Cryorig Unveils Frostbit M.2 SSD Cooler With Dual Heatpipes

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stdragon

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Even if it provided no technical value, the fact it looks cool (pun intended) might be reason enough to get it :D
 

Zaporro

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What is that thing with M.2 SSD thermal throttling? Is this a new scheme for hardware companies to sell "Gamers" obsolete stuff just to milk them from cash?

My Samsung EVO 960 500GB without any heatsink can reach 80 Celsius degrees during extensive benchmarking and still maintain full speeds and do not fall into thermal throttling.

It seems that some one singular case where early design M.2 NVMe SSD throttled speed due to temperature (and possibly bad case airflow) caused shitpost media to blow the issue out of proportion and then open up an avenue for hardware manufacturers to sell something that in reality is not needed.


RGB M.2 heatsinks will be pinnacle of that where people will stat buying them "because i heard it helps"....
 

PaulAlcorn

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You may not realize it, but Samsung's SSDs do throttle and the company even quantifies how much data the SSD can transfer before it engages. From our review of that model --

Samsung attacked thermal throttling from several angles. The Polaris controller runs cool during general desktop use, but it has a high thermal ceiling. Samsung highlights the thin copper strip that it embedded in the 960 EVO's label, but we have our doubts about its effectiveness. For what it is worth, there is a thin copper strip between the adhesive layers and printed layer on the label. The company placed several copper layers under the black paint, and the printed circuit board also features a larger, thicker copper layer that is in closer proximity to the heat source.

Throttling seems to occur in stages to minimize the impact on the user experience. The 960 EVO can operate a full 16 seconds longer than the 950 Pro before the dynamic thermal guard (DTG) triggers and reduces performance to maintain a safe thermal envelope. That allows 60% more data to transfer, which is a full 253GB of data during sequential reads on 512GB-class products.

The throttling can be brief, it typically occurs in spurts (micro-throttling) to reduce the observable impact. That said, if you can transfer 253GB of data before the throttling kicks in, a heatsink really isn't necessary. It is cool, though.
 

me2olive

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It looks like the large heatpipe assembly is removable, perhaps making this the thinnest passive heatpipe cooler I've seen. I wonder how good this would be as a replacement tablet SOC cooler? I have a Z8500-based Dell tablet that really suffers from thermal throttling and have been looking for something thin enough to fit over the SOC without having to butcher the back of the tablet to make enough space.
 

stdragon

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"The Samsung 950 Pro 512GB flagship SSD would enter the thermal throttle state after 63 seconds of reading data and 65 seconds of writing data. The drive would read 158GB of data and write 93GB of data during that time...."

"Samsung increased the thermal performance with the 960 Pro, which can now read for 95 seconds and write for 147 seconds before throttling. Samsung's new Dynamic Thermal Guard technology employs a combination of an improved management algorithm and a novel sticker to combat any thermal throttling issues."


So basically, that thin metallic sticker is all that's needed to sustain 1 and half minutes of sustained throughput before it gets heat-soaked.

For 99.999% of everyone out there, this Frostbit is worthless. But, if you're video editing, I could see the justification in this. But for gaming, the data pulls would be burst-able rates, and I doubt it would be enough to saturate the heat-sink before throttling can occur.
 
Lol. I just thermal glued a small peace sawed of an old chipset cooler on my Samsung 960 EVO and it never reaches more than 40c no matter what. BTW, itwas thermal throttling at about 62c but even that wasn't noticeable in normal work even comparing to my other, SATA SSDs. Did it only to alleviate anxiety about overheating eventually damaging data on it although regular backups eliminate most of it.
I did place a small fan on it but found it unnecessary.
 

cat1092

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When I installed the 512GB Samsung 950 PRO, used a much lower cost & reliable solution.

Rather than sitting a $300 NVMe SSD on a hot motherboard (throttling is the case with mSATA models also), I used a $13 Sintech PCIe adapter with included small fan attached, blowing air directly on the SSD, can be found on Amazon. Speed can be adjusted via a knob & should fanwears out, can pick up another on eBay for $5 or less (may as well get a couple). This keeps my investments cool & has never throttled.

HWMonitor always shows the Samsung 950 PRO NVMe SSD to be running under 36C & this PC has been running hard for over 12 hours.

Have a second setup the same way, only a (normally) warmer 240GB MyDigitalSSD BPX NVMe SSD in another build, temps sometimes reaches 42C, but no higher. It was near 70C on on the Sintech adapter with fan switched off, my mistake in turning the knob the wrong way. Temps dropped to under 40C within a minute after turning the fan wide open. On the build with the Samsung 950 PRO, fan speed is set to roughly 50% & temps are holding steady.

One can most likely purchase at least 5 of these low cost PCIe adaptors for the price of one of Cryorig solution. It sure does look cool, but don't see it fitting under all GPU's, and there's no promise it'll outdo a good old fan blowing air direct onto the NVMe SSD. Anyone with a spare x4 lane can use the Sintech PCIe adapter, or in my case, used my second GPU lane, the performance hit (running at x8) is hardly noticeable.

Those with CPU which has 28-40 lanes (or more) on a capable MB will easily find a x4 slot to be used for this purpose. I'm not spending $300 for a NVMe SSD & another $60-100 to cool it (if this solution proves to drive temps down & works across the board as intended). Have doubts it'll work as well as a fan. The answer is simple, get it away from the hot MB for under $15 per NVMe SSD & enjoy many more years versus having these running hot.

We'll see if Cryorig can get these drives to run below 40C passively under the hardest loads possible. HWMonitor is an excellent tool to monitor temps, Speccy and some other utilities cannot measure NVMe temps & other specs.

Cat
 
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