We Water Cooled an SSD!!

[nicklmg]

Alphacool MCX RAM: https://www.alphacool.com/shop/mainboard-cooler/chip-cooler/599/alphacool-mcx-ram?c=20693

MCX RAM Copper Edition: https://www.alphacool.com/shop/mainboard-cooler/chip-cooler/10762/alphacool-mcx-ram-copper-edition?c=20693

Corsair MP600: https://www.corsair.com/ca/en/Categories/Products/Storage/M-2-SSDs/Force-Series™-Gen-4-PCIe-NVMe-M-2-SSD/p/CSSD-F2000GBMP600 

[NubCak]

I legit thought about doing this the other day to my MP600

[Car712]

This SSD actually needs watercooling to function : https://hardforum.com/threads/beware-the-bling-rgb-on-your-hyperx-ssd.1980977/

[Nekonen]

Aqua Computer actually makes watercooled m.2 to pcie 3.0/4.0 adapters if you want something less janky  https://shop.aquacomputer.de/product_info.php?products_id=3401

[brandishwar]

That tiny waterblock many have used to watercool Raspberry Pi boards as well.

[SolarNova]

2 hours ago, nicklmg said:

~~snip~~

Cool , but one other issue is that that block and those small tubes would restrict the crap out of a normal custom loop, so you effectively have to have an entire dedicated loop just for the SSD(S) if u did want to do this.

 

Guess it gives some people a somewhat legit reason to run a triple loop system

 

CPU + VRM loop

GPU loop

SSD loop

 

 

 

[Tandy626]

Hey guys,
Is Anthony’s looping script too confidential to share? I love me a good script!

I posted this in the form and the YouTube video too hopefully get noticed.

 

Thanks!

[SenKa]

That motherboard is sagging like CRAZY. Get a larger testbench for these massive boards or atleast try to prop it up smh

[Luscious]

Similar to when manufacturers wanted to water cool RAM many years ago. EK still does it but the results are negligible.

 

A heatsink and some focused airflow will do a better job for small chips like these. Given the low profile design of m.2, space constraints inside the ATX spec and that tubing diameter it will be a challenge to incorporate anything like this even in an existing open loop.

 

That said, a different design with standard G1/4 fittings on a PCI board with m.2 drives in pairs or x4 would be far more doable, and some out there would gladly sacrifice a double width PCIe space for 8TB of water cooled m.2 goodness. Except that you can already get that with many existing single slot PCIe SSD options - attaching a slim fan to the heatsink can work surprisingly well, or remove the heatsink and attach an old school chipset water block with a custom mounting plate.

 

I would even make it an experiment to mount some of those tiny 20mm fans to the m.2 heatsink and see if that makes a tangible difference.

[thrasher_565]

well you no there all ready an water block for an ssd...but anyway ltt got to llt it for views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQmI5A27Iv8

[Results45]

10 hours ago, nicklmg said:

.

Spoiler

 

.

Alphacool MCX RAM: https://www.alphacool.com/shop/mainboard-cooler/chip-cooler/599/alphacool-mcx-ram?c=20693

MCX RAM Copper Edition: https://www.alphacool.com/shop/mainboard-cooler/chip-cooler/10762/alphacool-mcx-ram-copper-edition?c=20693

Corsair MP600: https://www.corsair.com/ca/en/Categories/Products/Storage/M-2-SSDs/Force-Series™-Gen-4-PCIe-NVMe-M-2-SSD/p/CSSD-F2000GBMP600 

 

.

 

Will you guys be doing a liquid cooling video with a carbon-ice and alcohol "CHILLINATOR" anytime soon?

 

 

[M Raheel Asghar]

Why didn't you use legit water block for the SSD available on aliexpress;

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32977665400.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.1f404ee5BSO87F&algo_pvid=df4711d4-c0a2-420a-9490-ad8df5f22bd4&algo_expid=df4711d4-c0a2-420a-9490-ad8df5f22bd4-0&btsid=3691263f-01b0-4fde-8156-5fbeb103fa7e&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_4,searchweb201603_53

 

or

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000636561107.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.1f404ee5BSO87F&algo_pvid=df4711d4-c0a2-420a-9490-ad8df5f22bd4&algo_expid=df4711d4-c0a2-420a-9490-ad8df5f22bd4-5&btsid=3691263f-01b0-4fde-8156-5fbeb103fa7e&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_4,searchweb201603_53

[RejZoR]

I'd just mount a silent 40mm fan on the factory Corsair's cooler. Usually, you can just screw them right in between the fins so you don't even have to use zip ties or drill threaded holes... Should do the trick.

