NVMe Heatsink?

[infiniteCurse]

Hello everyone, I was wondering if it was worth spending money on a heatsink for my M.2 drive? It is a 970 Pro 512gb NVMe and i will only be using it for gaming. Any input is greatly appreciated thank you.

[Princess Luna]

you don't need a NVMe just for gaming to begin with, but nah you don't need the heatsink, it's more for aesthetics.

[Mister Woof]

I watched a gamers Nexus video that NVMe NAND likes to be around 40c during writing, and too aggressive of cooling can actually reduce lifepsan.

 

According to that video, if you want to use a heat sink, only use thermal pads on the controller and not the memory chips.

 

That's said, I got one for my 660p and used it with all the pads because the 660p is ugly green PCB. During writing i'm at 38c with zero active fan cooling (it's right under my blower GPU)

[Enderman]

24 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

you don't need a NVMe just for gaming to begin with, but nah you don't need the heatsink, it's more for aesthetics.

M.2 drives get very hot, the heatsinks are not just for aesthetics.

[Cyracus]

6 minutes ago, Plutosaurus said:

I watched a gamers Nexus article that NVMe NAND likes to be around 40c, and too aggressive of cooling can actually reduce lifepsab

I've heard that the memory chips work better getting hotter, but I've also heard from large sample studies that keeping ssds cool is better for their long term health, with 40ºC being the approximate temperature where early failure rates start increasing, under that (I'm pretty sure the data bottomed out at 20ºC) showed little difference in failure rates. No specifics were given about the failures. Haven't seen data demonstrating the performance difference with the memory at different temperatures.

[Mister Woof]

13 minutes ago, Cyracus said:

I've heard that the memory chips work better getting hotter, but I've also heard from large sample studies that keeping ssds cool is better for their long term health, with 40ºC being the approximate temperature where early failure rates start increasing, under that (I'm pretty sure the data bottomed out at 20ºC) showed little difference in failure rates. No specifics were given about the failures. Haven't seen data demonstrating the performance difference with the memory at different temperatures.

@6:15

 

[Cyracus]

8 minutes ago, Plutosaurus said:

 

 

http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~omutlu/pub/flash-memory-failures-in-the-field-at-facebook_sigmetrics15.pdf     TL;DR one of their conclusions was that temperature may be a major factor in failures, dependent on whether it throttles speed to manage temps and such, could well be the controller blowing up and the memory chips were ecstatic.

I remember watching that ask GN and forgot that he referenced an expert... guess until I hear otherwise I'll go with what he said, cool controller, leave memory to cook

[Mister Woof]

I ignored it anyway any just used the whole pad

 

Actually I forgot about it until now and I already put the pad on and now I'm to lazy to remove it.

36 minutes ago, Cyracus said:

http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~omutlu/pub/flash-memory-failures-in-the-field-at-facebook_sigmetrics15.pdf     TL;DR one of their conclusions was that temperature may be a major factor in failures, dependent on whether it throttles speed to manage temps and such, could well be the controller blowing up and the memory chips were ecstatic.

I remember watching that ask GN and forgot that he referenced an expert... guess until I hear otherwise I'll go with what he said, cool controller, leave memory to cook

 

[Mick Naughty]

For 12 bucks I did. Looks better that way for me and protects me from ruining it. Might as well. 

[_Hustler_One_]

14 hours ago, Enderman said:

M.2 drives get very hot, the heatsinks are not just for aesthetics.

Yep, my M.2 Samsung SSD recorded 60C as its highest temp it ever reached while gaming. I also wondered if it needs heatsink to cool itself, but I think it's kind of worthless if I give it a heatsink as it's located on the back of motherboard without having moving air for active cooling.

[Enderman]

2 hours ago, _Hustler_One_ said:

Yep, my M.2 Samsung SSD recorded 60C as its highest temp it ever reached while gaming. I also wondered if it needs heatsink to cool itself, but I think it's kind of worthless if I give it a heatsink as it's located on the back of motherboard without having moving air for active cooling.

Yeah you can't really do anything if it's on the back of the board.

Usually motherboards with them on the front already include some metal covers with thermal pads that act as a heatsink.

 

Also 60C isn't too bad, if you hit it hard with a long read or write like moving large files around they can get to 80 or 90C which is very unhealthy.