Uncovering the real impact of NVMe heatsinks

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I recently crafted a video on whether you should peel the sticker off your NVMe SSD ( • Should you peel the st... ). In that video, someone left a comment suggesting you could also just leave the heatsinks off and get better temperatures. I thought that was a curious concept and so I wanted to test it for myself. So in this video I take two different motherboards and test both the WD_Black SN850 ( • How to install WD_Blac... ) and Crucial P5 Plus ( • How to install Crucial... ) and test them both with and without heatsinks on different motherboards.
I used CrystalDiskMark with several passes in both setups to test and check for reasonable use cases. I also was already running the machines in different ways to be similar to daily use so I could give a fair test. The results are surprising.
There are obviously a lot of different heatsink designs out there. Neither of the drives I tested had them built onto the drive, instead I'm relying on the motherboard heatsinks and those vary wildly. But it's still an interesting test.
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Obviously there are some caveats to these tests. The results will vary from system to system, depending on how many fans you have, the quality of your motherboard, your environmental temps and the generation of drive you're using.
Both the Crucial P5 Plus and WD_Black SN850 are PCIe gen 4 drives, running on Intel Z790 systems at x4 PCIe lanes. The motherboards are decent and have good heatsinks too. Older gen drives might not run as hot. Drives installed at the bottom of the motherboard, closer to the case fans might not be as hot.
Hardware used in these tests:
Machine 1 (Crucial P5 Plus)
Lian Li Lancool 216 RGB • Lian Li Lancool 216 RG...
Motherboard - Gigabyte Aorus Z790 Elite AX • Gigabyte Z790 Elite AX...
CPU - Intel Core i5-13600K
RAM - 32GB Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 6000Mhz RAM
PSU - NZXT C1200 Gold • NZXT C1200 Gold ATX 3....
GPU - Gigabyte RTX 4070 TI 12G OC • Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti 1...
AIO - Corsair H150i Elite LCD • Corsair H150i Elite LC...
RGB - Lian Li Strimer V2 Plus 600 watt 12VHPWR RGB cables • Lian Li Strimer V2 Plu...
Lian Li Strimer Plus V2 • Lian Li Strimer Plus V...
NVMe - Crucial P5 Plus
Fans - Lian Li P28 • How to connect Lian Li...
Machine 2 (WD_Black SN850)
Asus ROG STRIX Z790-A GAMING WIFI D4 motherboard ( • Asus ROG STRIX Z790-A ... )
Intel Core i9-13900K CPU
Kingston FURY Beast RGB SE 32GB (amzn.to/3NPEuvD)
Lian Li Dynamic Evo ( • I made some mistakes w... )
Corsair HX1500i PSU ( • Corsair HX1500i instal... )
NZXT Kraken Z73 ( • NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB In... )
Lian Li SL120 V2 fans ( • Lian Li SL120 V2 fans ... )
Asus Strix RTX 4090 white edition
Is your M.2 NVMe port slower than you realise? Not all M.2 ports give equal speeds • Is your M.2 NVMe port ...
Crystal Diskmark download - crystalmark.info/en/download/
🏆Big thanks to my super awesome RU-vid members:
SirSpawnsALot, Meatykeyboard, Rawrr483, Aaron Yarden, Space Cannons, Riggs79, Mike S, Jay Shank 007, Jason Morgan, Starastin, Charles Latrom, McFarty, Chief Hao, Kraken Tortoise and Megan Schafer.
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📸 Recorded with amzn.to/3kYrhGP
PLEASE NOTE
Affiliate links*:
Disclosure: Shopping links within the description of this video generate a commission at no extra cost to you. These are added for your convenience but other retailers are available. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Products:
Products featured may also have been sent for free for review/testing purposes. Often these have to be returned by me, but not always. I endeavour to avoid bias in my videos wherever possible and try to give honest, subjective opinions.

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Опубликовано:

16 май 2023

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Комментарии : 56

@jouniosmala9921 Год назад

Lower slots typically come through chipset and share bandwidth with other periphelias and are slower. So the top most slot is the one you should use unless you know that using bottom-slot doesn't hurt performance.

