent them both back.

Managed to find another 5400S so I guess we’ll be trying out SATA raid for awhile until the 3rd or 4th gen nvme controllers arrive.

 

[batboy]

How do you read the temps of the SSD? I have a fan controller with thermistors. I put one under the drive in about the middle. I have a large sink on the m.2 that seems to be working well. The highest I've seen is 34 C (I know that's not the controller temp). I do have a temp on the motherboard called PCH that I'm not sure what it's for.

I ran Crystaldiskmark, I have no idea if it's good or bad.

 

[||Console||]

Crystal disk info should give you the ssd temp

 

[Sentential]

How do you read the temps of the SSD? I have a fan controller with thermistors. I put one under the drive in about the middle. I have a large sink on the m.2 that seems to be working well. The highest I've seen is 34 C (I know that's not the controller temp). I do have a temp on the motherboard called PCH that I'm not sure what it's for.

I ran Crystaldiskmark, I have no idea if it's good or bad.

View attachment 192907

Use HWmonitor as it will report all temps on all devices. PCH = platform-controller-hub aka southbridge

As for the drive numbers those look fantastic. The absolute max you can get on the socket is 4K/4K your drive is rated at 3k/2k

 

[Nebulous]

Dang those are awesome M2 speeds! I'm having issues with mine and can't pinpoint the problem.

 

[Sentential]

Dang those are awesome M2 speeds! I'm having issues with mine and can't pinpoint the problem.

What are your PCH temps looking like?