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Does a Waffle Surfaced Heatsink Dissipate Heat Better?

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Alvin777

Alvin777

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Aug 25, 2021
Hello Overclockers friends. Stay safe. This is for an NVME SSD (read speed of 3400 MB/s and write is 2900 MB/s).

Which heatsink surface design dissipates heat better (this is for an NVME SSD), the "waffle" or the diagonal line one? They vary in price, the thicker the pricier. Which thickness is a good sweetspot between performance and price: 3mm, 4mm, 5mm or 6mm?

Waffle Heatsink.png Diagonal Lines Heatsink.png

It says they're copper coated w/ graphene, Is graphite or graphene coated copper worth it, than just pure copper? Is a pure copper heatsink worth it vs. an aluminum one (cheaper)?

Thank you.

God bless, Rev. 21:4
 
surface area would be key in my mind, but if you have air flowing across the sink- the smoother potential flow from the diagonal lines may work better. I suspect the difference will be minimally different
 
Hi, thanks for the reply. Is it recommended I need buy two of these?

One 4mm thick for the top and one 3mm for the bottom? Or one 4mm would suffice (coz' they're a bit pricey) or would just a pure aluminum one be alright (or would a pure copper one, though the aluminum one is cheaper but is there a significant difference?) and this graphene coated one won't be that significant?
 
Judging by the read/write speeds, that's a PCIe 3.0 drive...which means you dont really need to cool them in the first place (in most cases). That said, I'm sure one of these would cool just fine. Like Dejo said, I hardly think there is a difference between those two heatsinks.
 
For NVMe SSDs aluminum is just fine. While they can get quite warm they do not generate the amount of sustained heat that a CPU/GPU produces. The heat is generally created in bursts during extended read/write cycles. Also, all modern SSDs are created to throttle themselves once a thermal threshold is reached. Naturally, we try to avoid this threshold, but these protections are in place so that the drive can not damage itself.

With that said, either copper or aluminum will work fine and so will either the waffle or slotted pattern. The thicker the heatsink the more heat can be removed from the drive so thicker is always better when everything else is the same.

For under the drive you should determine:

1. Are there even chips located on the underside of the drive? If not then this heatsink will not be necessary.
2. What is the clearance under the drive? Likely you will want a very thin heatsink. I would recommend one that wraps around the drive and is attached to the top heatsink. This allows the heat to migrate to the larger top heatsink for more effective cooling. Remember the bottom heatsink will not receive any airflow.
3. What is your use case? If you are not reading/writing large files frequently (large files of 100+ GB) is a heatsink even necessary. As Earthdog mentioned, you may not even need one. You can monitor your temps and bandwidth with software to determine if it is throttling. If it's not then you will be fine without.
 
Thanks for the detailed technical stuff, much appreciated. I just ordered a 4mm thick one, graphene (most likely just graphite) coated copper heatsink (before your reply came) coz' there weren't any ratings on the copper one, they seem to all buy and rate the graphene coated one (temps of -12 to -15 says one ratings giver, some say not much happened- I should cancel the order or refund it and get a simple aluminum one, I'm open to advise).

The bottom is clean, has no ICs, no small caps or small resistors, it's all just small, round gold contact points thankfully.

I used my diamond jeweler's magnifying lens, the label seems to be a thin heatsink with the sticker on it (Teamgroup MP34, 1TB), measuring the thickness with a digital caliper, from the end where the screw hole is it starts at 2.02mm, then halt way it's 2.04mm, then a third, it's 2.18 then tapers down to 2.04mm at the connector end.

I'll be doing some 3D modeling, animation stuff for apps development, a few modern 3D games after work and very heavy research with the browser (4 windows with 70 tabs each usually). I read this NVME SSD at heavy loads sustained, reaches 80C (it's spec say it's operating temp is only at 70C).

Thanks.
 
I'll bite... what nvme? Also, do you have any links to those heatsinks pictured in the first post?
 
Ok good info there. So you will definitely benefit from having a heatsink. If you've already ordered the copper sink I would just use that one. You are already reaching (exceeding) the normal operating temps and likely it's throttling to maintain that 80°c I would guess.

Be sure to post before and after results so we can see how much impeachment you get.

FTR: sensors on these can be unreliable at times. We trend to use an actual digital meter to measure temps for our reviews for a more accurate result. I mention this only so you don't freak out over a high number, it could be inaccurate.

EDIT: @EarthDog - he mentioned it's a Teamgroup MP34 1TB
 
Hi. Thank for the reply.

It's in most popular online shops (search: graphene nvme heatsink or graphite nvme heatsink), it's available on all popular PC online shops (Amazon, Shopee, Lazada, AliExpress, Newegg- type graphene heatsink)

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100...xp_id=769dd8d9-9ced-4999-a954-b56939f591b3-18

(if you can find a parcel forwarder that's good, it might shorten the delivery- sometimes it takes even 6 months even to 1 year for Ali to deliver. I'm thinking since a lot of russians get it fast from it seems from AliExpress, maybe there's a russian parcel forwarder that delivers to anywhere in the world and use their russian address).

