Do I need a cooler/heatsink for an M.2 860 EVO?

[lewis02]

I have recently decided to purchase a new 500gb SSD, as my 250gb 850 EVO is running out of space for my games. I am looking at getting an 860 evo, as they are extremely cheap. However, I wanted to get an M.2 one to save me the trouble of opening up my computer to plug a SATA SSD into my power supply.

However I have heard that many m.2 ssds can get quite hot. Would I need any form of external cooling for the 860? Or would the temps be fine? Another thing to consider is that my m.2 slot is right under my gpu, which gets up to 60-70 degrees during games.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Skip the 860 EVO, they are no faster than your 850 EVO because they are also bound by the throughput of SATA 3.0.

If you want faster storage, and your motherboard supports PCI NVME M.2, the 970 EVO is the way to go. There is currently no faster consumer M.2 drive except the 970 Pro, and that doesn't win out by all that much unlike the older 960 EVO vs the 960 Pro. Much closer performance gap this time around.

You don't want an M.2 SATA drive. You want an M.2 PCI NVME drive if you want faster performance. Also, the 970 EVOs have no heat issues, pretty much at all. It is not even recommended to use a heatsink with the 970 EVO models because they simply don't get hot.

No matter what kind of drive you get, SATA or M.2, you are going to have to open up your computer to install it, so if that is the reason you want an M.2 drive, might just as well get another SATA SSD.

 

[lewis02]

Skip the 860 EVO, they are no faster than your 850 EVO because they are also bound by the throughput of SATA 3.0.

If you want faster storage, and your motherboard supports PCI NVME M.2, the 970 EVO is the way to go. There is currently no faster consumer M.2 drive except the 970 Pro, and that doesn't win out by all that much unlike the older 960 EVO vs the 960 Pro. Much closer performance gap this time around.

You don't want an M.2 SATA drive. You want an M.2 PCI NVME drive if you want faster performance. Also, the 970 EVOs have no heat issues, pretty much at all. It is not even recommended to use a heatsink with the 970 EVO models because they simply don't get hot.

No matter what kind of drive you get, SATA or M.2, you are going to have to open up your computer to install it, so if that is the reason you want an M.2 drive, might just as well get another SATA SSD.

The review of the 970 tend to recommend a heatsink for it. Also the reason i want the m.2 860 rather than the sata is because I my cable management at the back of my case isn't great and I essentially need to take apart my pc to access the back compartment. It is a lot easier if i can just insert an SSD into and m.2 slot and move on.

I sort of do want a 970 evo now that i think of it, but i'm not convince that it won't need a heatsink or some form of cooling.

 

[Darkbreeze]

If you plan to use the drive for heavy loads, like very large sequential file transfers, continuously, then yeah, you probably want a good heatsink on it. Avoid the MSI M.2 heatsinks though, they're trash.

For use as a standard OS drive, whether for strictly application usage or for gaming, I don't see an issue and neither does anybody else in any of the more recent reviews that have been done after successive firmware and driver updates for the 970.

To answer your original question better though, no, for the 860 EVO you would not need a heatsink IMO. It does not have the kind of speed offered by a PCI M.2 drive, and does not generate as much heat as the much faster drives do under sustained loads. I've seen a lot of documented testing from review sites showing that in many cases the use of a heatsink on these kinds of drives has INCREASED heat, not diminished it. Probably it would pay to read some reviews of heatsinks in addition to reviews of the drives themselves.

Case in point.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2781-msi-m2-heat-shield-increases-temperatures

 

[USAFRet]

I have recently decided to purchase a new 500gb SSD, as my 250gb 850 EVO is running out of space for my games. I am looking at getting an 860 evo, as they are extremely cheap. However, I wanted to get an M.2 one to save me the trouble of opening up my computer to plug a SATA SSD into my power supply.

However I have heard that many m.2 ssds can get quite hot. Would I need any form of external cooling for the 860? Or would the temps be fine? Another thing to consider is that my m.2 slot is right under my gpu, which gets up to 60-70 degrees during games.

What motherboard do you have?
This has implications on what SATA ports may or may not be disabled by use of an m.2 drive, or even what type of m.2 drive you can or should use.

Depending on where your 850 is currently connected, you may have to get in there and mess around with the cables anyway.

 

[lewis02]

I have recently decided to purchase a new 500gb SSD, as my 250gb 850 EVO is running out of space for my games. I am looking at getting an 860 evo, as they are extremely cheap. However, I wanted to get an M.2 one to save me the trouble of opening up my computer to plug a SATA SSD into my power supply.

However I have heard that many m.2 ssds can get quite hot. Would I need any form of external cooling for the 860? Or would the temps be fine? Another thing to consider is that my m.2 slot is right under my gpu, which gets up to 60-70 degrees during games.

What motherboard do you have?
This has implications on what SATA ports may or may not be disabled by use of an m.2 drive, or even what type of m.2 drive you can or should use.

Depending on where your 850 is currently connected, you may have to get in there and mess around with the cables anyway.

Motherboard is MSI B350 PC MATE

 

[USAFRet]

Motherboard is MSI B350 PC MATE

OK.
That will take either a SATA or NVMe m.2 drive, with no apparent SATA port conflicts.
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/B350-PC-MATE/Specification