Acidalie M.2 2280 SSD Heatsink on WD Black SN850 

Thank you for doing all these reviews and putting in the hard work and effort! I ended up buying 3 of these, 2 black and 1 silver in 3 of my systems. They look great and perform really well; definitely lowered the temps to close to what you saw.

This heatsink is an absolute beast. I ended up getting this for my SN850 that is currently sitting inside of a sub 10L case. There's absolutely no air flow so without a heatsink at all, the drive would run into the 85+c range. I had an EK heatsink on it and that didn't bring the temps below 80 but it held steady at around 81-82, I then included a noc A4x20 fan (low to no noise btw) and it brought the temps down to ~62. I then got this heatsink and without a fan it would sit around the 48-49 range. When I include the small noc fan, it dropped the temps down to 42C. Please note all temps were on max load after either a few hours of gaming or benchmarking.

I want to say firstly, thank you for all the work you put into this for us! Your professionalism, attention to detail, and openness to viewer input is amazing. The amount of work you put into your videos is very much appreciated. The smooth switching between different camera angles while not skipping a beat on audio makes for a very pleasant experience and doesn't go unnoticed! You can tell by your responses in the comment section that you really do care about your viewers. Not sure if you'll get a chance to see this, but I just wanted to say thank you for everything.

Hey, thanks for this great video. It really helped me perfectly apply the heatsink to my NVME drive. I got the black anodized version of the heatsink. They've modified the base since your review to have slits in the sides and they must've lengthened the holes too, because it was not at all difficult to seat the screws.

great content testing various NVME heatsinks. got myself this Acidalie one based on your testing results.

So glad i found your channel. I’ve learned so much from your videos. Thank you very much for sharing.. :)

As soon as we see you, we have the feeling that you are a trustworthy computer expert, and this feeling is true. I have subscribed.

Thank you for your review of the heatsinks.

Another great vid, thank you Gil 👍

Amazing video! Thanks so much for this!

Thanks for the detailed video. You convinced me to buy one and OMG! I went from 69C to 48C on the CrystalDiskMark test!

You are my master. You explain a very important topic very clearly. cool :) ) literally

What a great video Gill! I got mine a few days ago(I was between this and the IGlacier8), and it everything went smooth. Temps dropped by 25°C with full load on 1TB MSI SPATIUM. perfect little chunk of heatsink, and looks really good too!

Great solid review on this product. This heatsink is now under $20 plus a 10% discount. Pretty good value with no moving parts. I like this product because often ssd's sold with a heatsink included are $40 or more in additional cost. With this we get better results for half the price. Loved the thorough and practical review. You remind me of some of my firearms instructors from the police academy. Subbed and looking forward to more videos.

Thanks Gil. I just put an Acidalie heatsink on a MAG X570S Tomahawk Max WIFI board in a Core W100 case. I needed a case with good airflow and 5.25 bays for DVD, swappable 2.5 and 3.5 bays, a memory card reader and USB C for the front panel. Let's just say the case is massive overkill but any case to do that job is getting as rare as rocking horse manure. I used a AK620 air cooler. I was concerned that the air cooler would cause clearance issues for this Acidalie cooler. No problem. However, the motherboard has an adjacent header that only has 1-2mm of lateral clearance and the graphics card lock clears the cooler by 0.5mm. Nothing is simple these days. I have a SN850X 2TB in as my NVME drive. Your videos have been a great help working through some of the weird considerations that arise these days and your testing has been very helpful. Why the core 100 does not come with a pile of drive mounting brackets is beyond me. The cut sections of thermal pads does make things awkward for the Acidalie. The instructions are scant but it looked like that are hinting to put pads on the controller not on the NAND. I fitted it the same as you and I will see what temperatures I get. The board has another PCI-E 3.0 NVME slot. I may well put a small cheap earlier generation NVME drive in there purely for swap just to remove one source of wear and tear. Can't stop windows or linux pre-emptively swapping hibernating processes. I may also consider putting temp space there but that will relincuish performance of apps that make heavy use of temp space. I wish I could rent out the spare space in the core W100! Your videos are great and your approach is methodical. It is so much more helpful than fan boy stuff. I haven't finished the build on this machine - a million fans to connect to power and ARGB along with all the front panel stuff. I am using 4x140 fans in the top to blow air down across memory, the vrms and a fair bit should make it under the AK620 to give flow on the Acidalie and the top of the graphics card. 3 fans in the bottom, 2 in the front. The aim is to run them all at relatively low speed but ensure positive pressure exists and it is relatively quiet. The proof will be in the pudding. Thanks again - Greg from Australia.

