Solved - Question about M.2 connector height in PCIe adapters

[engineer137]

Have any of you seen an m.2 to pcie adapter that can accommodate a double sided heatsink?

The m.2 ports on my motherboard are 8mm from the pcb to the top of the m.2 connector.  They have plenty of clearance between the motherboard and ssd, which allows me to use a double sided heatsink.
I believe they are either 6.7H or 8.5H as seen in this photo:

 

I also own several m.2 to pcie adapters, but all of them use a much shorter m.2 connector.  Most of them are 2.5mm tall. I have one that is 4mm tall, but is is for sata, not nvme.

 

Background info:
I recently purchased a Sabrent ssd (SB-RKT4P-2TB) and installed it into port M2_3 of my MSI EK Carbon X570S motherboard using the stock (single sided) heatsink.  The drive would crash frequently (chkdsk would report it as RAW) but upon reboot, it usually reappeared just fine. (GPT partitions did not report any errors, Sabrent Rocket app tests would all pass). 
I purchased the Sabrent double sided heatsink (SB-HTSS) and the drive has been rock solid ever since.  I really like that heatsink. I track the temperatures in Aquasuite, and that heatsink does a fantastic job keeping the temperatures stable and cool (43C).

I would like to move this 2TB ssd to the PCI_E4 port of my motherboard so I can take full advantage of the 4.0 speeds.  The chipset is 3.0 speeds, and the M2_1 port is already occupied with another 4.0 speed SSD.
I bought the Sabrent m.2-PCIe adapter, but I was highly disappointed in it.  What I would love to find is an adapter that can accommodate the Sabrent double sided heatsink, have you any of you run across an adapter that used one of these taller m.2 connectors?

 

[PDifolco]

52 minutes ago, engineer137 said:

Have any of you seen an m.2 to pcie adapter that can accommodate a double sided heatsink?

The m.2 ports on my motherboard are 8mm from the pcb to the top of the m.2 connector.  They have plenty of clearance between the motherboard and ssd, which allows me to use a double sided heatsink.
I believe they are either 6.7H or 8.5H as seen in this photo:

 

I also own several m.2 to pcie adapters, but all of them use a much shorter m.2 connector.  Most of them are 2.5mm tall. I have one that is 4mm tall, but is is for sata, not nvme.

 

Background info:
I recently purchased a Sabrent ssd (SB-RKT4P-2TB) and installed it into port M2_3 of my MSI EK Carbon X570S motherboard using the stock (single sided) heatsink.  The drive would crash frequently (chkdsk would report it as RAW) but upon reboot, it usually reappeared just fine. (GPT partitions did not report any errors, Sabrent Rocket app tests would all pass). 
I purchased the Sabrent double sided heatsink (SB-HTSS) and the drive has been rock solid ever since.  I really like that heatsink. I track the temperatures in Aquasuite, and that heatsink does a fantastic job keeping the temperatures stable and cool (43C).

I would like to move this 2TB ssd to the PCI_E4 port of my motherboard so I can take full advantage of the 4.0 speeds.  The chipset is 3.0 speeds, and the M2_1 port is already occupied with another 4.0 speed SSD.
I bought the Sabrent m.2-PCIe adapter, but I was highly disappointed in it.  What I would love to find is an adapter that can accommodate the Sabrent double sided heatsink, have you any of you run across an adapter that used one of these taller m.2 connectors?

 

Can't you just remove the heatsink and plug the naked drive in the adapter?

I have a SN850 in one and it's really cool there (like up to 20C less in stress test than when it was on the board M2 !!), a heatsink is useless

[corrado33]

I'd guess some sort of issue with how you mounted it/installed it the first time more than "the heatsink made it stable." 

 

Alternatively, if the heatsink clamps on the ssd, it could be helping a loose solder joint somewhere, and in that case the drive is defective and should be RMAed.

 

I'd try to remove the double sided heatsink and install it again and see if it still gives you problems. 

 

Record the temperatures of the drive with the normal heatsink on it and see what they are and post them here. 

 

 

EDIT: I think you're installing the heatsink wrong. Everyone else online installed it on normal boards just fine, no "tall" connectors needed. 

[engineer137]

Here is additional information about the system:
The X570S chipset on this motherboard does not have a fan (the S is for Silent).  The chipset does have a large heatsink, and I have decent airflow in the case, but I am not super confident in the chipsets ability to handle large data transfers between two very fast m.2 SSDs.  The failures seemed to occur only during heavy use, although I am not sure if the problem is from the motherboard or the SSDs.  The MSI forums did report other users having similar issues.  MSI did release a new BIOS last month which I installed this week, there is the possibility that the BIOS update helped the situation. 
I moved the 2 SSDs around many times between the 3 open m.2 ports (the motherboard has 4 total).  I tried smaller heatsinks, 3rd party heatsinks, and the stock motherboard heatsinks, and I improper mounting seems unlikely. 

 

Both of the SSDs that were dropping out are double sided.  I installed the SB-ROCKET-NVMe4-1TB in the Sabrent SB-HTSS heatsink and that SSD never dropped out after that. I was so impressed with that heatsink that I purchased a second one and installed it over the SB-RKT4P-2TB and that drive has also never dropped out since then.  

You may be onto something about the mounting pressure, but until they have issues again, I would rather not investigate intermittent solder issues quite yet.  The drives have 5 year warranties, and I am not putting any critical data on them right now.  (I also backup my data on a separate TruNAS scale server)

So really, this is more of an optimization issue.  The 1st M.2 slot has a direct connection to the CPU. I haven't even mentioned that SSD so far because it is working fantastic and I am not going to be moving it.  The chipset has a PCI4.0x4 connection to the CPU, which is a bottleneck because downstream from it I have 2 spinning disks, 2 ssds, and various USB devices.

I would love to move the SB-RKT4P-2TB to the PCI_E4 expansion slot.  This would give that SSD its own PCI4.0x4 connection as well as freeing up bandwidth over the x570 chipset.

I own several M.2 to PCIe adapters, but none of them can be used with the large double sided heatsink, and I am leary of removing the SB-HTSS heatsink because it is working so well.

 

The perfect solution is an M.2->PCIe adapter that uses a taller m.2 connector.  It seems so simple, surely someone manufactures this, I just can't find it.  As soon as I add "taller" or "high profile" to my searches, I only get results for high profile adapters (meaning full size PCI brackets).  I need a taller m.2 connector, not a taller pci bracket.  Adding H4.2 or H4.0 to my search gives me plenty of supplier links from mouser and such, so I guess one option would be to buy my own taller connector and solder it to one of my own boards.  My solder skills are above average, and I have a nice Metcal RF iron, but considering that most of these adapters only cost $10-20, modding the adapter seemed like overkill.  I am still hoping that someone in the community has run across an adapter with a taller connector, and hopefully they will chime in eventually with a product recommendation or alternative solution.

[engineer137]

Last update:
I did some more reading in the MSI motherboard manual, and it turns out the PCI_E4 slot is connected also to the chipset, not directly to the CPU.  The manual says the PCI_E4 speed is 4.0x4 and the M2_4 slot is 6MB/s, but I doubt the PCIe slot would be a noticeable improvement over the m.2 slot.  It seems I cannot avoid the chipset bottleneck afterall.

So far I have only found 1 adapter that I think would work with my original plan (if I ever run into this problem on a future build), but it isn

t cheap.  Its the KyroM.2 from Aquacomputer.  The SSD mounts perpendicular to the PCI connector, so the electrical traces shouldn't be in the way. I believe I would be able to cut a hole in that adapter so there would be clearance for the SB-HTSS heatsink.