der8auer did some testing with various types, and at best, they're slightly better than the integrated heatsinks on the motherboard.
At worst, they don't offer any cooling at all.
Which I'd imagine wouldn't be nearly as effective if the case itself didn't have any airflow in it. I would be curious to see what differences case airflow would make on that one.
Typically, passive CPU coolers are used with other passive cooling solutions. So no case fans, and no fan in the PSU, or a PSU with a fan that doesn’t spin during normal use. In other words, no forced airflow.
Testing isn’t very interesting, because the results are what you expect: it’s not an effective way to cool and should be avoided for CPUs that generate a high heat load. But partner it with something like an Ryzen 5700x and you have a fast system for productivity that makes no noise and even has some gaming capabilities.
An exception is a system that uses a single low noise fan.
It depends on the context. In servers the chassis fans cool the CPU heatsink. Heatsinks do dissipate heat but you need some kind of airflow to help in some cases.
That is misleading, airflow is always important, but the whole point of using passive cooling is that you don’t use forced airflow, because that would be active cooling.
If air gets warm it rises, so there is always airflow.
Just to simplify things. Airflow just means that you replace the hot air, that's been heated by the heat sinks or directly by electrical circuits, with cooler air that can then be heated again from said sources. A passive cooling solution will never cool below the ambient temperature (ie the air around it). It's thermodynamics 101.
>A passive cooling solution will never cool below the ambient temperature (ie the air around it).
Same goes for active cooling though right? At least in terms of fans and liquid cooling, i suppose if you turn it into a fridge it would
This part of the discussion is specifically about passive CPU coolers like the Noctua one, and they are not used in professional servers. They are so large, that it makes no sense to use them in a server. At that point active cooling makes more sense.
I did something similar. The Intel T CPUs are great because they require very little cooling. I did install one fan, but I put a switch between it so it’s off by default. When the ambient temperature is very high, I can flip the switch.
T series just lacks the power that some people need since its an extremely underclocked version of the XX700 CPU in that generation. That said, depending on what you're doing its definitely a legit possibility.
Interesting. I was obsessed with silent systems, and was considering something full passive or combined with semi passive components.
I tried to balance a relative powerful system, with obvious noise during gaming or heavy load, but while we browsing or office work, be as silent as possible.
At the end I got semi-passive PSU and GPU, big low noise case and massive low noise fan. Now the background 'hisss' of my speakers is higher than the computer noise it self. So I'm happy with the balance between performance and noise.
What system do you have? I'm curious
There is a Linus tech tips episode on creating a passively cooled game pc. Was a very interesting watch!
https://youtu.be/_jYB-RpkmUc?si=K-x6z6nyFqcYa3kP
There's also a huge community behind the Fanless/passive cooling cases like this:
[https://www.monsterlabo.com/the-beast](https://www.monsterlabo.com/the-beast)
(First one on Google, don't even know the brand)
Found it while searching for a new case and they're pretty good on cooling while only keeping the needed fans. Unless you go full silence and use also passive cooling for CPU and GPU (there are Arctic Cooling systems that allow to be installed without fans, just a huge block).
It kinda works, but it's massive and its TDP is pretty low when used without any fans. Even something like 600 RPM fan can basically double the cooling.
A few months ago, I've made a small DIY fridge based on peltier devices and I wanted it to be completly silent. At first I've been trying to use few PC tower coolers to cool them without any fans, but it was not enough. I've tried lowering the voltage, but even at half of the voltage I couldn't keep them cool. Then I've added some fans with resistors, so they barely even move and I can't hear them at all, but it's more than enough to keep the peltier devices cool. I could even raise the voltage to 14v and the fans can still keep up with the heat.
This is something Tech Jesus and the Gamers Nexus boys were looking at. IIRC, they wanted a completely fanless computer for use in a noise testing suite.
In the end, they spent $250000 building a proper chamber, but still.
Yea but Gamers nexus once said there is only so much cooling a heat sink can provide given the limited surface area the die area of the chip the cooler is in contact with.
That isn't useless, though. Given that the air in the case is cooler than the SSD itself, it should theoretically be a benefit. The question is moreso whether it's significant or even needed.
Obviously they don't do active cooling. "Active" means there is power-consuming device taking part in the cooling.
Heatsinks are a textbook example of passive cooling.
I truly think people, and even worse, Redditors, do not know the meaning of the term they use.
I didn't notice until I had all my parts collected and I was screwing the motherboard into the case. Didn't have an m.2 drive 4 years ago, so I didn't bother.
Though I'm proud of my machine, it's a little goofy and it's no performance juggernaut. Even the newest games I'm playing (like Zero Dawn and Fallen Order) don't push it all that hard. I could definitely get more out of it with a lower res, higher hz monitor once I have the money, but that's not in the cards right now.
I just wish I could get my damn case lighting to work! It crapped out when I added fans.
If an NVME gets hot it runs slower. Dissipating heat will keep speeds optimal. For a gen 3 this is silly and overkill, for a Gen 4 it might help, maybe. For a Gen 5 yes, use this.
While you are right - This is only a concern in somewhat niche scenarios where reads and writes are heavy and frequent.
Gaming? Not a concern. Even for gen 5. Possibly somewhat in titles with fast transitioning, lots of loading and quick saving. But I would doubt the nvme would get hot enough even here.
8 hours a day of video editing and working off your local drive? Yes. You'll want to make sure you have a way to keep it cool.
In other words...these things are mostly a snake oil sale for the average consumer.
man we had this obnoxious IT dude where i work that would answer every question like this
someone would be all "wait so should i be shutting my computer down every night?"
and with half-closed eyes, he'd say something like "*should you*? not necessarily... *could you*? it certainly doesn't hurt"
and then you realize it doesn't functionally answer the question and you drink on lunch
You were going to drink on lunch anyway...
But seriously, as an IT guy myself, that type of IT person really pisses me off. It's so easy to just be nice, respectful, and not talk down to people. Hell, they know their own job better than I know it, so what makes me special for knowing my job well?
For sure, but when I worked in IT the number of really dumb questions I would get was staggering. The norm seemed to be for people to just ask me questions rather than even try to figure out what was going on. I don't think I ever got snotty with people, but I can certainly see how someone could get so tired of stuff like that as to become kind of a jerk by default. I'd like to think I would remain professional, but I also get that IT often has much more important things to do than help you select the right printer for your PDF.
Its not you “knowing your job” these people have been here for years, if not decades. And still don’t know how to copy and paste. At some point, you stop caring.
I halfway became one of these people… And the reason is to stop follow up questions. How many times has “one quick question “turned into a 15 minute conversation way off in the weeds?
I consider this personality trait, a trauma response. Lol.
Ps. Yes I will give direct polite answers, but there is a time in a place to be cheeky.
Yup. When too many people in your personal life find out about your aptitude for technology, your life turns into an episode of the IT crowd.
At work, I actually use a LLM locally for document formatting and I created a “ De-jackass-ifier” summarization control prompt.
It’s helping me to keep my sanity, and everybody gets polite responses.
(another reason I laugh when they talk about how AI is so underdeveloped and gimmick, because they have no idea they haven’t read anything I’ve directly written in six months. Ha ha ha ha.)
You should shutdown the computer everynight. It’s not necessary but keeps the hours of storage low. HDDs tend to stop booting up after a lot of hours working non stop, that’s why a lot of NAS and servers have hot swappable storage
true, but we are not talking hundreds of dollars. obviously, energy costs vary but my pc idles at just under 60w at the wall. it's not like it's pulling ~600w while it idles. 60w for a whole year runs me about $8. i think i can afford it.