Awesome stuff!!!!!!! Thanks

Why just now that your videos appeared on my recommendations. Love your vids. Very informative. Subbed

Very helpful!! Thank you so much!

Very interesting... hard to believe, right. Amazing

Very informative and incredibly concise. Just successfully installed mine. Acidalie must have improved them somewhat since 2021. Packaging was in a small box not a round, foam bundle. I didn't have to apply much force at all to align the screws. My stock Asus heat sink was hitting 104F. Oddly enough, after playing 30 minutes of ARMA Gold, the temps still hit 104F (according to CPUID Monitor). After quitting the game, the temps quickly dropped to 96.8 (after 6 minutes). I have the Acidalie installed on top of my Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2T.

I ordered this just for looks before I found your video. I'm excited, have not yet Finnished your video

I learn a lot🌹Thank you⭐️

10:55 love to hear someone put thoughts into their products. Should be the standard.

Awesome video, I will get this for my sabrent rocket 4 2tb q4. Subscribed buddy, keep up the awesome content 👍

I have just received this product and I can confirm the temperature decrease mentionned in this video (I have a Samsung 980 Pro NVMe). I am a satisfied user.

You're videos are my favorite

Great channel! Thank you for reviewing this, I wouldn’t have found this otherwise. I bought it to replace one of my MSI Z690 Edge WiFi DDR4 m.2 covers. The SK Hynix P41 Platinum drive idles and run hot, about 12-15c warmer than my Seagate Firecuda 530. This Acidalie dropped the P41 temps by about 7-8c, so I’m now at 61-62c vs 68-69c at load. The controller temp were even higher - mid-upper 70’s. Not anymore. The drive is mounted in my top slot between my GPU and CPU. No clearance issues with either my AIO block or GPU. Thanks again.

Top 10 underrated RU-vid channels. These videos make RU-vid a great place, keep going with your job.

This one was a Classic🌹

I have watched all of your videos regarding the NVME SSD heat sinks and thermal pad evaluations with great interest. I am impressed with your testing techniques and methods ... near scientific analysis. I was surprised when you opted not to use the bottom heat pad on the Acidalie heatsink test done connected to the motherboard. When you did the very first assembly and test, using the OEM heat pads, the temperature after the test run was at 48C. When you elected not to put the bottom heat pad on and went to a 1.0mm thick heat pad just on the top, you didn't have the same compression which could help to explain the difference ... plus, the lack of a bottom thermal pad. Trust me when I say the bottom of the circuit board can be a significant source of heat dissipation. My very first PC build used a Gigabyte GA-x48t-DQ6 motherboard that came stock with heat sinks on the bottom of the motherboard. I just wish Gigabyte had put thermal pads between the metal bottom stiffener and the X299 Designare EX motherboard I am using now. FYI, there are 2 specific RU-vid videos/tests done on illustrating the significance of heat pad thickness on heat transfer. I just ordered an Acidalie heatsink to use on a WD 750 NVME SSD which I will be putting on my Gigabyte X299 Designare EX motherboard. If I feel I can do better using one of the other 12 W/mk heat pads, but at 0.5mm thickness to keep the better heat dissipation

thanks for doing this very slowly and you explain very well. i have a differetn heatsink but the demo video was too quick and the instructors hands were all over the place.

If you liked this one then you'd be blown away by "Thermalright HR-09 2280 PRO" , give it a try, it's the best NVMe cooler out there.

Wow.. the attention to detail here is CSI level. LOL.. a man after my own heart. Especially the "someone opened this box from the bottom based on the crease, a greasy fingerprint, and traces of DNA on the inside of the box that isn't mine..." 🙂

Thanks

I recently installed this SSD heatsink on my Samsung 980 Pro, Ran a stress test and the results were substantial Without heatsink max temp was 68C, with this heat sink installed max temp was 41C, I'm impressed.

I just added a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO to my system with this Heatsink. At startup, it was running 31C, after the 1st benchmarking (using Samsung Magician) it increased to 35C and after a second benchmarding, it increased to 38C -- not too bad! I'm now going back to add this same heatsink to my 980 PRO, which went to 55C after the first benchmarking and 65C after the second benchmarking with the Samsung supplied heatsink. I hope to comment again after I have those results.

I have 2 installed on my Rog Strix X570-E Gaming II system covering my WD SN 850 2 TB - I used 1 Copper shim on the heatsink side with orange high temp translucent tape on the outside edges. I used 1silicon pad on the bottom.

