SSD died - What is this residue?

[KaiAurora]

I got a BSOD "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED", rebooted and it went into the BIOS. I checked and my main SSD (Samsung 990 PRO) is no longer listed. So I have took apart the machine to see what's going on and I see this residue on the SSD.

 

I can only assume its come from the heatsink that has the thermal pad. Is it possible this has shorted something? I checked my other SSD and it also has some residue on it, so I am going to remove these thermal pads.

 

Has anyone seen this before? The thermal pad / heatsink is what came with the motherboard which is an MSI Z790 Tomahawk.

 

[191x7]

Have you tried re-seating the SSD and booting the machine?

 

I had one of my drives disappear yesterday, came back after a reseat.

[KaiAurora]

7 minutes ago, 191x7 said:

Have you tried re-seating the SSD and booting the machine?

 

I had one of my drives disappear yesterday, came back after a reseat.

I have tried that and I swapped them over in the NVMe slots and all drives are working again. Not sure what happened though, from the photo you can see it is in the slot

[Alex Atkin UK]

58 minutes ago, KaiAurora said:

I got a BSOD "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED", rebooted and it went into the BIOS. I checked and my main SSD (Samsung 990 PRO) is no longer listed. So I have took apart the machine to see what's going on and I see this residue on the SSD.

 

I can only assume its come from the heatsink that has the thermal pad. Is it possible this has shorted something? I checked my other SSD and it also has some residue on it, so I am going to remove these thermal pads.

 

Has anyone seen this before? The thermal pad / heatsink is what came with the motherboard which is an MSI Z790 Tomahawk.

 

Dust, the sticker and liquid from the thermal pad - all perfectly normal and no it wont be conductive.

 

The problem is more likely:

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-damage-has-been-done-to-samsungs-sickly-990-pro-ssds-despite-the-new-firmware-fix/

[KaiAurora]

55 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Dust, the sticker and liquid from the thermal pad - all perfectly normal and no it wont be conductive.

 

The problem is more likely:

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-damage-has-been-done-to-samsungs-sickly-990-pro-ssds-despite-the-new-firmware-fix/

The drive was already updated when I checked with Samsung Magician a while back. I will try to RMA the drive as I don't want to risk loosing data if there is a problem with it.

 

I'll clean up the pads and remove them and see what temps are like without and replace if needed. I guess those are the best options.

 

There is an old post here regarding oils leaking from thermal pads and a mention of MSI which is what my motherboard is and the heatsink that came with it.

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

37 minutes ago, KaiAurora said:

The drive was already updated when I checked with Samsung Magician a while back. I will try to RMA the drive as I don't want to risk loosing data if there is a problem with it.

 

I'll clean up the pads and remove them and see what temps are like without and replace if needed. I guess those are the best options.

 

There is an old post here regarding oils leaking from thermal pads and a mention of MSI which is what my motherboard is and the heatsink that came with it.

 

 

There's a big difference between leaving residue where it touched the component (all pads will do that as they are wet) and leeching it extensively due to heat wicking.  If anything, if a pad doesn't leave residue then its probably already too dry.

I've swapped SSDs on several motherboards from different manufacturers, there has always been residue, it doesn't mean the pad is bad, although I do hate how that pad has a hole cut out of it but then its not usually the NAND you are trying to cool, its the controller.

[KaiAurora]

6 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

There's a big difference between leaving residue where it touched the component (all pads will do that as they are wet) and leeching it extensively due to heat wicking.  If anything, if a pad doesn't leave residue then its probably already too dry.

I've swapped SSDs on several motherboards from different manufacturers, there has always been residue, it doesn't mean the pad is bad, although I do hate how that pad has a hole cut out of it but then its not usually the NAND you are trying to cool, its the controller.

 

Ah could be faulty for other reasons then, the drive didn't show up in the BIOS after multiple reboots etc until I took it apart, cleaned, reseated and checked.

[Alex Atkin UK]

36 minutes ago, KaiAurora said:

 

Ah could be faulty for other reasons then, the drive didn't show up in the BIOS after multiple reboots etc until I took it apart, cleaned, reseated and checked.

Bad connections can happen for many reasons, it doesn't always mean something is faulty.  Its why often the advice given on this forum is "have you tried re-seating your CPU" for example. 

 

I've also seen a lot of videos of people touching the gold connectors on the end of RAM and M.2 cards, that can cause problems over time too as finger oils can insulate or cause corrosion.

 

Sometimes things do just need a clean.