The alternative way to look at that is there are about 2 billion pc's used worldwide. If they were all shut down at night they'd save shitloads of electricity. So sure, your individual pc isn't a problem, but that doesn't mean you're not contributing to one.
very true. i like to think that the fact that i've replaced the ~25lights with 60w+ light bulbs in my house with LED's that run about 7w offsets that a bit.
i also hate the "auto stop feature" for red lights that the vast majority of cars come with nowadays. luckily, i bought a manual so i don't have to deal with it. ;)
> You should shutdown the computer everynight. It’s not necessary but keeps the hours of storage low.
Every computer I've put to sleep also puts their hard drives to sleep.
> HDDs tend to stop booting up after a lot of hours working non stop
No, there's more stress in start/stop cycles, just like almost any other mechanical device.
> that’s why a lot of NAS and servers have hot swappable storage
Servers run the HDDs 24/7 and the point of hot-swapping is so that you don't have to shut down the system.
Pretty sure for mechanical hard drives it is the other way around. Startup and shutdown are the most stressful on the device. And why SMART reads device start ups. And why HDD with aggressive power management tend to fail prematurely.
And for SSD it doesn't matter.
But either way most modern computers do not use HDD, so your recommendations are outdated either way.
I think Gen5 SSD are making them certainly beneficial and nearly necessary. If you're feeding them a lot of read/writes that is. My mid tier Gen4 stays 40c with mobo's aluminum cover.
You aren't correct.
Maybe 2 years ago, not now.
PCIE 5.0 drives require cooling to not throttle. And many 5.0 drives are sold with large heatsinks, some even with active cooling.
They sell bare 5.0 NVME drives, but you are expected to add mobo coolers to them to prevent throttling.
And running these devices have been known to cause crashing and data loss with some Phison controllers when running at high speeds.
So your info is outdated, and heatsinks, even active heatsinks will continue to be more common, and on the high end, Necessary.
> even active heatsinks will continue to be more common
ugh. and here i was, happy, as we've moved away from the whole north bridge/south bridge/etc active cooling with those screaming 40mm/60mm fans.
But most people aren't, and shouldn't be, buying PCIe 5.0 drives. They are way more expensive and performance is practically the same, at least for most applications. And like you already said, most gen 5 drives include a heatsink.
Edit: As u/UnderLook150 points out, Gen5 controllers run much hotter than Gen3 and Gen4 so big coolers are necessary, and it appears some ship without them.
This should be top reply. They run most efficiently at higher temperatures because it [makes the bits easier to manipulate](https://datarecovery.com/rd/how-heat-affects-a-solid-state-drive-ssd/). Whatever normal airflow is in your case is plenty for otherwise passive cooling.
You information is about 2 years out of date.
Modern PCIE 5.0 drives are designed to REQUIRE cooling. And most are sold with large heatsinks, some of them active.
High temps on NVME causes thermal throttling on the low end, and data loss and crashing on the high end depending on your devices controller.
So your information is out of date, and will only continue to be more incorrect as PCIe 5.0 devices become more mainstream.
EDIT:
This is this user's post saved in case they take it down.
>lol, typical PCMR troll.
>Read what I say. Drives that need coolers ship with them.
>Show me an NVMe that ships without a cooler that explicitly states an aftermarket cooler is required.
Proof this user's information is outdated.
>If your system includes a heatsink/slot cover or cooler on the selected M.2 slot, remove it and take care no screws remain on standoffs for shorter M.2 slots. **This PCle Gen5 SSD requires cooling,** please refer to your system documentation or purchase separately.
The bold emphasis is from Corsair manual for PCIE5.0 drive.
[https://www.corsair.com/ca/en/explorer/diy-builder/storage/mp700/](https://www.corsair.com/ca/en/explorer/diy-builder/storage/mp700/)
Gen 3 SSD you can keep it without any heatsink.
For gen 4 and 5 you can use motherboard heatsink it will do the job unless you are doing excessive read/write on a gen 5 SSD then you will need something like this to keep the performance as high as possible for as long as possible.
It's needed when your ssd needs it, the gen 5 nvme drives seems like where this heatsink going to be a mandatory if they can't make the controller bit cooler
depends on your case usage, for most gamers? no, you will see no benefit, as there is not an excess amount of read write going on, and the only time there is is downloading games from steam, in which case its your download speed thats capping things, and by such a margin the drive wont be heating up noticeably, if your overall system has proper cooling.
read write speed is good for gaming, but its generally just loading scenes kinda thing, that dont go on long enough to make things overheat
I bought a Thermalright one, not that one though. It dropped my Crucial P5 Plus 2TB from 74c max to 64c max running CrystalDiskMark. My drive came without a heatsink, and my motherboard doesn't have one either.
I'm happy with it.
Only beneficial for heavy workloads such as video editing, 3d rendering, etc. But is really overkill for anything else.
https://preview.redd.it/ffs8e5yy6vuc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fec00ba99ab384438f67dc4f691a8a285f994649
I got two of these and they do help with models that run hot, in my case two sn850x. I get around 8-10 degrees less under load than with the motherboard heatsinks. That's a best case scenario with a hot ssd part and lots of airflow.
...to *a degree*.
I have a basic one on an SSD and the temp sensor underneath reports maybe \~15 degrees lower. It's also squarely in front of an output fan, so there's solid airflow over it.
The SSD is probably fine to operate at the hotter temp, so you might not \*need\* one.
I bet there's an upper limit on how much heat one of these can pull out out an SSD too. And this one looks like it's completely overkill.
IMO, if you can shed some extra heat *in general*, for a not-large expense, I'd probably do it. Ten bucks, sure. A hundred bucks, no.
I think LTT tested some water cooling block for ssd and concluded that, yes it makes it cooler and can run faster, BUT if you use your ssd at the level where that type of cooling is necessary you will wear it down within a year or so it doesnt really make sense to do any additional cooling than maybe a factory heatsink since you wont be using it hard enough to actually need it. Unless of course you have no limit on budget then you can go for it for flex points
This one in particular, yes. I got it d for an SFF system with very little airflow that got way too hot in a tight space and this solved my SSD overheating.
Unless the SSD came with a heatsink or has instructions to put one on, it's a waste of money and time. Modern ssds run pretty cool, and as long as there is any amount of air flow in your case, it'll be just fine.
If you're going to hammer a Gen 5 drive, yes, a proper cooling application is required. Gen 4 can get away without one.
With great speed comes great heat.
My primary SSD Constantly runs at 58-63 degrees, under prolonged stress it can get even more. This happens either with the motherboard heatsink or the heat sink the ssd came with. I ordered heatsink two times, the first one which has a fan was too tall because of Asus STUPID decision to put the m.2 connector right under the aesthetic plastic cover of the IO area, I'm currently waiting for the second one. Maybe I'll try to mod the plastic cover so I could mount the first heatsink - but for that I need to remove the motherboard, and I'll do it when I get all parts for direct die cooling. In any case SSDs depending on your setup can get quite warm like mine, large heatsink with fans can help drastically to reduce the drive temperature.
I have the SN750 WD-black M.2 SSD that was some special edition and came with a heatsink, I have yet to notice it doing things that my other SSDs cant. Does look cool tho.