I ended up getting about 17C improvement at idle on a Samsung 980 PRO 1TB PCIe NVMe Gen4 SSD M.2 with this heatsink and the pads that came with it. Thanks for the review!

Ive got 990pro it was at 91C at test.... got this cooler and dropped to 51 Thanks

received acadalie m.2 heatsink today. and i can confirm they are not the same as the old ones. the fins between the copper pipes are not the same and seems lighter also. i will order elecgear m.2 to compair.

This is the best NVME heat sink of the bunch, if you have the room. This has real heatpipes. This is why it beats the Sabrent's fake heat pipe heat sink. I am buting two and having then heavy copper plated, so I can use them with liquid metal. NOW thats cool !.

I think we have a win!! I think I like this over the next fan m.2 heatsink because there is no moving parts. Where the fan can fail or clog up dust. But if the temp on the fan heatsink is better.. I would have to consider.

Update from my end . Got the Elecgear el 80p installed on my B550 tomahawk / Kingston KC3000 1tb and my lows are 21c and max 30c really impressed . My 970evo sat at 52c at idle

Danke 😊 ist bestellt

When the designer knows the importance of pad compression, you get great results...i think this one is best for single sided drives, while the Sabrent is better for double sided ( I guess) . Also curious about ambient temps! Awesome video ,love it !

Small tip on removing thermal pad plastic covers: pull horizontally instead of up, so they stay kinda more put on the heatsink

Great video. I was debating between this and the sabrent. I'm going for the Acidalie for its performance since I'm investing in a sabrent rocket 8tb SSD. I think it's a double-sided SSD, so I'm going to risk it. Amazon says it's compatible with double-sided ones too so we'll see.

According to the manufacturer, the included Thermal pads are .8mm and are 2W/mk

What an exciting video with some very revealing results! I contacted the manufacturer of the Acidalie through Amazon and found that the pads that come furnished with the cooler are rated at a very mere 2W/Mk and both pads are 0.8 thick. The performance that you achieved at this level of heat transfer was truly mind boggling! This speaks volumes at how well this particular product was designed: both, the pads as well as the construction of the heat sink. Your results definitely merits having further testing with better quality pads. So the question arises as can the thermal pads be upgraded to achieve even better heat transfer results? I believe the answer is yes. I initially thought of Thermal Grizzly, their pads are rated for 8W/Mk. However, I wanted to try to get the most possible heat transfer. Why not go for the overkill? So, I have ordered some 15W/Mk Gelid pads in 0.5 and 1.0 to make sure I get the right amount of fit for my WD SN850 1TB to see if it is possible to get the temps any lower with better heat transfer rate. I am hoping you might try the same. My WD SN850 with Acidalie cooler will be installed on my older i7-5930k MSI X99A Godlike Gaming Motherboard's M.2 slot. I love what you are doing, Gill! Keep up the good work! Can't wait to see what you have to show us with more experimenting! Subscribed! Two thumbs way up! Maybe do a shootout video to determine best actual results of different quality pads?

Was checking around the internet for nvme heatsinks reviews when your channel came up! What can i say? Your effort to supply as much information as you can and your attention to detail are astounding! I've been watching all your nvme heatsink tests and i decided to buy this one! Although it was difficult to find it on italian Amazon since it goes by the brand of "ElecGear"! Could you please tell me what is the thickness of the thermal pads included since i plan to replace them with Thermal Grizzly ones? Also if i choose 0.5 mm thermal pad for the bottom and 1 mm for the top of the nvme do you think i will have clearance/compression problems? Thank you so much!

That's a very nice shirt.

Hello, I want to thank you from Dominican Republic... I have an Asus Prime B560 Plus, 48gb ddr4 ram, intel i5-10500t cpu, id-colling se214xt cpu heatsink-cooler.... Im using a Crucial P5 1tb nvme ssd.... Temp Without heatsink 50c idle and 66c under stress, the controller temp was 55c idle and 84c under stress With acidalie heatsink now is 34c idle and 42c under stress, the controller temp now is 38c idle and 47c under stress Thanks a lot for your time and advice... Keep ahead!

It seems they really intended for the blue pads to be applied to the individual chips; then they have a little space to spread out and it's possibly not that hard to assemble the whole thing, don't need all the force to compress it.

