So PCIe gen4 drives get hot, right?

[Bfuqua]

I'm in the middle of building my first ever dedicated gaming rig, and I bought a Seagate firecuda nvme drive that runs on PCIe gen 4. 

 

As I understand it, gen 4 drives tend to get pretty toasty when under heavy load. Whether or not I would ever end up putting under such sustained load, I really don't know, but I would like to be prepared for it. 

 

My motherboard didn't come with a drive shield, so I would need to figure something else out in regards to cooling it. 

 

So I was wondering what sort of solutions, if any, that other people have come up with? 

 

I was thinking about possibly just buying some small copper heatsinks and sticking them on with thermal pads or something like that. Has anyone tried that? 

 

I would also like to know if anyone has tried ripping the label off the drive so the heatsinks get direct contact with the drive. 

 

And of course typical "fan vs no fan" and "thermal pads vs thermal paste" stuff. 

 

PS: I was sure whether to put this in this section or the drive section. Sorry if it doesn't go here. Mods, feel free to move it if you feel so inclined.

[Morco]

From my experience every gen 4 ssd comes with a heat sink. if not, i guess you're fine with sticking some copper heat sinks on there. you can watch the LTT video where they water cooled their ssd. i know that is not your plan, but you can get a pretty good idea of how hot they actually get and how you can and should cool them efficiently.

[Sakkura]

Regular thermal pads aren't adhesive, you'd want thermal tape or thermal adhesive instead. But yeah, little copper heatsinks would do fine (and some come with thermal adhesive IIRC). And you don't necessarily need many, cooling is more important on the controller than the NAND flash and DRAM.

[Constantin]

You worry to much.

You will not have any problem, at least if the case have a decent airflow

PS: SSD Mvne Gen 4 run better at temperatures 55c ish than 20c-30c

[Bfuqua]

Just now, Constantin said:

You worry to much.

You will not have any problem, at least if the case have a decent airflow

PS: SSD Mvne Gen 4 run better at temperatures 55c ish than 20c-30c

Well I'm not trying to keep it super cool. I just don't want it getting to like 80 or higher. If I can keep it at a decent temp, I'm fine with it. 

[Bfuqua]

32 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Regular thermal pads aren't adhesive, you'd want thermal tape or thermal adhesive instead. But yeah, little copper heatsinks would do fine (and some come with thermal adhesive IIRC). And you don't necessarily need many, cooling is more important on the controller than the NAND flash and DRAM.

All the little heatsinks I've bought in the past come with thermal tape on them, so I was just gonna go with that. 

 

And I'll probably just get enough to cover the entire top with them. They're aren't horribly expensive, so it's not a big deal. 

[Constantin]

I have my evo 970 w/o anything on it, one year it works just fine

[Bfuqua]

Just now, Constantin said:

I have my evo 970 w/o anything on it, one year it works just fine

Well I'm not worried about degradation. I'm really more worried about throttling, and possibly crashing. 

 

I've seen instances where drives will get too hot and just shut down completely. 

 

And even if they don't crash, they can still throttle down to almost HDD speeds if they get hot enough. 

[Constantin]

1 minute ago, Bfuqua said:

Well I'm not worried about degradation. I'm really more worried about throttling, and possibly crashing. 

 

I've seen instances where drives will get too hot and just shut down completely. 

 

And even if they don't crash, they can still throttle down to almost HDD speeds if they get hot enough. 

As i said if you have a case with decent are flow (not 2 fans) you should be fine.

[seagate_surfer]

I would save the money and test the SSD first, after monitoring temperatures then I would make the decision, but the truth is that, as already mentioned above, having temperatures below 55 ° C is fine, although the SSD really hold a little more and it would be better to confirm the temperatures directly in the spreadsheet.