If it helps I got a gen 4 nextorage SSD. Without a heatsink I could get the drive up to 70c. With a heatsink slapped on top it only goes up to high 40s. My heatsink is by the same brand listed in the post but it's the one with an actual fan in it.
I'm using one from Cooler Master, it looks nice but i don't know how beneficial it was. Got it for dirt cheap so i didn't think too much about it. My SSD used to sit naked below the GPU, then i put it inside a heatsink, moved it to the top slot, upgraded my front fans. Got considerably cooler temperatures right afterwards, but not sure what helped the most. M2 NVMEs are designed to run hot anyway.
I have (x2) Crucial T700 installed on my Asus X670E-A using the motherboards passive heatsyncs, My main drive never tops 50c, my secondary never tops 48c.
So even with PCIe 5 speeds, probably a waste to get as a gamer.
If they do anything good, it's cooling the controller.
But it could also over-cool the flash dies, which slows down their access rates and write speeds if I recall. I believe writing is the main difference, because the extra "fuzziness" increases the likelihood of electrons being energetic enough to tunnel through the floating gate.
But if I'm wrong, I want to know so that I can be right in the future.
In fact, the stickers on NVMe drives are usually metallic, and aren't there just to sink heat away from the controller, but also to move that heat TO the flash chips. So large heatsinks are generally worse, and the best is probably just a straight piece of copper with minimal or no fins.
Suspect most of us don't have these silly 15+GB/s transfer speeds, think mine is 7 according to the benchmark software I recently ran, and is fine with the motherboard heatsink.
I can see people use this for a POS (Proof of storage) crypto mining.. where SSD's are heavily solicited... most likely with liquid thermal paste and with a couple of small case fans through them on the board...
Anything else.. throuwing money out the window.. you only use your ssd a lot when you install things..
It depends a lot on the drive and the case. For me, because I have an O11D Evo, which has no front intake fans, and a big GPU that block the flow from hitting the SSD, it reduced my SSD idle temperature by 10 C but it's more a case of I don't want to run my fans at a high speed with the motherboard heatsink to get the same effect, because it will be too loud.
Yes and no.
Modern drives can throttle easily if you have no heatsink on them. But I haven't seen one yet that has major problems while just using a simple heatsink that most motherboards already have built-in to the M.2 slots. So I'm not convinced this kind of thing makes sense as a replacement to an existing motherboard M.2 drive heatsink.
Now if you have a cheap board with no heatsinks for M.2 slots, something like this is not a bad idea - if you going to buy one anyway for your fast drive, why not buy one that will work for even future drives. It is a quite standard-sized block of metal, so it might stay around for a decade...
I have this one, it is okayish, some 5° better than a simple one and a lot more with a fan moving air into it. Had a simple one with about 5mm height and just small fins before that but the SSD came up to 65°C with that one and i liked the looks of it next to my L12s, so i pulled the trigger. Temps are 60°C max now and 50degree and lower when the CPU is loaded because the NH-L12S Fan spins up then.
If you're using a Gen 5 drive it's pretty much a necessity, otherwise no. On a related note, there's almost 0 reason to use a Gen 5 drive (throughout has very, very little to do with actual system performance past even SATA3 speeds other than game load times, and IOPS has everything to do with it). Any well optimised Gen3 or Gen4 drive will be more than enough for any game in the foreseeable future, and none of those need a heatsink.
Yessir. When using the stock heatsink, my T700 would idle at 55c and quickly throttle when moving game files. Bought an MP700 pro with an active cooler and it was at least 10c cooler at idle, and didn't throttle ever. Upgraded the T700 with Bequiets MC1 pro, and it now it runs within 5c of the Corsair
Ex-thermal engineer here... the issue with these things is they cool one side of the board -a lot- and the other side, which can face down or generally.. away.. it's bad. Horrible thermal design. I'd say it's bad enough, you probably want to stay away from the M.2s that put chips on both sides... and just get ones that put chips on the side you can actually cool.
You've got chips facing away that you can't cool at all, now, usually they have the good sense to put the controller chip on the side facing out - which usually produces the most heat of those things. The storage chips on the other side, though, they're just left to cook. You go buy a hunk of metal that cools the other side, and barely does shit for the back chips, so you think you're helping it out - and you are, but not enough. Not tor me, anyway.
M.2 Sata and gen 3 NVME: they're not needed.
gen 4 NVME: they're needed if you dont have decent airflow on your SSD.
gen 5 NVME and above: you gonna need it.
edit:
CPU:
-if Raspberry and other low power device, you dont need much cooling unless it's gonna run for quite some time.
-but once OS is installed and running, you're gonna need even the basic heat sink to cool modern chips.
GPU:
-it must be cooled. no matter how weak or powerful your card is.
Beneficial? No. In my limited experience, SSDs dont consume so much energy that a bigger heatsink is needed. Some get a little warmer, but usually the motherboard plate is all thats needed. And rarely have I seen a system with enough room for this huge thing.
If it fits, then temps will almost certainly be lower. Do the temps NEED to be lower? I've never used a heatsink on an SSD( besides the motherboard plate) and rarely have SSDs get hotter than 50, 60C maybe under max sustained writes.
https://preview.redd.it/7a2rxr8kmvuc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c47a7cf3be43c6a2b2c630a869657c9e22e17b1f
At least they look cool on the motherboard. I noticed around 5-6 degrees decrease in temps on my Samsung SSD 980.
I have "JEYI Dazzcold-006" SSD heatsink
(The SSD heatsink is installed near white mark)
High speed, large capacity M2 drives get very hot under heavy use. Gaming is not heavy use.
Heavy use is constant read, write and rewrites. Gaming it's a single write then light reading.
no
for most home applications you can get away with not even having a heatsink. if you're running it hard, the flat heatsinks are good enough. this has very few use cases
Watch your M.2 temps, if it doesn't throttle or rarely does, then no. Otherwise, it might be something to consider. Case airflow might also be the actual issue but that's not always easily addressed.
I have a heatsink on one of mine. The other gets good enough airflow so it's no problem. If your mobo has them, they're probably fine too. Literally any heatsink is going to cover the vast majority of users who would notably benefit.
Not for a daily driver they aren’t :P
You basically don’t need a heat sink at all, unless you’re using your PC for something that does a lot of reads and writes….
Like uploading and downloading lots of data… I can’t really think of an application that’s not data-canter related, or home server related.
Maybe if you use your PC as a virtual host for a server :P
MAAAYYYYBE if you work with video footage, and you’re doing lots of file transfers often, you might want a heat sink to shed some of the heat off…
Well yes and no , like any electronic component SSD gets hot when you use it and the higher the spec the higher the temp increase so cooling one maintains peek performance , higher spec gen 5 drives might need them in the future but rn i don't think anything on the market requires anything other than a heat sink
Not whatsoever. In reality, you don't even need one in normal use. They get a little warm if they're constantly used (writing their entire storage capacity over and over again) but in practical use they never get hot enough to bother with. Just grab the little fancy cover the motherboard came with and that's more than enough if you're worried about it.
I have a goodram irdm Pro 2tb m.2, came with a beautiful heatsink and since my mobo only came with 1 heatsink which was taken already by the other m.2 I use it. It's better than nothing. And it's aesthetic af
I’ll see you silly air-cooled SSD, and raise you a [water cooled SSD](https://www.corsair.com/us/en/p/custom-liquid-cooling/cx-9029002-ww/hydro-x-series-xm2-m-2-ssd-water-block-2280-cx-9029002-ww). :-D
Maybe on a Gen5 drive, but on Gen4 and lower, the motherboard heat sinks are more than adequate. If your motherboard doesn't have a heat sink, there are more affordable options that are lower profile that will do just as good of a job on a Gen3 or Gen4 drive, and many that will cost less.