Like your videos very informative & to the point. I purchased the Acidalie & want to share my experience. To those considering doing this it does work. But a word of caution, if your M.2 screw is metal you will be fine. These days some manufacturers use plastic now & it turns in place to hold down the SSD, helpful but bends easily like on the ASUS B660i. The space at the bottom between the SSD and the tray is separated by the thermal pad. There isn't enough room for the plastic ssd hold down to go between and cannot go on top of ssd because its to tall. If it was a screw it wouldn't be a problem. I was very careful & was hoping to get it between the ssd & the tray, I bent the plastic hold down piece. The Acidalie sits in place but not very snug, plastic hold down piece somewhat holding. Not sure how its going to work long term. There is a center hole on top of the plastic hold down piece but can't see any threads so it doesn't appear the piece can utilize a screw insert. Every board layout is different, like he said in the video dry fit and look it all over before moving forward.

Hello sir. After a week of research, I purchased the "Startech Dual M.2 PCIe Adapter PEX8M2E2" card to use with my two 970 Evo Plus drives. As you know the card mounts the drives right next to each other with what seems to be a 1.7 mm separation of the edges. My two .95 inch width tray coolers touch each other's screws and have sympathetic heat sharing. I did mount the Samsung drives in the center of the cooler as each was previously in it's own slot. The drives are only .87 inch in width. The cooling is atrocious, rising up to 68C on long copy tests. Lowest down to 47C at idle. I want to try two Acidalie heatsink but their tray width is 1.01 inches. I'm thinking I can scoot the drive over to a tray edge and have the excess width hang over the outboard areas of each board mounting respectively. I may have to dremel off the "U" part of the the base tray to do this. Do you think this will work ? And have you tried to mount two coolers this close together on any of those dual Nvme cards ?

ACIDALIE has developed an upgraded version of the built-in fan, suitable for m.2 2280 heatsink. It is specially designed for PC, with double aluminum and double heat pipes, high-speed heat conduction and heat dissipation, equipped with 30mm cooling fan, connected to the motherboard fan control socket, 4PIN interface power supply, 8600 rpm, PWM speed regulation. Compatible with single-sided/double-sided M.2 NVMe SSD coolers, easy installation, and high-quality cooling pads provide 4.8W/mk high performance.Model: VB06

Hmmm... it’s a tie between this one & the Sabrent for my PS5 atm. Any chance of performance testing these with the Firecuda 530 as well? Fantastic Videos, as always. Cheers!!

Are you sure when your applying the pressure whilst fitting the screws that your not damaging the ssd as you sat it upon the small " lugs" that were protruding out from the lower part of the heatsink which you noted was stopping the lower thermal pad from contacting the underside of the ssd! This was something I took note of when you were constructing/ fitting thus heatsink to your ssd, even tho it had small drill holes on the underside I still thought contact through the thermal pads would still be necessary!

im currently looking at this. in the UK its up for £28. However there seems to be a clone from ElecGear EL-80P whihc is £10 cheaper. would love to see the differnce

can you test the cooler with the pads installed the right as the blue pads are for the ICs only the way you did it may help it cool more or maybe you will get better cooling with the blue pads installed right

Too bad, we don't have like that in the Philippines 😌

at beginning of the video, but how long did the shipping take. I've been waiting two plus weeks now since purchase. thx in advance keep up the good work

0:50 Just looking at that my jaw dropped. NVME drives have dual thermal zones- the controller, which runs hot and needs to be cool, and the flash chips, which run cool and both perform better and last longer when run warm. So in theory, this design is smarter than having two continuous heatpipes. Actually, I want to see one that's 1 halfpipe on one end and 3 halfpipes on the other instead of 2 and 2!

nice shirt, do I hear Jimmy Buffett playing in the other room?

Could you please test Acidalie (which is the best heatsink so far you tested) with Firecuda 530, please. Thanks a lot!

ElecGear M.2 2280 SSD Cooler, M11 Angle and Height Adjustable Heat Pipe + Solid Aluminum Heatsink with PWM Cooling Fan for 80mm PCIe NVMe and SATA SSD Internal Solid State Drive, Thermal Pads included and ineo M.2 2280 SSD Rocket Heatsink Built with Adjustable PWM Cooling Fan [M9] and JEYI Copper M.2 HeatSink, Passive Nvme SSD Heatsinks with Copper Fins - Finscold Q80 and Vantec ICEBERQ M.2 NVMe/SSD Heat Sink with Thermal Pad (HS-NVME150-RD, Red) and XINSHIS - M.2 Heatsink NVMe NGFF SATA M.2 SSD Heatsink Thermal Module, Compatible for PCIE NVME M.2 2280 SSD Radiator and SATA M.2 2280 SSD Heatsink, with Heat Pipe and Silicon Thermal pad

