Asus ROG Maximus VIII Formula : M.2 heat trapping problem?

[Sokonomi]

I was working on composing a new PC, and I completely fell in love with the formula, however, something is bugging me a bit.. The M.2 drive, why is it enclosed in a plastic box?

M.2 drives are known to get pretty hot, some of them hit up to 110'C/230'F with sustained transfers. Wont it be problematic when you stuff it behind the armor plate of the Formula motherboard?

Id hate to spend the extra money on an M.2, only to have it severely heat throttling all the time.

Anyone have any thoughts or experience with this?

 

[Gingerbread]

Well first of all, most m2 ssds have Dynamic Thermal Throttling (at least that is samsung's way of calling it). Second they get installed inside laptops (which run hotter, have worse airflow and even less space). Third if it's really that much of a problem, you could always remove it, though I doubt it will ever be.

 

[Sokonomi]

I know it throttles, thats part of the problem. If its going to choke under there, speeds would be pretty terrible. Ive seen what an M.2 SM951 strip does when it throttles, its not pretty. Speed takes a dive from 1600MBps to barely 700MBps, at which point the extra cost of M.2 kinda becomes moot (might as well grab a SATA SSD).

Taking the lid off would make it plain ugly, the silver badge along with its RGB LED diffuser is attached to it, and imho thats atleast 50% of the boards aesthetics. If I have to strip it down to make it not catch fire, I might as well just get a cheaper ROG Hero. :')

I'm trying to find out if I can get a spare lid somewhere, because if I can, I wouldn't mind milling a heatsink hole into one. A half square inch little sink on the controller chip is really all it needs, but if I risk botching an irreplaceable part of a 400 dollar motherboard, id rather not attempt it.

 

[SCGT1]

Yes it is terrible and a PISS POOR DESIGN on Asus's part. They should have made it aluminum. I purchased this board thankfully for $70 off at Superbiiz still to me because of this terrible design isn't worth more then a hero price point. It makes the m.2 slot useless. My 950 Pro 512GB with a 120mm 79cfm fan blowing directly onto the panel (right up against the panel in fact) hits 79C in Crystal Mark. Idle is 59C. The premo temp on these is max 45-47C for full performance. I hardly hit one of the advertised speeds on this thing before throttling kicked in.

So I have a Silverstone ECM20 and Enzotech BMR-C1-LE on order with Amazon for temporary. (not that I wanted to muck up my build with an extra addon card this is why I purchased this board to begin with. That and the fact I've been on the Formula line the last three builds (V, VI, now VIII).

This is an extremely poor design on Asus and I'm very displeased with it to say the least. What is the point of tucking a m.2 drive away if it's going to melt down into a nuclear pile of s$#@!

Save your money and purchase a lower line board that has an open slot that you can slap some heatsinks on and get airflow over.

FYI there is at least only one waterblock that I know of either in copper or nickel Aquacomputer kryoM.2 yet their foreign site states Delivery Date Exceeded what ever that means for either version.

 

[Sokonomi]

Its kinda sad, I love the rest of the board to absolute pieces, and im kinda stuck to this one because I want FET watercooling and RGB LED control. I dont think any other board offers this aside from the formula..

As for the PCI cards, im not too fond of having an ugly PCB with massive heatsinks in my watercooled case.

Im half tempted to take a dremel to the lid that covers the M.2 drive so I can atleast have some heatsinks on it, but asus wont supply me a spare lid in case I botch it by accident, so I dont know..

 

[EpIckFa1LJoN]

My question is will it work? Throttling to 700Mbps is still about 200Mbps faster than my Samsung 850 Pro, and the write speed at operating temperature is 3x that. I saw a guy on the ROG forum who said his 950 runs fine with the armor on, but I get that its about $350 US for something that could possibly melt down.