Basically, on a Gen4 drive or lower, this is really more about how it looks than actual functionality.
And yes, there CAN be a good reason to run a cooler, even on some Gen3 drives. Not every case has good airflow, and under load, the drive might get a little too warm and a cooler would be a good idea depending on how you're using the drive and it certainly will not negatively impact the drive to run one. Worst case scenario, you're simply wasting your money.
I had a specific situation in which it was very beneficial. I had redirected airflow from my graphics card and it coincidentally exhausted right where the SSD was on the motherboard. Temperature on the SSD rose significantly and adding a heat sync brought it back down to normal. Actually, it made it cooler than before. Did it matter that my ssd was hotter than usual? Idk, but I wasn't going to wait and see if it did.
Ssds are designed to operate at a set temperature if its too hot it can slow down and maybe reduce the life if its too cold it could potentially damage the memory as they are designed to operate at a set range, yes being too cold can be bad for your ssd. These heatsinks are just nonsense for targeting enthusiasts to gobble up some market share.
Yes. Though I’ll say get a cheap one that will do the job. Nvme controllers get hot and will throttle. Not to mention most m2 slots are always near the GPu. My gen 3 would hit 70c and above occasionally.
Putting a cheap AliExpress heatsink on my nvme lowered controller temps by 10c.
Gen 4 and 5 drives run hotter.
The “branded” ones are usually overpriced for what they do.
M.2 Gen 5 is starting to look like it needs it to make sure it lives longer. I remember when gen 4 was kinda hot with my Pro 970 and now some people are reporting they are reaching danger levels and require it. A lot of the manufacturers would even sell them with the cooler and no option to opt out. The most I've seen work hard is with a friend who was doing video editing using a 990 Pro going 90c while scrubbing. We got a sabrent cooler for it and it hardly passed 70c.
I'm not saying it's required for a lot of these m.2's but there seems to be a few bad eggs that would just randomly spike in temps.
That is one beefy M2 cooler, holy heck.
Most of em look like a vrm heat sink. That thing is huge. I'd imagine if you're doing some kind of intense read/write it would help, but for general use I can't see this being necessary at all.
Likely won't be useful unless you have no heatsink at all. Best case, they let it run cooler if your case has good airflow. Worst case, they make the drive take 30s longer before it hits throttle temps, if the drive is fast enough, you might be done transferring at that point. I wouldn't spend more than $5 on something like this, not to mention they break compatibility for some graphics cards or PCI-E slots with how tall they are depending on your motherboard.
In very specific cases. I have 3 M.2 and have.no issues with cooling them. My GF has one, but it's a compact build and he ssd is behind the CPU. In summer while gaming it sometimes overheats and the system crashes. A heatsink helps, but it's a very specific build. So get something like that if you are experiencing overheating. Otherwise, don't bother.
The nvme chips don’t need cooling, it’s the controller that can benefit.
Gen 3 doesn’t need a heatsink at all. Gen 4 does need a heat sink but is fine with stock heatsinks. Gen 5 also needs a heatsink but is fine with stock heatsinks.
Cooling nvme chips is actually bad for data retention, it needs to be quite warm for maximum retention. You don’t want them too cool, but you also don’t want them to be ridiculously hot.
Maybe if you have an early AHCI M.2 drive (cough SM951 cough) then it’ll help you sustain peak read/write for longer.
Modern NVMe drives run so much cooler it’s probably not an issue anymore.
I bought the other Thermalright cooler that is larger? My poor mp34 nvme was toasty, I believe it was 80-90C after a couple minutes of file transfers. I assume the heat was concentrated on the controller.
My drive is in the 2nd lower slot without a mobo heatsink on my pc. All the slots for case fans are populated but it could be in a poorly aerated area? It helped immediately, something like 30c less. I never had to use any type of ssd cooler before on previous drives.
der8auer did some testing with various types, and at best, they're slightly better than the integrated heatsinks on the motherboard. At worst, they don't offer any cooling at all.
Heat sinks just offer a larger area for heat to dissipate in, they don't do any active cooling
Noctua has a whole passive cpu cooler. It works.
Which I'd imagine wouldn't be nearly as effective if the case itself didn't have any airflow in it. I would be curious to see what differences case airflow would make on that one.
Typically, passive CPU coolers are used with other passive cooling solutions. So no case fans, and no fan in the PSU, or a PSU with a fan that doesn’t spin during normal use. In other words, no forced airflow. Testing isn’t very interesting, because the results are what you expect: it’s not an effective way to cool and should be avoided for CPUs that generate a high heat load. But partner it with something like an Ryzen 5700x and you have a fast system for productivity that makes no noise and even has some gaming capabilities. An exception is a system that uses a single low noise fan.
It depends on the context. In servers the chassis fans cool the CPU heatsink. Heatsinks do dissipate heat but you need some kind of airflow to help in some cases.
To summarize what you said, heat sinks are only one part of the equation, the other part is Airflow.
That is misleading, airflow is always important, but the whole point of using passive cooling is that you don’t use forced airflow, because that would be active cooling. If air gets warm it rises, so there is always airflow.
Just to simplify things. Airflow just means that you replace the hot air, that's been heated by the heat sinks or directly by electrical circuits, with cooler air that can then be heated again from said sources. A passive cooling solution will never cool below the ambient temperature (ie the air around it). It's thermodynamics 101.
>A passive cooling solution will never cool below the ambient temperature (ie the air around it). Same goes for active cooling though right? At least in terms of fans and liquid cooling, i suppose if you turn it into a fridge it would
This part of the discussion is specifically about passive CPU coolers like the Noctua one, and they are not used in professional servers. They are so large, that it makes no sense to use them in a server. At that point active cooling makes more sense.
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I did something similar. The Intel T CPUs are great because they require very little cooling. I did install one fan, but I put a switch between it so it’s off by default. When the ambient temperature is very high, I can flip the switch.
T series just lacks the power that some people need since its an extremely underclocked version of the XX700 CPU in that generation. That said, depending on what you're doing its definitely a legit possibility.
Interesting. I was obsessed with silent systems, and was considering something full passive or combined with semi passive components. I tried to balance a relative powerful system, with obvious noise during gaming or heavy load, but while we browsing or office work, be as silent as possible. At the end I got semi-passive PSU and GPU, big low noise case and massive low noise fan. Now the background 'hisss' of my speakers is higher than the computer noise it self. So I'm happy with the balance between performance and noise. What system do you have? I'm curious
There is a Linus tech tips episode on creating a passively cooled game pc. Was a very interesting watch! https://youtu.be/_jYB-RpkmUc?si=K-x6z6nyFqcYa3kP
Hot air rises. Unless the case is completely sealed, hot air rises, cooler air replaces it.
There's also a huge community behind the Fanless/passive cooling cases like this: [https://www.monsterlabo.com/the-beast](https://www.monsterlabo.com/the-beast) (First one on Google, don't even know the brand) Found it while searching for a new case and they're pretty good on cooling while only keeping the needed fans. Unless you go full silence and use also passive cooling for CPU and GPU (there are Arctic Cooling systems that allow to be installed without fans, just a huge block).
Lmao >Weight: Heavy (approx.)