I hope this helps.
 
Oops, I missed it in the post above (good info to hvae in the first post!)!! :chair:

I think he read a review that said it reached 80C though...

I looked for reviews and only ran across this one with temperatures and looks like in this testing it didn't break 70C. Since it seems to throttle a bit lower than that, a heatsink can't hurt. That said, I doubt you'll be writing to it as fast as it will go for minutes at at time like the testing, but cooler is always better. :)
The review specifically states...
The tests above represent a worst-case scenario for the SSD since we're running it at maximum speed for an extended period of time.
Click to expand...

Please keep us posted on the result!! :grouphug:


EDIT: I'm curious, Alvin, does your board not have any M.2 heatsinks for the socket? YOu could have used one of those and likely still been OK. But since you ordered everything (before you came back to see replies) feels like a moot point. :shrug:
 
Before NVME heatinks became mainstream, I've been using Thermaltake's memory heatsink from back in the day. Fits perfectly and with a 60mm fan blowing across it, keeps the drive chilly @ 40c when transferring files.
 

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Old thread, but after some research I have determined that this product actually provides the best cooling for m2 SSD, while anything else provides negligible results.


a competitor in temp reduction results to that is this:


but i was skeptical of pipes. Even though the results chart showed both these had the same and most temp reduction compared to the other flat things (including the type OP posted).
 
Pipes are great but if there's not enough air turbulence being generated against the heatsink directly, the faster heat transfer to the rest of the heatsink will be for nothing. Also, it looks like the black heatsink you show has bigger, taller fins overall. Heat pipes are nice but to take advantage of them requires a concomitant increase in heat transfer from the heatsink to the air. It would be interesting to compare the performance of these two things under direct spot cooling air flow. I'd imagine it would be a challenge to hit the heatpipe one just right, because of those small fins that are so rounded in, it's like they intentionally made it as aerodynamic as possible, which is the OPPOSITE of generating maximum air turblence. You'd need to direct a very precise, concentrated blast of airflow.
 
Those are... lol... the first one looks like it's 2" tall... yikes. Heatpipes are a thing.... a good thing in a lot of cases. Of course, the bigger the temp difference the better the transfer/removal (derp), but they work well independently.

I'd only get a heatsink if motherboard doesn't already have one for the socket and it's a pcie 4.0 nvme drive. Otherwise, it's lip service.

Also, Paul, not that you follow up on your posts/threads, but a link to where you came up with your conclusion would be great! ;)
 
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I should mention, speaking of which, those blue Thermaltake heatsinks shown by Nebulous, IMO are one of the best overall designs for general purpose small low power heatsinks, which is probably why they've been so ubiquitous. You can see that they are made to catch as much air turbulence as possible from just about any direction. They do lose cooling power compared to straight unbroken fins if enough concentrated airflow was used, but for their applications, outside of extreme situations, that would be irrelevant.
 
Post magically merged:

this guy has a few videos testing different heatsinks for m2 ssd... the link is for his 'playlist' of the m2 related vids. You need to click "Watch on YouTube" on the bottom right and the playlist wil be displayed on the right side.

...one of them had a results table at the end of the video. i'll try and find it again and post lol.

edit: here is the table i was looking at that had my decide upon the Jeyi M.2 heatsink I linked above.


Table appears at 35min 24sec.
 
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I've seen the temp sensor on my P5 exceed 90c on CrystalDiskMark, and it made no difference at all.
I dislike the temperature, but not much I could do about it. Unfortunately my NVME sits between a pci-e slot and the massive pump block of the Arctic Liquid Freezer ii, so there's no clearance
 
Well damn. So my SSD (Samsung 950 Pro 256gb) without anything was consistently at 40C (no matter what I did... which isn't a lot).

I slapped on a Grizzly Thermal a few months ago.
www.newegg.com

Thermal Grizzly M.2 SSD Cooler - Newegg.com

Buy Thermal Grizzly M.2 SSD Cooler with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!
www.newegg.com www.newegg.com

It reduced the temperature by a whopping 1C. Barely. It bounced back and forth 39~40. Stayed mostly at 40 99% of the day. Oh well.


However, this one! -- the temp consistently at 29C!!


Directly below my heatsink are a spray of cables spewing from the power supply which covers maybe 40% of the bottom intake fan. That covered fan is blowing up at the heatsink. Directly above the heatsink is my GPU's fan pulling from the heatsink. I suppose that's providing 'active' cooling? Anyway...I was quite skeptical, but I am pleasantly surprised.
Post magically merged:

IMG-1494.JPG
 
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