M.2 970 Pro SSD - Heat Sink or NO?

[computerbuilder1]

Hello,

 

One day I launched HWinfo and saw that my m.2 ssd was showing red temperatures. I freaked out and bought a heat sink.

After doing tons of research it seems people agree a heat sink is a good idea but only on the controller NOT the NAND.

However cooling the controller could spoof the nand into thinking its not hot and in return get much hotter?

I also read that if you put a heatsink on it it can reduce the life of your ssd and I don't want that.

What I do want is for my ssd to stay alive for as long as possible and not to be hot  as I feel that would reduce lifespan as well. I never want it to throttle but I dont want to kill it! lol

 

Well I ended up moving my m.2 underneath my gpu and installed it's drivers.. my temps are as follows

IDLE (Itunes, Firefox open): TEMP2 usually likes to hang around 65-70 ( just updated cod and it jumped up to 70 in seconds)

Gaming for 2 hours:

 

I would like to put my heatsink on my m.2 however the first temperature seems to be my NAND and I think 48~ degrees is healthy, is this correct? If so If I put my heat sink on will this damage my NAND?

For some reason my temps seem to be okay now? I don't like that my max temp is 75 or currently near 70 but again is this normal? I am just unsure..

Your feedback is appreciated

 

Thank you!

[Jurrunio]

NAND actually prefers running warm, cooler is better rule only works with the controller.

https://www.eeweb.com/profile/eli-tiomkin/articles/industrial-temperature-and-nand-flash-in-ssd-products

basically, low temperature for NAND is better for retaining data, but warm is better for write and erase. Just so happens that NAND flash gets warm during write and erase, but not when holding data or read.

[computerbuilder1]

43 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

NAND actually prefers running warm, cooler is better rule only works with the controller.

https://www.eeweb.com/profile/eli-tiomkin/articles/industrial-temperature-and-nand-flash-in-ssd-products

basically, low temperature for NAND is better for retaining data, but warm is better for write and erase. Just so happens that NAND flash gets warm during write and erase, but not when holding data or read.

Thank you, so I should really just put a heat sink on the controller and that is it right? Currently at 61 degrees with a max of 76 Celsius

[Jurrunio]

1 minute ago, computerbuilder1 said:

Thank you, so I should really just put a heat sink on the controller and that is it right? Currently at 61 degrees with a max of 76 Celsius

yep

[computerbuilder1]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

yep

Thank you, yeah it's weird now it's idling at 75 degrees. Controller is temperature 2 just to make sure right?

 

I bought a heat sink that covers the whole stick, should I just put the thermal pads under and on top of the controller and have the rest of the heat sink hover over the nands and not touch it? Or will this trap heat?

[Jurrunio]

6 minutes ago, computerbuilder1 said:

Thank you, yeah it's weird now it's idling at 75 degrees. Controller is temperature 2 just to make sure right?

that's actually hard to verify. You could let it cool down first, and do a lot of read work. The one which significantly gets warmer than the other will be the controller. As a control, do a write test. Both temperature data should rise and difference will be smaller than read.

[computerbuilder1]

I’m pretty sure temp two is control but

[computerbuilder1]

9 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

that's actually hard to verify. You could let it cool down first, and do a lot of read work. The one which significantly gets warmer than the other will be the controller. As a control, do a write test. Both temperature data should rise and difference will be smaller than read.

I’m pretty sure it’s temperature two but is 75 degrees really bad for controller temp? And what about the 51 degrees on the NAND?

[Jurrunio]

24 minutes ago, computerbuilder1 said:

I’m pretty sure it’s temperature two but is 75 degrees really bad for controller temp? And what about the 51 degrees on the NAND?

SSDs are normally rated to run at up to 70C only, that tells you how confident manufacturers are to running SSDs above that

 

50C NAND temperature is pretty common, assume that's fine

[NewMaxx]

Yes, typically sensor 2 is the controller and it will throttle in the 70-80C range. Although the sensor is not 100% reliable and neither is it the "real" controller temperature, keeping in mind these are ARM microcontrollers that can handle 125C internally. The 970 Pro is MLC-based, it should be fine, cooling is optional and not dangerous for your usage. Client NAND ratings are based on 40C load, actually, you're above that and won't be cooling below, it's no worry.

[computerbuilder1]

58 minutes ago, NewMaxx said:

Yes, typically sensor 2 is the controller and it will throttle in the 70-80C range. Although the sensor is not 100% reliable and neither is it the "real" controller temperature, keeping in mind these are ARM microcontrollers that can handle 125C internally. The 970 Pro is MLC-based, it should be fine, cooling is optional and not dangerous for your usage. Client NAND ratings are based on 40C load, actually, you're above that and won't be cooling below, it's no worry.

So you're saying if I do put the entire heat sink on and have the thermal pads on the NAND I will be okay? NAND is idling at 43 Celsius right now. I am editing videos and playing PUBG and COD mostly.

[NewMaxx]

Yes, absolutely. Cooling would be to prevent the controller from throttling which is why that's all you really need to cool, however cooling the NAND is not a huge deal for consumer usage especially with MLC that will survive 10-30K P/E. JEDEC's notes for client NAND temperature is 40C under load and 30C (or less) for power-off. I consider a heatsink to generally be aesthetic for consumer usage, but if it can help the controller keep from throttling it's usually worthwhile. Your NAND seems to run hot enough that isn't not a huge concern anyway.

[computerbuilder1]

6 minutes ago, NewMaxx said:

Yes, absolutely. Cooling would be to prevent the controller from throttling which is why that's all you really need to cool, however cooling the NAND is not a huge deal for consumer usage especially with MLC that will survive 10-30K P/E. JEDEC's notes for client NAND temperature is 40C under load and 30C (or less) for power-off. I consider a heatsink to generally be aesthetic for consumer usage, but if it can help the controller keep from throttling it's usually worthwhile. Your NAND seems to run hot enough that isn't not a huge concern anyway.

Alright thank you very much.

[computerbuilder1]

20 hours ago, NewMaxx said:

Yes, absolutely. Cooling would be to prevent the controller from throttling which is why that's all you really need to cool, however cooling the NAND is not a huge deal for consumer usage especially with MLC that will survive 10-30K P/E. JEDEC's notes for client NAND temperature is 40C under load and 30C (or less) for power-off. I consider a heatsink to generally be aesthetic for consumer usage, but if it can help the controller keep from throttling it's usually worthwhile. Your NAND seems to run hot enough that isn't not a huge concern anyway.

I am a little worried though at idle my nand  is 43-47 Celsius, if i have the heat sink on it wont it go down to 30? and that's  with it running