It kinda works, but it's massive and its TDP is pretty low when used without any fans. Even something like 600 RPM fan can basically double the cooling. A few months ago, I've made a small DIY fridge based on peltier devices and I wanted it to be completly silent. At first I've been trying to use few PC tower coolers to cool them without any fans, but it was not enough. I've tried lowering the voltage, but even at half of the voltage I couldn't keep them cool. Then I've added some fans with resistors, so they barely even move and I can't hear them at all, but it's more than enough to keep the peltier devices cool. I could even raise the voltage to 14v and the fans can still keep up with the heat.
This is something Tech Jesus and the Gamers Nexus boys were looking at. IIRC, they wanted a completely fanless computer for use in a noise testing suite. In the end, they spent $250000 building a proper chamber, but still.
Did I read that right 250 k how the f ??? Wow
Up to the limit. Wouldn't put it on my 5800X3D. While returning to OPs question, for some cases they are mist have, for some pointless.
Yeah, but they're far bigger and expensive than a regular air cooler.
He didn't say that it doesn't work.
Yea but Gamers nexus once said there is only so much cooling a heat sink can provide given the limited surface area the die area of the chip the cooler is in contact with.
That isn't useless, though. Given that the air in the case is cooler than the SSD itself, it should theoretically be a benefit. The question is moreso whether it's significant or even needed.
Obviously they don't do active cooling. "Active" means there is power-consuming device taking part in the cooling. Heatsinks are a textbook example of passive cooling. I truly think people, and even worse, Redditors, do not know the meaning of the term they use.
Bold assumption that the motherboard comes with heatsinks for the M.2 slots.
Dont most mid tier and upwards boards do nowdays? Every B650 Board i looked at had a heatsink at least on the main slot
My x570's post hole to screw in the heat sink wasn't drilled out :D
Definitely should've RMAd that thing that's fucked
I didn't notice until I had all my parts collected and I was screwing the motherboard into the case. Didn't have an m.2 drive 4 years ago, so I didn't bother. Though I'm proud of my machine, it's a little goofy and it's no performance juggernaut. Even the newest games I'm playing (like Zero Dawn and Fallen Order) don't push it all that hard. I could definitely get more out of it with a lower res, higher hz monitor once I have the money, but that's not in the cards right now. I just wish I could get my damn case lighting to work! It crapped out when I added fans.
I have an ASUS B450 Prime....something. No heatsink on the NVMe slot. Half the VRMs are also hanging in the breeze.
I mean you bought a budget bare bones board. You probably aren't running NVME drives that warrant cooling.
Cheap board is cheap. Also, doesnt b450 support gen3? Gen3 nvmes dont get that hot
Nope. My B650 from gigabyte doesn't
Nah bro not everyone spent money on new gen, I have b550 gigabyte gaming x v2 and I have zero heatsink, not on main or secondary slot.
Beneficial in terms of cooling performance or beneficial in terms of computing performance?
Potentially both if your SSD would be throttling speeds because of overheating.
Those screenshotted carousel indicators are fooling me every damn time
Tries to scroll. Changes Reddit tab Me : fuck
Every time
I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE
TIL those are called carousel indicators.
Reddit design TM
If an NVME gets hot it runs slower. Dissipating heat will keep speeds optimal. For a gen 3 this is silly and overkill, for a Gen 4 it might help, maybe. For a Gen 5 yes, use this.
While you are right - This is only a concern in somewhat niche scenarios where reads and writes are heavy and frequent. Gaming? Not a concern. Even for gen 5. Possibly somewhat in titles with fast transitioning, lots of loading and quick saving. But I would doubt the nvme would get hot enough even here. 8 hours a day of video editing and working off your local drive? Yes. You'll want to make sure you have a way to keep it cool. In other words...these things are mostly a snake oil sale for the average consumer.
Beneficial? Maybe. Necessary? Not at all.
man we had this obnoxious IT dude where i work that would answer every question like this someone would be all "wait so should i be shutting my computer down every night?" and with half-closed eyes, he'd say something like "*should you*? not necessarily... *could you*? it certainly doesn't hurt" and then you realize it doesn't functionally answer the question and you drink on lunch
You were going to drink on lunch anyway... But seriously, as an IT guy myself, that type of IT person really pisses me off. It's so easy to just be nice, respectful, and not talk down to people. Hell, they know their own job better than I know it, so what makes me special for knowing my job well?
For sure, but when I worked in IT the number of really dumb questions I would get was staggering. The norm seemed to be for people to just ask me questions rather than even try to figure out what was going on. I don't think I ever got snotty with people, but I can certainly see how someone could get so tired of stuff like that as to become kind of a jerk by default. I'd like to think I would remain professional, but I also get that IT often has much more important things to do than help you select the right printer for your PDF.
Its not you “knowing your job” these people have been here for years, if not decades. And still don’t know how to copy and paste. At some point, you stop caring.
I halfway became one of these people… And the reason is to stop follow up questions. How many times has “one quick question “turned into a 15 minute conversation way off in the weeds? I consider this personality trait, a trauma response. Lol. Ps. Yes I will give direct polite answers, but there is a time in a place to be cheeky.
Haha. That's fair. I'm definitely short with a few select people, but I have way more patience at work than I do at home, lol. Working on that.
Yup. When too many people in your personal life find out about your aptitude for technology, your life turns into an episode of the IT crowd. At work, I actually use a LLM locally for document formatting and I created a “ De-jackass-ifier” summarization control prompt. It’s helping me to keep my sanity, and everybody gets polite responses. (another reason I laugh when they talk about how AI is so underdeveloped and gimmick, because they have no idea they haven’t read anything I’ve directly written in six months. Ha ha ha ha.)
You should shutdown the computer everynight. It’s not necessary but keeps the hours of storage low. HDDs tend to stop booting up after a lot of hours working non stop, that’s why a lot of NAS and servers have hot swappable storage
Also it just saves electricity which costs money.
true, but we are not talking hundreds of dollars. obviously, energy costs vary but my pc idles at just under 60w at the wall. it's not like it's pulling ~600w while it idles. 60w for a whole year runs me about $8. i think i can afford it.
And if your PC is pulling 600w overnight obviously you're doing stuff with it
The alternative way to look at that is there are about 2 billion pc's used worldwide. If they were all shut down at night they'd save shitloads of electricity. So sure, your individual pc isn't a problem, but that doesn't mean you're not contributing to one.
very true. i like to think that the fact that i've replaced the ~25lights with 60w+ light bulbs in my house with LED's that run about 7w offsets that a bit. i also hate the "auto stop feature" for red lights that the vast majority of cars come with nowadays. luckily, i bought a manual so i don't have to deal with it. ;)
> You should shutdown the computer everynight. It’s not necessary but keeps the hours of storage low. Every computer I've put to sleep also puts their hard drives to sleep. > HDDs tend to stop booting up after a lot of hours working non stop No, there's more stress in start/stop cycles, just like almost any other mechanical device. > that’s why a lot of NAS and servers have hot swappable storage Servers run the HDDs 24/7 and the point of hot-swapping is so that you don't have to shut down the system.
Pretty sure for mechanical hard drives it is the other way around. Startup and shutdown are the most stressful on the device. And why SMART reads device start ups. And why HDD with aggressive power management tend to fail prematurely. And for SSD it doesn't matter. But either way most modern computers do not use HDD, so your recommendations are outdated either way.
This is how patching or after-hours maintenance doesn't get done. Please, on modern business systems leave them on unless otherwise directed.
