960 EVO Heat Issues

[Subsonicbassist]

Hey all, I'm running into a common problem with thermal throttling on my 960 EVO, however I have tried most of the reasonable cooling solutions and still seem to have stuttering issues in games once the drive is heated up. I am using the NZXT S340 Elite case with an H115i Pro cooler pulling cold air into the front of the case and 2 Corsair LL fans as exhaust, one out the back and one out of the top. My M.2 drive happens to live under the GPU (1070ti Strix) and directly behind the airflow path of the radiator. The stock drive would get over 70C and the controller was well over 90C under load. After trying a PCIe bracket to relocate it to the rear of the case, it went down a few degrees but nothing crazy. I then tried to fit a heatsink on it in this location and it wouldn't fit on the bracket, so I installed it back in the original spot on the motherboard (Strix X370 Gaming-F) with an EK heatsink and saw decent results with peaks in the mid 60's under load. I could still tell it is throttling in game, even though all of my games are installed on an 850 EVO that stays under 40C all the time as my 960 is the OS drive. I have tried increasing airflow to the intake fans, but my suspicion is that the hot air coming off the backside of the radiator actually heats up the drive as with increased airflow from the intake fans, the temps actually went up! I tried ramping those down and increasing both exhaust fans, but this made no temp difference, just a louder system. My hope is that the KryoM.2 evo enclosure I just ordered will help, but if that doesn't work I'm out of ideas! I would really prefer to just have the EK heatsink on the drive in it's normal location because I think it looks much better, but that doesn't seem to be an option at this point. Any advice or suggestions would be nice, but please don't respond with "With decent airflow, those drives are fine" or "they never get hot enough unless you are moving huge files" because that has been proven false with this set up. I'm running only the OS and having games installed on another drive entirely and I can still feel the lag and stutter I get in games like Overwatch and Diablo 3 from the throttling.

 

[Groveling_Wyrm]

Just some thoughts....

You should list your system specs so we know about your computer specs, and diagnose better.

1. Putting your h115i at your cool air intake is probably a bad idea. You are dumping a large amount of heat straight into your case, instead of allowing cool air to cool your components. This causes your motherboard, gpu, drives, etc... all to have higher temperatures and stresses them. Maybe relocating your Radiator might be a good thing.

2. With high temps, might do good to find a 40mm fan and blow air across the EK heatsink you have on it. 40mm fans are usually quiet, and give out enough air to drop temps significantly.

3. Might want to check your system to see what programs are accessing so much data that it heats up the sdd. That could help if you could thin those out.

3b. If you are lagging, something is utilizing a large load on your ssd, cpu, or gpu.....might want to use task manager and monitor this....see what exactly is going on.

 

[Subsonicbassist]

Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately on the S340 Elite, the only place to put a radiator is the front as an intake. The rear can only fit a 120 fan and the top a single 140 fan so that's the only config I can run. I would really like to find a place that sells the 3d printable fan mount and screws so I could use the drive in its intended spot with the fan, but I have yet to find for this board. I have the kryo m.2 evo installed now and under a gaming load for a few hours the controller still is getting up to the high 60's but the drive doesn't seem to be throttling much (I can't remember the exact throttling temp but it seemed to be 60C on the controller). Nothing is out of the ordinary according to Task Manager either... I also can't get my Corsair LINK working correctly to control my fans so I have to do a complete reboot and change the fan curve in the UEFI every time I want to control the fan curve so it's getting a bit old lol. I'm gonna work on it a bit more and see what I can find out regarding fan curves.

 

[tinob20]

i think your weak spot is those fans. Those LL RGB are not meant for Static pressure. Be conscious that the S340 Elite doesnt have the most open of front fan intakes cause of the front cover. You need to get proper SP fans, I know it sucks ditching the RGB but if you want RGB like that, then you got the wrong case for it. A H700i would give you lots more options.