 

[cl-justin]

My question is will it work? Throttling to 700Mbps is still about 200Mbps faster than my Samsung 850 Pro, and the write speed at operating temperature is 3x that. I saw a guy on the ROG forum who said his 950 runs fine with the armor on, but I get that its about $350 US for something that could possibly melt down.

I have the Samsung PRO 950 M.2 with this board and do not notice any throttling at all, but then again I don't do that much extensive transferring. This M.2 is really fast.

 

[Sokonomi]

My question is will it work? Throttling to 700Mbps is still about 200Mbps faster than my Samsung 850 Pro, and the write speed at operating temperature is 3x that. I saw a guy on the ROG forum who said his 950 runs fine with the armor on, but I get that its about $350 US for something that could possibly melt down.

I have the Samsung PRO 950 M.2 with this board and do not notice any throttling at all, but then again I don't do that much extensive transferring. This M.2 is really fast.

Would you care to shove a +10gb file through it and post back the temp and transfer rates after its been going for a minute or 3? Just to put this thing to rest for good. :'3

 

[bnichols1022]

My question is will it work? Throttling to 700Mbps is still about 200Mbps faster than my Samsung 850 Pro, and the write speed at operating temperature is 3x that. I saw a guy on the ROG forum who said his 950 runs fine with the armor on, but I get that its about $350 US for something that could possibly melt down.

I have the Samsung PRO 950 M.2 with this board and do not notice any throttling at all, but then again I don't do that much extensive transferring. This M.2 is really fast.

Hi,

I am currently troubleshooting my 950 pro with this Asus Maximus VIII Formula and was wondering if you could take a look at Samsung Magician and let me know under "PCIe Slot" what it says for "Link Speed Cur:" ?? Mine is currently at 8 Gbps with Max 8 Gbps but I am thinking this should be 10 Gbps for both?

Thanks!

 

[senberg]

Hi,

I am currently troubleshooting my 950 pro with this Asus Maximus VIII Formula and was wondering if you could take a look at Samsung Magician and let me know under "PCIe Slot" what it says for "Link Speed Cur:" ?? Mine is currently at 8 Gbps with Max 8 Gbps but I am thinking this should be 10 Gbps for both?

Thanks!

I have the same mb and drive and it shows Link Speed Cur :8Gbps, Max :8Gbps Link Width Cur :x4, Max :x4 Bandwitdth Cur :32Gbps, Max :32Gbps

I also stress tested it by copying 32 11gb files at the same time. The temperature of the hard drive reported by CrystalDiskInfo 7.0.3 was 77 degrees constant. The throttling seemed to kick in since everything ground to a halt 🙁

I removed the plate cover and did another test with the same files. The temperature again reached 77 degrees even without the cover ... Oh well, guess I can leave it on.

 

[bnichols1022]

Hi,

I am currently troubleshooting my 950 pro with this Asus Maximus VIII Formula and was wondering if you could take a look at Samsung Magician and let me know under "PCIe Slot" what it says for "Link Speed Cur:" ?? Mine is currently at 8 Gbps with Max 8 Gbps but I am thinking this should be 10 Gbps for both?

Thanks!

I have the same mb and drive and it shows Link Speed Cur :8Gbps, Max :8Gbps Link Width Cur :x4, Max :x4 Bandwitdth Cur :32Gbps, Max :32Gbps

I also stress tested it by copying 32 11gb files at the same time. The temperature of the hard drive reported by CrystalDiskInfo 7.0.3 was 77 degrees constant. The throttling seemed to kick in since everything ground to a halt 🙁

Thanks for answering! That must not be my problem then. What speeds do you get? Currently I am getting sequential speeds of 1500-2000 read and 900 write using Crystal DiskMark 5.1.2 x64 with 2gb test files. I am lucky in that my drive never goes over about 55-60 degrees during stress, and averages 41 during normal day to day use.

 

[senberg]

Thanks for answering! That must not be my problem then. What speeds do you get? Currently I am getting sequential speeds of 1500-2000 read and 900 write using Crystal DiskMark 5.1.2 x64 with 2gb test files. I am lucky in that my drive never goes over about 55-60 degrees during stress, and averages 41 during normal day to day use.