 

Or to go the extra length, cut/sand off portion of stock heatsink at an angle and mount the fan on that newly angled part so you don't gain height with fan and still make it push air at an angle to the side through the fins, accelerating air circulation.

[Nystemy]

Adding cooling to an SSD has its pros and cons.

 

One thing to take in note is that the controller of an SSD is not where data is stored, and yes the controller can get warm, especially modern PCI v.4 ones.

Though, at 60 degrees C, most silicone based chips have a mean time between failures of over a decade... But since silicone based transistors can operate upwards towards 150 degrees C before heat related failure and that most low density chip designs usually have no problem keeping their transistors bellow that temperature, then thermal throttling is rather rare to start with. (It is though still a useful protection feature that most manufacturers include regardless, and typical thermal limits are lower than 150C, since the measurement point can be rather far away from the highest temperature area. (Sometimes there simply isn't room for the thermal sensor in the higher heat area.))

 

Though, the flash chip on the other hand is a very different story.

Since flash based memory works by temporarily breaking down the insulation surrounding a floating gate to push charge into it, then we preferably want as little resistance in that insulation as possible. (Ie, have it as conducting as possible) And the fact that most insulators have higher leakage (ie lower resistance) at higher temperatures allows the memory cell to be written to with less energy imparted in the insulation, thereby degrading the insulation less and extending the lifetime of the drive in the process.

 

Ie, cooling a Flash memory is not really a good thing when it comes to the drives endurance.

 

Flash chips also don't usually suffer thermal throttling since they don't have much fancy decoding and protocol management to deal with, meaning that they are not consuming a lot of power. So adding cooling to the flash chips can even to start with be rather unneeded. Thermal conduction is usually sufficient to keep them from overheating and die due to thermal related failures. Though, some flash manufacturers are working on including heaters in the chips themselves, since it can extend the write endurance of Flash cells by as much as 5 orders of magnitude.

 

Erasure times can also be improved when the flash is kept at a higher temperature, since erasing also moves charge through the insulation around the floating gate.

 

Though, if you are going to toss a thumb drive into a time capsule, then cooling it down to sub ambient might be a good thing, since Falsh media tends to forget their content within a decade if left at room temperature. (Some industrial Flash cells made for long term data retention can remember their content for over 30 years at 80C, but I'll let you guess if such memory is "cheap"... (Every KB costs about a few cents. Ie thousands of dollars per GB.) ) The reason for it forgetting is due to the aforementioned insulation around the floating gate, the gate stores a small amount of electrical charge on it (literally a handful of electrons/or-lack-there-of) representing a certain bit state. (MLC and QLC flash stores multiple bits by simply varying the amount of charge and making things a bit more analogue.) But since the insulation around this gate isn't a perfect insulator, it will slowly let this charge leak through the insulation, effectively corrupting/erasing the data over time. And this leakage is for the vast majority of insulators going to be smaller at lower temperatures.

This is though a fair bit of oversimplification, and in actuality things are "a bit" more complicated.

 

TL:DR
You want to heat the Flash when writing to it (also erasing, since that is writing as well), and cool it when just keeping the data around.

 

The flash controller handling the PCIe interface isn't a stupid thing to cool, but the Flash chips can on the other hand actually benefit from less cooling.

[Fnige]

Do people actually watercool hard-drives

[brandishwar]

On 1/20/2020 at 4:06 PM, SolarNova said:

Cool , but one other issue is that that block and those small tubes would restrict the crap out of a normal custom loop, so you effectively have to have an entire dedicated loop just for the SSD(S) if u did want to do this.

That's only the case if you try to put it in series with everything else. Which, no, you shouldn't do. Instead you put it in parallel with the loop's flow. Such as with the fitting that @VegetableStu shows in his reply, the AlpahCool MCX 5-way divider.

[Freeman]

I was hoping they would compare it against the original passive cooler when it gets a decent airflow, like it might in your standard system. Nothing against the worst case scenario, but with that as the only representation, the information value of the video is somewhat diminished.