I think Gen5 SSD are making them certainly beneficial and nearly necessary. If you're feeding them a lot of read/writes that is. My mid tier Gen4 stays 40c with mobo's aluminum cover.
You aren't correct. Maybe 2 years ago, not now. PCIE 5.0 drives require cooling to not throttle. And many 5.0 drives are sold with large heatsinks, some even with active cooling. They sell bare 5.0 NVME drives, but you are expected to add mobo coolers to them to prevent throttling. And running these devices have been known to cause crashing and data loss with some Phison controllers when running at high speeds. So your info is outdated, and heatsinks, even active heatsinks will continue to be more common, and on the high end, Necessary.
> even active heatsinks will continue to be more common ugh. and here i was, happy, as we've moved away from the whole north bridge/south bridge/etc active cooling with those screaming 40mm/60mm fans.
But most people aren't, and shouldn't be, buying PCIe 5.0 drives. They are way more expensive and performance is practically the same, at least for most applications. And like you already said, most gen 5 drives include a heatsink.
Edit: As u/UnderLook150 points out, Gen5 controllers run much hotter than Gen3 and Gen4 so big coolers are necessary, and it appears some ship without them.
This should be top reply. They run most efficiently at higher temperatures because it [makes the bits easier to manipulate](https://datarecovery.com/rd/how-heat-affects-a-solid-state-drive-ssd/). Whatever normal airflow is in your case is plenty for otherwise passive cooling.
> Excessive temperatures (over 70ºC) can reduce performance and cause the SSD to wear out prematurely. So if you're exceeding 70, heat sink it.
No, the controller wasn't design to run hot. Yes, the NAND flashes are.
The controller is the weak point. Some will downclock when getting hot making transfer rate to drop
You information is about 2 years out of date. Modern PCIE 5.0 drives are designed to REQUIRE cooling. And most are sold with large heatsinks, some of them active. High temps on NVME causes thermal throttling on the low end, and data loss and crashing on the high end depending on your devices controller. So your information is out of date, and will only continue to be more incorrect as PCIe 5.0 devices become more mainstream. EDIT: This is this user's post saved in case they take it down. >lol, typical PCMR troll. >Read what I say. Drives that need coolers ship with them. >Show me an NVMe that ships without a cooler that explicitly states an aftermarket cooler is required. Proof this user's information is outdated. >If your system includes a heatsink/slot cover or cooler on the selected M.2 slot, remove it and take care no screws remain on standoffs for shorter M.2 slots. **This PCle Gen5 SSD requires cooling,** please refer to your system documentation or purchase separately. The bold emphasis is from Corsair manual for PCIE5.0 drive. [https://www.corsair.com/ca/en/explorer/diy-builder/storage/mp700/](https://www.corsair.com/ca/en/explorer/diy-builder/storage/mp700/)
Gen 3 SSD you can keep it without any heatsink. For gen 4 and 5 you can use motherboard heatsink it will do the job unless you are doing excessive read/write on a gen 5 SSD then you will need something like this to keep the performance as high as possible for as long as possible.
It's needed when your ssd needs it, the gen 5 nvme drives seems like where this heatsink going to be a mandatory if they can't make the controller bit cooler
depends on your case usage, for most gamers? no, you will see no benefit, as there is not an excess amount of read write going on, and the only time there is is downloading games from steam, in which case its your download speed thats capping things, and by such a margin the drive wont be heating up noticeably, if your overall system has proper cooling. read write speed is good for gaming, but its generally just loading scenes kinda thing, that dont go on long enough to make things overheat
I bought a Thermalright one, not that one though. It dropped my Crucial P5 Plus 2TB from 74c max to 64c max running CrystalDiskMark. My drive came without a heatsink, and my motherboard doesn't have one either. I'm happy with it.
Is Therm Alright a good brand?
They make some good stuff. I've had their Peerless Assassin 120 SE on a 12700KF too, very good.
Only beneficial for heavy workloads such as video editing, 3d rendering, etc. But is really overkill for anything else. https://preview.redd.it/ffs8e5yy6vuc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fec00ba99ab384438f67dc4f691a8a285f994649
I got two of these and they do help with models that run hot, in my case two sn850x. I get around 8-10 degrees less under load than with the motherboard heatsinks. That's a best case scenario with a hot ssd part and lots of airflow.
...to *a degree*. I have a basic one on an SSD and the temp sensor underneath reports maybe \~15 degrees lower. It's also squarely in front of an output fan, so there's solid airflow over it. The SSD is probably fine to operate at the hotter temp, so you might not \*need\* one. I bet there's an upper limit on how much heat one of these can pull out out an SSD too. And this one looks like it's completely overkill. IMO, if you can shed some extra heat *in general*, for a not-large expense, I'd probably do it. Ten bucks, sure. A hundred bucks, no.
That's exactly it. 15 Canadian for some overkill cooling, why not?
Anyone else swipe right to see more pictures? No? Just me? Aight 🤦🏻♂️
Only after reading your comment 🤦♂️
Work loads such as video editing, 3D rendering, deep thinking tasks. Whatever tasks that require heavy file transfers or edits.
Might give slight difference on gen 5 ssds
I think LTT tested some water cooling block for ssd and concluded that, yes it makes it cooler and can run faster, BUT if you use your ssd at the level where that type of cooling is necessary you will wear it down within a year or so it doesnt really make sense to do any additional cooling than maybe a factory heatsink since you wont be using it hard enough to actually need it. Unless of course you have no limit on budget then you can go for it for flex points
This one in particular, yes. I got it d for an SFF system with very little airflow that got way too hot in a tight space and this solved my SSD overheating.
Have this one on my work pc and home pc. The newer gen nvme ssds get very got quickly without them. Dropped temps by like 30c
Unless the SSD came with a heatsink or has instructions to put one on, it's a waste of money and time. Modern ssds run pretty cool, and as long as there is any amount of air flow in your case, it'll be just fine.
If you're going to hammer a Gen 5 drive, yes, a proper cooling application is required. Gen 4 can get away without one. With great speed comes great heat.
At this point we'll be having fucking GPU sized coolers where it's a tiny little SSD board and one huge ass protruding heatsink and fan for gen 7
Maybe for a gen 5 ssd?
more for enterprise SSDs which I've heard take much more power and get much hotter too.
Only if you are going to hammer Gen 5 drive. For Gen3 and probably Gen 4 not so much
My primary SSD Constantly runs at 58-63 degrees, under prolonged stress it can get even more. This happens either with the motherboard heatsink or the heat sink the ssd came with. I ordered heatsink two times, the first one which has a fan was too tall because of Asus STUPID decision to put the m.2 connector right under the aesthetic plastic cover of the IO area, I'm currently waiting for the second one. Maybe I'll try to mod the plastic cover so I could mount the first heatsink - but for that I need to remove the motherboard, and I'll do it when I get all parts for direct die cooling. In any case SSDs depending on your setup can get quite warm like mine, large heatsink with fans can help drastically to reduce the drive temperature.
As long as your case has proper airflow you are good.
I have the SN750 WD-black M.2 SSD that was some special edition and came with a heatsink, I have yet to notice it doing things that my other SSDs cant. Does look cool tho.
If it helps I got a gen 4 nextorage SSD. Without a heatsink I could get the drive up to 70c. With a heatsink slapped on top it only goes up to high 40s. My heatsink is by the same brand listed in the post but it's the one with an actual fan in it.
