[SOLVED] GIGABYTE Z390 I AORUS PRO WiFi (Intel LGA1151/Z390/Mini-Itx) NVMe Question

[steve-a]

I am thinking about buying the above mb which has two NVMe connectors. One connector is on top of the board and has a heat sink. The manual says the second NVMe connector is located "on the bottom of the board" and has no heat sink. Newbie here but do I need to have some sort of heat sink for this second NVMe on the bottom of the board? If so, do you have any recommendations? This is not a gaming PC and I plan to use mostly for system development/coding.
I plan to use both NVMe slots - one 500 gb NVMe on the top of the board to boot/run Windows 10 and one 500 gb NVMe on the bottom of the board to boot/run Ubuntu.
May be a newbie question but don't want to buy the wrong board. Any help is most appreciated!!

 

[Eximo]

Most NVMe drives don't require a heatsink. They have their own thermal throttle points. Unless you are massively moving data constantly, shouldn't be a problem. They are built for burst loads.

Most these days will have a metal sticker to act as a heat sink.

Some drives react negatively to having a large heatsink on only one side. Really the thing that heats up in the controller chip, the memory actually needs to be warm for best function.

All that said, not really something to worry about. Just don't buy a drive that comes with a tall heatsink, otherwise you will have to take it off to use it on the bottom.

Since it is Mini ITX, aren't that many boards that will offer more. ASUS has their DIMM.2 which is basically a daughter board that sticks up to hold more NVMe storage. Those are on some pretty high end boards though.

 

[steve-a]

Thanks Eximo. that is very helpful!! I appreciate the response