Upgrading Laptop Storage

[Yazzy108]

I recently bought a new laptop. The MSI Stealth GS66 12UGS-025. I'm pretty happy with it so far, but I was thinking about upgrading the storage in it from 1TB to 2TB by putting in an additional drive.

 

It looks like it has an extra slot for a PCIe 4 NVME SSD. The drive in there currently is sitting on what I believe is a thermal pad (I'm not super knowledgeable about computer hardware and accessories), but there is no thermal pad for the extra slot at the moment. There is also some black thing a little thicker than a piece of paper covering the SSD, and it seems like it sticks to it slightly. I attached a screenshot from this video of an older model of the laptop (which seems to have a thermal pad and cover thing for an additional SSD already in it):

 

My possibly stupid question is: what is this cover thing, and do I need to worry about buying one of these if I buy an additional SSD? Also, should I buy a thermal pad for the SSD (I assume the answer is yes since there is one for the preinstalled SSD, but I just want to be sure).

 

Thanks in advance for any help!

[GhostRoadieBL]

10 minutes ago, Yazzy108 said:

what is this cover thing, and do I need to worry about buying one of these if I buy an additional SSD?

that cover should just be an isolation pad, basically keeps any metal bits on the drive from touching the back panel. the same strips are on the RAM.

don't worry about buying one for the second SSD slot, if the new SSD has a label sticker or copper pad with a label it does the same thing (copper pad acts as a head spreader too)

you don't need a thermal pad for SSDs unless you plan to be running them hard for extended periods of time, most SSDs never see high sustained writes and reads outside of benchmarking. If the drive doesn't come with a heatspreader (most do nowadays, the only gen4 one I can think of that doesn't is SN750 SE) I would toss a thermal pad on it just to spread out some of the heat.

on a side note that pre-installed pad is SUPER thick and likely there to save on MSI installing a drive with a heatspreader stuck to the drive already. It's not doing much in the way of heat transfer when the controller (main heat source) is on the opposite side of the drive's PCB than the thermal pad, it would do some transfer but not a lot.

[Yazzy108]

22 minutes ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

that cover should just be an isolation pad, basically keeps any metal bits on the drive from touching the back panel. the same strips are on the RAM.

don't worry about buying one for the second SSD slot, if the new SSD has a label sticker or copper pad with a label it does the same thing (copper pad acts as a head spreader too)

you don't need a thermal pad for SSDs unless you plan to be running them hard for extended periods of time, most SSDs never see high sustained writes and reads outside of benchmarking. If the drive doesn't come with a heatspreader (most do nowadays, the only gen4 one I can think of that doesn't is SN750 SE) I would toss a thermal pad on it just to spread out some of the heat.

on a side note that pre-installed pad is SUPER thick and likely there to save on MSI installing a drive with a heatspreader stuck to the drive already. It's not doing much in the way of heat transfer when the controller (main heat source) is on the opposite side of the drive's PCB than the thermal pad, it would do some transfer but not a lot.

This is the SSD that I was considering buying. Does what you say about both the sticker and thermal pad apply for this one, or are you referring to something with a big heatsink on it?

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-980-pro-1tb-pcie-gen-4-x4-nvme-gaming-internal-solid-state-drive/6431939.p?skuId=6431939

[GhostRoadieBL]

https://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-ssd-980-pro-review-1tb-500gb-capacities-benchmarked_222142/11

this was done in a case with decent airflow, maxed out at 83C. This is a toasty drive when doing long transfers so you'll want a thermal pad for sure. as far as I can tell the drive was really not designed with laptops in mind and is more of a desktop motherboard with a big heat spreader kind of drive. If you don't do hour long transfers it won't see benchmark temps so it may be fine. (just loading a game or as a OS drive it would be fine, but as a video editing drive or large cad file storage, game development or code creation, not so much)

[Yazzy108]

40 minutes ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

https://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-ssd-980-pro-review-1tb-500gb-capacities-benchmarked_222142/11

this was done in a case with decent airflow, maxed out at 83C. This is a toasty drive when doing long transfers so you'll want a thermal pad for sure. as far as I can tell the drive was really not designed with laptops in mind and is more of a desktop motherboard with a big heat spreader kind of drive. If you don't do hour long transfers it won't see benchmark temps so it may be fine. (just loading a game or as a OS drive it would be fine, but as a video editing drive or large cad file storage, game development or code creation, not so much)

Hmm. I guess I will do more research for drives that may be good for laptops and don't get too hot. Thanks for your help.

[GhostRoadieBL]

1 hour ago, Yazzy108 said:

Hmm. I guess I will do more research for drives that may be good for laptops and don't get too hot. Thanks for your help.

Best question to ask is what you want to do with the drive, gen4 speed is awesome but do you use and move files that size or would a gen3 still do everything?

If it's just a storage and games drive a 980 non-pro is still more than fast enough, most sabrent drives have a heat spreader as the sticker, WD is hit and miss, Samsung 980 and 970evo both have one.