diy Question for my DIY M.2 heatsink

[Shutset]

This is sort of a follow-up to my last thread here.

 

I bought an M.2 SATA SSD for my laptop and I want to cool only the controller chip while leaving the other ones (i.e. DRAM and NAND flash) untouched.

So I bought a be quiet! MC1 Pro M.2 heatsink and managed to cut a piece off with a hacksaw, and smoothed and sides and edges with a filer, to fit that controller.

 

 

 

 

However, I'm worried that any tiny debris from the cutoff ends of the copper heatpipe (or the heatpipe itself) may fall out and damage the electronics inside the laptop

so I wonder if I should glue the sides of the piece with thermal glue or something.

 

If that's all I need to do or if there any better ideas, thanks.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Just dunk the thing in water thatll get rid of any particles though youll prob have to wait abit for it to fully dry even after shoving it in a tissue

[Shutset]

1 hour ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Just dunk the thing in water thatll get rid of any particles though youll prob have to wait abit for it to fully dry even after shoving it in a tissue

Does it matter if its soft or hard water?

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Just now, Shutset said:

Does it matter if its soft or hard water?

Wtf is hard water?

Likely doesnt matter

[OhioYJ]

Just now, Shutset said:

Does it matter if its soft or hard water?

No you won't have it in there long enough to care. 

 

Why didn't you use a regular universal heatsink rather than going through all this work? I buy small heat sinks in both copper and aluminum from ebay all the time for all sorts of projects.

[OhioYJ]

1 minute ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Wtf is hard water?

Likely doesnt matter

Hard water has more minerals in it. Maybe you live in an area where water softeners aren't common. Here we use water softeners to remove minerals from the water. 

[Shutset]

1 hour ago, OhioYJ said:

Why didn't you use a regular universal heatsink rather than going through all this work? I buy small heat sinks in both copper and aluminum from ebay all the time for all sorts of projects.

I'm kinda a perfectionist.

I didn't want a plain old heatsink but a piece of a high end one to maximize cooling for my SSD.

Plus I learned that, by using a full size heatsink on my entire SSD and thus cooling the NAND flash, I actually degrade its performance and lifespan so I have to focus cooling on only the controller. I did consider buying a raspberry pi heatsink but I kinda bought the full heatsink, originally just planning to cut it in half, then refreshed my memory on everything too late.

 

Rather than buy a raspberry pi heatsink, I wanted to see if I could, indeed, cut the regular heatsink to fit the SSD's controller, which I did.

[Shutset]

I dunked the piece in some water and found a lot of debris fall out of the heatpipe so now it's mostly hollow.

Does that actually impact its performance in any way?

[OhioYJ]

2 minutes ago, Shutset said:

Does that actually impact its performance in any way?

Well it would better if it were solid.  Obviously that is not a functioning heat pipe any more so it's just air which will not transfer heat efficiently.

 

This is why I was thinking you could find a properly sized universal heatsink.

[Shutset]

Yeah. I see that now.

So just to be clear, which material should I get? Copper or aluminum?

 

Wait. What if I filled the pipe with thermal glue?

Would it transfer heat again?

 

Or fill it with thermal compound then seal it with thermal glue?

[Poinkachu]

29 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Wtf is hard water?

Likely doesnt matter

To put it in the simplest way possible, in our country :  air tanah (bukan aqua atau PAM).

[OhioYJ]

5 minutes ago, Shutset said:

Yeah. I see that now.

So just to be clear, which material should I get? Copper or aluminum?

 

Wait. What if I filled the pipe with thermal glue?

Would it transfer heat again?

 

Or fill it with thermal compound then seal it with thermal glue?

 

Copper is better than aluminum. However you'll probably find a wider variety of sizes in aluminum. Aluminum will also be cheaper. Either will work fine. 

 

Thermal glue will not conduct as well as being solid metal. Not to mention it would be hard to fully fill the heat pipe. It would be likely you would still be left with air bubbles / air gaps. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

22 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

our country

 

23 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

air tanah

The cleaner stuff you get from the mountains or springs or straight up pumping water out of the ground?

[Poinkachu]

4 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

 

The cleaner stuff you get from the mountains or springs or straight up pumping water out of the ground?

Ground basically. One that contains high amount of minerals, mainly calcium & magnesium IIRC