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

That is true.

@Cuhbs Год назад

saw you had the same motherboard for the first part and great to see the heatsink on it works really well

@MrVoayer Год назад

Important illustration of the function and purpose of heatsinks !!!

@glakoblako Год назад

Nice vid Dr. Prawn informative as always.

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

Thank you kindly!

@daviddesrosiers1946 Год назад

Gives you a little bit of an idea of what kind of heat is being generated right at the transistors. You can kind of visualize the temperature gradient through the heatsink.

@MarkJacksonGaming Год назад

-- They make a HUGE difference. I run passive heat sinks on Samsung 990 pro 2tb NVME drives. I have Acdale sinks, under constant tests with disk mark, I can't the drives over 39c. They run gen 4, Glid .5/1.0mm pads where relevant, thermal grizzly between the sync and the spreader. Also did tests first with labels on and labels off the drive. That saved me about 1c.

@CristianCiupitu Год назад

I think you meant Acidalie.

@PeterHarford 6 месяцев назад

Very Informative, my Samsung 970EvoPlus runs at about 54deg using your Methodology on Asus Mbd heatsink.

@Pertamax7-HD 8 месяцев назад

nice detail sir

@TheProvokedPrawn 8 месяцев назад

Thanks

@Liedral 11 месяцев назад

Oh, lucky... just as I start searching for NVMe heatsinks, this video comes up and the motherboard you're using is the one I have.

@TheProvokedPrawn 11 месяцев назад

Nice

@bigpappa_ 8 месяцев назад

Great video thanks for the info.

@TheProvokedPrawn 8 месяцев назад

Thanks for watching

@terrimalia7214 Месяц назад

I don't think the average user's temperature, heat sinks or not, will get anywhere near the temps you're showing - as long as they have sufficient cooling to begin with and the fans are not blocked. Thanks for the video.

@larsjrgensen5975 Год назад

The temperature gun at 30cm away from target measures a circle of 5-10cm diameter depending on model, so you are not measuring the SSD alone.

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

Tbh the internal sensor temps are a better measure of what I'm showing anyway but thanks for the input.

@Sleepy.Time. Год назад

it would be good to list the ambient room temperature you are doing the tests in..i got annoyed with Jay's2cents when he was doing a AIO review and going on about how great it kept the temps when i noticed on his digital thermometer that he had his room cooled down to 18c so of course he had better than expected results to make his sponsor happy

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

That is fair. There are obviously a lot of variables that could impact it which is why I did two passes. Also I live in England, so it's always cold, but it's still a significant difference. Worth testing your own system if in doubt :)

@andrewphoto4750 Год назад

perfect timing tbh i have 1 heatsink wd drive so i had to take of my mobo heasink shield that COVERED 3 slots the other 2 are free

@Pegaroo_ Год назад

The heatsink that comes on the WD850X has thermal pads covering some chips but not others, do we know what chips they don't want to cool and why? And should we / is it worth trying to do the same with other ssds like the 990 Pro for example? or just cool it all?

@Pegaroo_ Год назад

@@simontemplar8719 comments aren't displayed in the same order for everyone

@markotto1767 7 месяцев назад

perfect video. thank you. i always had doubts about motherboard thermal pads cause they are not very thikness and i thought they do the opposite job, but your test demonstrate they are good. is it unsafe to remove motherboard thermal pads when changing ssd ? Is there a risk to damage the chip ?

@TheProvokedPrawn 7 месяцев назад

That I don't know but I don't think it's a problem

@gloriclyoko Год назад

Very helpful video as always! Packed with content. Thank you, Provoked Prawn. One quick follow-up question: when ssd come preinstalled with a heatsink but is removable, such as WD sn850x. Would you opt for the heatsink from the ssd or the one from the board? Thanks

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

The SSD one personally. Though I'm going to test that soon too.

@gloriclyoko Год назад

@@TheProvokedPrawn thank you for your insights!