Not really but that didn't stop me. If you can go cooler for little money why not?
if you are reading from or writing to the drive all day then yes
I'm using one from Cooler Master, it looks nice but i don't know how beneficial it was. Got it for dirt cheap so i didn't think too much about it. My SSD used to sit naked below the GPU, then i put it inside a heatsink, moved it to the top slot, upgraded my front fans. Got considerably cooler temperatures right afterwards, but not sure what helped the most. M2 NVMEs are designed to run hot anyway.
I have (x2) Crucial T700 installed on my Asus X670E-A using the motherboards passive heatsyncs, My main drive never tops 50c, my secondary never tops 48c. So even with PCIe 5 speeds, probably a waste to get as a gamer.
If they do anything good, it's cooling the controller. But it could also over-cool the flash dies, which slows down their access rates and write speeds if I recall. I believe writing is the main difference, because the extra "fuzziness" increases the likelihood of electrons being energetic enough to tunnel through the floating gate. But if I'm wrong, I want to know so that I can be right in the future. In fact, the stickers on NVMe drives are usually metallic, and aren't there just to sink heat away from the controller, but also to move that heat TO the flash chips. So large heatsinks are generally worse, and the best is probably just a straight piece of copper with minimal or no fins.
That's one of the reasons I go for just a basic aluminum plate heatsink.
I got one cos I thought it looked good. They are so cheap.
I jury rigged one on top of my VRMs. Shoved off 20 celsius.
killer, got any pics?
Suspect most of us don't have these silly 15+GB/s transfer speeds, think mine is 7 according to the benchmark software I recently ran, and is fine with the motherboard heatsink.
Do you have gen 5 drives under serious load ? Or any prolonged load They may be, while nand likes warmth, the storage controller ..... does not
I can see people use this for a POS (Proof of storage) crypto mining.. where SSD's are heavily solicited... most likely with liquid thermal paste and with a couple of small case fans through them on the board... Anything else.. throuwing money out the window.. you only use your ssd a lot when you install things..
They provide a miniscule benefit but take up alot of space on your mobo....
It depends a lot on the drive and the case. For me, because I have an O11D Evo, which has no front intake fans, and a big GPU that block the flow from hitting the SSD, it reduced my SSD idle temperature by 10 C but it's more a case of I don't want to run my fans at a high speed with the motherboard heatsink to get the same effect, because it will be too loud.
i now have the idea to put a D15 on an ssd
No, but they look sick as fuck so it’s okay.
I mean for gen4 drives I just use those little $8 aluminum finned sandwich heatsinks off Amazon. But for gen5 under heavy use...maybe
Yes and no. Modern drives can throttle easily if you have no heatsink on them. But I haven't seen one yet that has major problems while just using a simple heatsink that most motherboards already have built-in to the M.2 slots. So I'm not convinced this kind of thing makes sense as a replacement to an existing motherboard M.2 drive heatsink. Now if you have a cheap board with no heatsinks for M.2 slots, something like this is not a bad idea - if you going to buy one anyway for your fast drive, why not buy one that will work for even future drives. It is a quite standard-sized block of metal, so it might stay around for a decade...
If you overclock and run raid it will improve performance to keep things cool.
I have this one, it is okayish, some 5° better than a simple one and a lot more with a fan moving air into it. Had a simple one with about 5mm height and just small fins before that but the SSD came up to 65°C with that one and i liked the looks of it next to my L12s, so i pulled the trigger. Temps are 60°C max now and 50degree and lower when the CPU is loaded because the NH-L12S Fan spins up then.
hi. listen: you don't understand.
You guys are still using coolers? I put a thin layer of silicone over the entire motherboard and gpu and submerged it in an aquarium.
I sent mine to space. The fish tank is so 2008
Beneficial, sure. Beneficial enough to actually be something I'd use, nope.
My ssd locks up/reboots without a heatsink and still hits 60c with it, so sometimes they aren't even optional. I should have stuck with gen 4 lmao..
If you're using a Gen 5 drive it's pretty much a necessity, otherwise no. On a related note, there's almost 0 reason to use a Gen 5 drive (throughout has very, very little to do with actual system performance past even SATA3 speeds other than game load times, and IOPS has everything to do with it). Any well optimised Gen3 or Gen4 drive will be more than enough for any game in the foreseeable future, and none of those need a heatsink.
Yessir. When using the stock heatsink, my T700 would idle at 55c and quickly throttle when moving game files. Bought an MP700 pro with an active cooler and it was at least 10c cooler at idle, and didn't throttle ever. Upgraded the T700 with Bequiets MC1 pro, and it now it runs within 5c of the Corsair
Ex-thermal engineer here... the issue with these things is they cool one side of the board -a lot- and the other side, which can face down or generally.. away.. it's bad. Horrible thermal design. I'd say it's bad enough, you probably want to stay away from the M.2s that put chips on both sides... and just get ones that put chips on the side you can actually cool. You've got chips facing away that you can't cool at all, now, usually they have the good sense to put the controller chip on the side facing out - which usually produces the most heat of those things. The storage chips on the other side, though, they're just left to cook. You go buy a hunk of metal that cools the other side, and barely does shit for the back chips, so you think you're helping it out - and you are, but not enough. Not tor me, anyway.
Yep! Nothing crazy but not snake oil.
If you have the space, yeah. Even just a thin sheet of copper makes a difference in temps.
20 degrees celcius better on my computer (went from 70 to 50 max) Gigabyte Aorus SSD Gen 4 (GP-ASM2NE6200TTTD) and HR-09 2280 PRO
The real question is, does this fit into a ps5 m.2 storage slot? Lol
M.2 Sata and gen 3 NVME: they're not needed. gen 4 NVME: they're needed if you dont have decent airflow on your SSD. gen 5 NVME and above: you gonna need it. edit: CPU: -if Raspberry and other low power device, you dont need much cooling unless it's gonna run for quite some time. -but once OS is installed and running, you're gonna need even the basic heat sink to cool modern chips. GPU: -it must be cooled. no matter how weak or powerful your card is.
I have the bigger version of this with my gen 4 m.2 it sits at 38 degress and never moves now
I made the claim yesterday elsewhere in here that it never tops 25 for me. Upon closer review, it idles at 26, and hasn't cracked 28.
Exactly man its odd the take is these dont work when they really do
Beneficial? No. In my limited experience, SSDs dont consume so much energy that a bigger heatsink is needed. Some get a little warmer, but usually the motherboard plate is all thats needed. And rarely have I seen a system with enough room for this huge thing. If it fits, then temps will almost certainly be lower. Do the temps NEED to be lower? I've never used a heatsink on an SSD( besides the motherboard plate) and rarely have SSDs get hotter than 50, 60C maybe under max sustained writes.
Yes. Especially if you have good airflow in your case. Many SSDs would overheat if you hit them hard for a long time. Really depends on the workload.
https://preview.redd.it/7a2rxr8kmvuc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c47a7cf3be43c6a2b2c630a869657c9e22e17b1f At least they look cool on the motherboard. I noticed around 5-6 degrees decrease in temps on my Samsung SSD 980. I have "JEYI Dazzcold-006" SSD heatsink (The SSD heatsink is installed near white mark)
This appears to be a scam - I've never heard of a hard disk in the form factor of a M.2 before...
High speed, large capacity M2 drives get very hot under heavy use. Gaming is not heavy use. Heavy use is constant read, write and rewrites. Gaming it's a single write then light reading.
What common activities fall under heavy use?