So is the replacement one from elecgear the same. Looks like pipes are plated, would that affect performance? Is the copper pipe one no longer good. Please advise Boyd

The main problem with all of these Nvme heatsinks is their surface area………….which there isn’t enough of. Do they lower temperatures of Nvme drives? Sometimes yes………but mostly no. Overall, they are not worth the money being charged. Fan…….no fan……heat-pipes……no heat-pipes………makes not one bit of difference. It is not the memory that overheats on these drives. It is the “controller”. If you can drop the controller temperature, then you have the problem beat. The entire drive does not need a heatsink. Sufficient air movement across the drive should be enough to cool these drives. No need for fancy coolers or useless tiny fans that move little, if any air. The fact you mentioned that memory needs to be warmer than the controller is the main reason I only cool the controller using double-sided, non-conductive tape and a copper heatsink. I have been successful with this method in maintaining drive performance by keeping controller temperatures lower then with a full heatsink or none at all.

Brand new setup less than a week old () Setup Fractal Meshify2 case with X2 GP-14 140mm fans 2 front 1 rear and top case exhaust 3 fans on the water cooled CPU radiator ASUS TUF Gaming Z690-PLUS motherboard With stock motherboard supplied heat sink ( flat piece of aluminum length is 2 x the length of the SSD with motherboard supplied thermal pad between the ssd (kingston KC3000 1TB) and the stock heat sink. Room Temp 78F or 25.6C PC up and running under no load for 15 mins stable steady state : Chip 25C / Controller 47C Peek after load run: Chip 32C / 48C Delta rise +7C/ +1 C!!! Ambient approach : 6.4C /22.4 Crazy surprised controller temp only up by 1C!!!!.. With those temps don't really need a flashy cooler...... wow super surprised.... May buy this one just to test it out.....

Would adding a Noc A4x20 fan on top blowing down (attached using double sided tape ) be overkill in something like a sub 10L case?

Where's the baseline temperature without the heatsink? Did I miss it?

If I had that cooler between an RTX3080/3090 and a quad card the fan on the RTX would be blowing hot air in the space and the extreme heat on the back of the gpu's VRAM would be sitting next to the cooler. I'd go with bottom 8X PCIe socket for the Dual NVMe card. maybe?

could you use this on a double sided drive by changing to .5mm Heat-pads? I like it and already ordered but concerned about the pressure. Thank you

Q: Instead of using the (rubber bands) what do you think about using Kapton Tape. Kapton tape's popularity is its chemical resistance. Ranging from -75°C to +260°C Kapton tape comes in both single-sided and double-sided varieties. Your input please.

Is it worth it? I dont know im having an issue now and its that every so 1 - 3 hours this static would come through my speakers and its really annoying its unbearable. So it happened to me the first time with my first NVME I had which already shut down on me and I have this second one installed but after a year and like 2 months the sound is back so im assuming that i might need a heatsink?

ty for your very informative vids... I'm wondering about the WIZMAX WARP Shield H heatsink because it's black & fits in my rig & the cooling fins will line up with the airflow in my case is it any good?? on the fence between this acidalie or the warp tyty :)

looks like they call themselves "ElecGear EL-80P" now ?

ooffff, I should've googled this review of this heatsink before I bought the other Digifast heatsink, had my doubts so I passed on this one xD *Edited for clarity

i dont know why but the acidalie i got over a year ago is so different from new ones and the elecgear also. can you please check this out for me Gill please thx

I just can't get away from a water block for a quad card. EKWB, don't fail me now. Every generation of every component gets smaller transistors, faster clocks, an increase in power draw and hotter. When I breakdown and go open loop water is the only question. Utubers are already crying about DDR5's temp increase. Wait till we get PCIe GEN5 M.2 drives and see the temps. If I need to put my 420mm rads in a window sill with the 140mm fans blowing winter air through the radiator and into the living room, I will.

Hello, can you share the thermometer you are using?

21:48 uh... phrasing?

Minor mistake at 6:25? You said you don't get into M.2 SSD. You should probably refer to that as M.2 SATA. It's a SATA vs NVMe thing. Both techs are technically SSD's.

I would be concerned with this design being so close to the gpu. If the gpu was running at 80c max, wouldn't the m.2 heatsink actually pick up some of that heat and potentially run at even up to 70c?

fan one is better for 10 bucks on amazon hr10 pro

How about thermal grease?

you talk way to much and we are not dumb, hurry up and do the video and stop all the gibberish

Thanks for this video bro! Would you say this is the best heatsink for m2 SSDs in terms of thermals?