@Beforedeth 7 месяцев назад

From my research the best method is leaving just the pad on the controller taking it off the nands and using the pieces u remove to put under the controller to the MB the nand need a high temp and the controller needs to be as cool as possible for longevity.

@westfield90 2 месяца назад

I just upgraded my 3 year old 500gb Nvme with a WD 2tb Nvme. I cloned the drive and instantly windows was freezing and random blue screens. I reformatted and cloned again and same results. Put the old one back and it works perfectly. So I’ve ordered a heat sink for the new one and hopefully that will solve this issue.

@amateurwizard Год назад

--READ ME-- What you're seeing is the controller thermal throttling. Flash will perform better under higher temperatures. If you cool the controller and not the flash you will get better performance. However to prevent bit rot you should keep the flash cool when not under heavy load.

@tanmayhembram9249 8 месяцев назад

perfect wanted to see a ssd for temps due to heat sink also a drive without heat sink.

@Adi_vk 4 месяца назад

is heatsink is also necessary with laptop motherboard ?

@swizzler8053 Год назад

A heatsink is very necessary with a pci gen 5 nvme. Keep up the great work and stay safe.

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

Yeah I've got a gen 5 drive for testing but I'm not allowed to show that yet. I'll be revisiting this when I can!

@swizzler8053 Год назад

@@TheProvokedPrawn which one? The corsair one?

@MrKZdemos Год назад

sir how did u make your task manager black?

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

Windows 11 lets you do it.

@JordanG2024 Год назад

Can you use a M.2 NVMe that has a heatsink with a motherboard heatsink?

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

you can't usually use both. If the NVMe has the heatsink already installed, then rely on that because it's probably superior to the motherboard one.

@JB-ue6lf 5 месяцев назад

What if you're only playing games and occasionally surfing the web like RU-vid? I want to buy a new ssd, but not sure if i should go with the one without the heatsink and save a few bucks. Ive heard contradictory things.

@mb-electricalservices Год назад

How about doing a video on how to get that Corsair AIO display to actually work and not show a red triangle all the time regardless of how many rimes you treble check your wiring, uninstall and wipe all traces of the software from your pc etc etc......that would be lovely...👍 Other than that rant, love your content.....that voice of yours is something special. 👌

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

Sorry to hear you've been having trouble. I'd recommend uninstalling iCue completely and downloading the latest version then check for firmware updates for the Commander Core

@mb-electricalservices Год назад

@@TheProvokedPrawn It's ok bud. Just a little rant really. When you invest thousands into a new rig and such a simple but handy thing doesn't work, it kind of upsets you a wee bit. I'll do as you suggest. Thanks for responding. 👍 Mike.

@negOshEAte Год назад

That’s how mine display is when the PC is off with the power plugged in

@soynatrian Год назад

I like pcmr science, good video

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

Thanks Sebastian

@johnpaulbacon8320 Год назад

Interesting

@techluvin7691 6 месяцев назад

In general, they don’t cool the Nvme drives………but cool the controller only with a copper shim and now you’re making a difference. The motherboard heatsinks are a little better because of the increased surface area. You might want to get a little closer with your thermal gun to get an accurate reading of the entire drive.

@codelinx 10 месяцев назад

I watched another video that stated that cooling the controller and not the nand helps more than cooling the whole nvme ....

@MrKZdemos Год назад

all of sudden my waterblock doesnt seem to crazy

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

haha.

@martinarscott3524 Год назад

I've just ordered a Gen4 drive but my motherboard only supports Gen3 so the drive will be running much slower than its max speed (it was the cheaper option surprisingly), should I still use a heatsink? thanks

@TheProvokedPrawn Год назад

Yes

@vinland98trance Год назад

After I watched this video, I tested my PCI 3.0 Samsung 960 EVO 250GB with Crystalmark. I dont have a heatsink on it. The temp quickly got to 68 degrees on the NAND and 90 degrees celcius on the controller. Didnt think a PCI 3.0 drive would get that hot...the speed is about 3500/1500