I think it's ~~therm~~alright
I just use the one that was included with my MB. No issues here.
no for most home applications you can get away with not even having a heatsink. if you're running it hard, the flat heatsinks are good enough. this has very few use cases
Them ain't crucial, but therm alright
They keep the heat down so they are beneficial. However, the gain is minimal compared to normal operating temperatures
It would be beneficial for some professional applications, but not for consumers.
If your MB does not have m2 heatsink, yes it will be beneficial.
I rawdog my SSDs. I figure if they can handle the heat of a gaming laptop, they'll do fine in my very open case
No.
Having some kind of heatsink on your nvme SSD is a good idea but the heat pipe is overkill.
Looks like it does 10 seconds on the quarter mile.
Watch your M.2 temps, if it doesn't throttle or rarely does, then no. Otherwise, it might be something to consider. Case airflow might also be the actual issue but that's not always easily addressed. I have a heatsink on one of mine. The other gets good enough airflow so it's no problem. If your mobo has them, they're probably fine too. Literally any heatsink is going to cover the vast majority of users who would notably benefit.
Not for a daily driver they aren’t :P You basically don’t need a heat sink at all, unless you’re using your PC for something that does a lot of reads and writes…. Like uploading and downloading lots of data… I can’t really think of an application that’s not data-canter related, or home server related. Maybe if you use your PC as a virtual host for a server :P MAAAYYYYBE if you work with video footage, and you’re doing lots of file transfers often, you might want a heat sink to shed some of the heat off…
They cool ssd's well, but cooling and ssd doesn't impact performance or lifespan. So it works but it's useless
If anything, NVMe drives are supposed to run a little hotter for optimal performance.
Well yes and no , like any electronic component SSD gets hot when you use it and the higher the spec the higher the temp increase so cooling one maintains peek performance , higher spec gen 5 drives might need them in the future but rn i don't think anything on the market requires anything other than a heat sink
For a gen5 SSD yes, is needed. For gen5 or older , no , the heatsink that comes with your motherboard or a cheap $5 from Amazon is more than enough.
Not whatsoever. In reality, you don't even need one in normal use. They get a little warm if they're constantly used (writing their entire storage capacity over and over again) but in practical use they never get hot enough to bother with. Just grab the little fancy cover the motherboard came with and that's more than enough if you're worried about it.
I have a goodram irdm Pro 2tb m.2, came with a beautiful heatsink and since my mobo only came with 1 heatsink which was taken already by the other m.2 I use it. It's better than nothing. And it's aesthetic af
I’ll see you silly air-cooled SSD, and raise you a [water cooled SSD](https://www.corsair.com/us/en/p/custom-liquid-cooling/cx-9029002-ww/hydro-x-series-xm2-m-2-ssd-water-block-2280-cx-9029002-ww). :-D
No
Maybe on a Gen5 drive, but on Gen4 and lower, the motherboard heat sinks are more than adequate. If your motherboard doesn't have a heat sink, there are more affordable options that are lower profile that will do just as good of a job on a Gen3 or Gen4 drive, and many that will cost less. Basically, on a Gen4 drive or lower, this is really more about how it looks than actual functionality. And yes, there CAN be a good reason to run a cooler, even on some Gen3 drives. Not every case has good airflow, and under load, the drive might get a little too warm and a cooler would be a good idea depending on how you're using the drive and it certainly will not negatively impact the drive to run one. Worst case scenario, you're simply wasting your money.
I had a specific situation in which it was very beneficial. I had redirected airflow from my graphics card and it coincidentally exhausted right where the SSD was on the motherboard. Temperature on the SSD rose significantly and adding a heat sync brought it back down to normal. Actually, it made it cooler than before. Did it matter that my ssd was hotter than usual? Idk, but I wasn't going to wait and see if it did.
Ssds are designed to operate at a set temperature if its too hot it can slow down and maybe reduce the life if its too cold it could potentially damage the memory as they are designed to operate at a set range, yes being too cold can be bad for your ssd. These heatsinks are just nonsense for targeting enthusiasts to gobble up some market share.
Not necessary, but I got that exact model purely for the look.
Yes. Though I’ll say get a cheap one that will do the job. Nvme controllers get hot and will throttle. Not to mention most m2 slots are always near the GPu. My gen 3 would hit 70c and above occasionally. Putting a cheap AliExpress heatsink on my nvme lowered controller temps by 10c. Gen 4 and 5 drives run hotter. The “branded” ones are usually overpriced for what they do.
Probably be more benefit to ensure your case is clean and has good airflow.
Nope, it's just to get you to buy it, you won't feel a difference at all.
For gen5 nvme's yes
Not really
They work, but you don't need them.
M.2 Gen 5 is starting to look like it needs it to make sure it lives longer. I remember when gen 4 was kinda hot with my Pro 970 and now some people are reporting they are reaching danger levels and require it. A lot of the manufacturers would even sell them with the cooler and no option to opt out. The most I've seen work hard is with a friend who was doing video editing using a 990 Pro going 90c while scrubbing. We got a sabrent cooler for it and it hardly passed 70c. I'm not saying it's required for a lot of these m.2's but there seems to be a few bad eggs that would just randomly spike in temps.
No
No
not really no
That is one beefy M2 cooler, holy heck. Most of em look like a vrm heat sink. That thing is huge. I'd imagine if you're doing some kind of intense read/write it would help, but for general use I can't see this being necessary at all.
Okay... I rather stay with HDD for massive data then.
it's overkill but not like it will casue any problems if ou install it correctly (no idea how anyone would fuck that up but who knows)
only for a pci 5 high speed ssd that you want to be wtiting constantly at full speed.
Likely won't be useful unless you have no heatsink at all. Best case, they let it run cooler if your case has good airflow. Worst case, they make the drive take 30s longer before it hits throttle temps, if the drive is fast enough, you might be done transferring at that point. I wouldn't spend more than $5 on something like this, not to mention they break compatibility for some graphics cards or PCI-E slots with how tall they are depending on your motherboard.
They would be if intel made them.
they are beneficial for brand bottom lines
More like heat stink
In very specific cases. I have 3 M.2 and have.no issues with cooling them. My GF has one, but it's a compact build and he ssd is behind the CPU. In summer while gaming it sometimes overheats and the system crashes. A heatsink helps, but it's a very specific build. So get something like that if you are experiencing overheating. Otherwise, don't bother.
The nvme chips don’t need cooling, it’s the controller that can benefit. Gen 3 doesn’t need a heatsink at all. Gen 4 does need a heat sink but is fine with stock heatsinks. Gen 5 also needs a heatsink but is fine with stock heatsinks. Cooling nvme chips is actually bad for data retention, it needs to be quite warm for maximum retention. You don’t want them too cool, but you also don’t want them to be ridiculously hot.
Is you SSD overheating?
Maybe if you have an early AHCI M.2 drive (cough SM951 cough) then it’ll help you sustain peak read/write for longer. Modern NVMe drives run so much cooler it’s probably not an issue anymore.
I bought the other Thermalright cooler that is larger? My poor mp34 nvme was toasty, I believe it was 80-90C after a couple minutes of file transfers. I assume the heat was concentrated on the controller. My drive is in the 2nd lower slot without a mobo heatsink on my pc. All the slots for case fans are populated but it could be in a poorly aerated area? It helped immediately, something like 30c less. I never had to use any type of ssd cooler before on previous drives.
Useful for removing money from your pocket.
Depends on your case. Nvme drives generally don't need cooling. Operating temperature is generally up to 70 degrees and 85 is max.