1 x 2GiB file
Seq Q32T1 Read 2579 Write 1512
4K Q32T1 Read 863 Write 416
Seq Read 2395 Write 1528
4K Read 57 Write 237

However, I'm having another unrelated problem with my motherboard. It makes noise 🙁 It sounds like an old sata ide drive clattering/reading/writing/ticking/etc. Quite low but since the rest of my system is quite I notice it. I have tried disconnecting every connector to the motherboard and disconnecting every fan. The noise source is located somewhere between the cpu / supremefx / backplate connectors and I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. Any ideas?

 

[bnichols1022]

Thanks for answering! That must not be my problem then. What speeds do you get? Currently I am getting sequential speeds of 1500-2000 read and 900 write using Crystal DiskMark 5.1.2 x64 with 2gb test files. I am lucky in that my drive never goes over about 55-60 degrees during stress, and averages 41 during normal day to day use.

1 x 2GiB file
Seq Q32T1 Read 2579 Write 1512
4K Q32T1 Read 863 Write 416
Seq Read 2395 Write 1528
4K Read 57 Write 237

However, I'm having another unrelated problem with my motherboard. It makes noise 🙁 It sounds like an old sata ide drive clattering/reading/writing/ticking/etc. Quite low but since the rest of my system is quite I notice it. I have tried disconnecting every connector to the motherboard and disconnecting every fan. The noise source is located somewhere between the cpu / supremefx / backplate connectors and I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. Any ideas?

Have you made sure the screws holding on your fan are relatively tight, and also the ones for the backplate? Are you using a fan or water cooler? I use an AIO water cooler (Corsair H115i) and my rig is relatively noisy and the only sort of "rattling" I ever hear comes from the fan that is on my corsair RAM (I've been thinking of removing it since I don't believe it is really needed/very effective).

Would you mind PMing me a copy of your BIOS settings? If you don't know, you can export them in the BIOS.

 

[senberg]

Have you made sure the screws holding on your fan are relatively tight, and also the ones for the backplate? Are you using a fan or water cooler? I use an AIO water cooler (Corsair H115i) and my rig is relatively noisy and the only sort of "rattling" I ever hear comes from the fan that is on my corsair RAM (I've been thinking of removing it since I don't believe it is really needed/very effective).

Would you mind PMing me a copy of your BIOS settings? If you don't know, you can export them in the BIOS.

I fixed it! After six hours of Googling I found out that the capacitors around the processor made noises when turning on and off cores. After disabling the Windows power plan that turned of cores when idle the noise stopped instantly! I'm so relieved.

 

[bnichols1022]

Have you made sure the screws holding on your fan are relatively tight, and also the ones for the backplate? Are you using a fan or water cooler? I use an AIO water cooler (Corsair H115i) and my rig is relatively noisy and the only sort of "rattling" I ever hear comes from the fan that is on my corsair RAM (I've been thinking of removing it since I don't believe it is really needed/very effective).

Would you mind PMing me a copy of your BIOS settings? If you don't know, you can export them in the BIOS.

I fixed it! After six hours of Googling I found out that the capacitors around the processor made noises when turning on and off cores. After disabling the Windows power plan that turned of cores when idle the noise stopped instantly! I'm so relieved.

That's great! I know the clicking you are talking about now, mine doens't do it often, i have my settings set that way. Could you send me a copy of your bios settings please? I'd like to figure out what's wrong with my 950 Pro and I have tried so many things.

 

[EpIckFa1LJoN]

Sorry to comment on this old post, but I should be receiving my 960 Pro 1TB in a few days and it reminded me of this post. But from everything Samsung claims about the 960, that should probably be anyone's first option and eliminate any worry about heat and thermal throttling with this board. I'll update if anything bad happens if not, assume everything is perfectly awesome 😀