Question Never had an M.2, heatsink?

[DarkSunPax]

So, my brother bought a nice custom built computer from a store a few years ago and decided to sell it to me. Overall its well done, but some fans were on the wrong spots on the board. Now, I'm looking at the M.2. The board is an ASUS Prime Z390-A, the manual doesn't say much about the M.2 other than a diagram that I don't quite understand and I've never had a computer with an M.2 slot. Is there generally supposed to be a heatsink overtop of the M.2 SSD? Because there is not one at all. It is held down by a screw with nothing over top of it. I only even thought about it because I saw a youtube video with literally a thumbnail with this exact thing saying don't do this lol. But then I thought theres a chance the vid is just some sorta clickbait and it might not matter?

Thank you for your input!

 

[Unolocogringo]

None of my M.2s have heatsinks.
Only needed for PCIE Gen4 or Gen5 drives.

 

[sizzling]

It’s pcie 3.0 which run cooler. It’s not needed for these speeds.

 

[Endre]

So, my brother bought a nice custom built computer from a store a few years ago and decided to sell it to me. Overall its well done, but some fans were on the wrong spots on the board. Now, I'm looking at the M.2. The board is an ASUS Prime Z390-A, the manual doesn't say much about the M.2 other than a diagram that I don't quite understand and I've never had a computer with an M.2 slot. Is there generally supposed to be a heatsink overtop of the M.2 SSD? Because there is not one at all. It is held down by a screw with nothing over top of it. I only even thought about it because I saw a youtube video with literally a thumbnail with this exact thing saying don't do this lol. But then I thought theres a chance the vid is just some sorta clickbait and it might not matter?

Thank you for your input!

Hello!

I have heatsinks on all 3 of my M.2 NVMe SSDs (provided by the motherboard manufacturer).
It will work without a heatsink too, but cooler is always better, so why not buying one? (It's pretty cheap).

 

[Unolocogringo]

All 3 of mine are heated by video card exhaust. So a heatsink would probably increase temps, not lower them.

 

[Lafong]

Motherboards of the Z390 era likely didn't include heatsinks for M.2 drives.

M.2 drives sold at the time Z390 was introduced (2018?) were typically sold without heatsinks.

If you are highly concerned about temps and think that there is a strong correlation between heat and longevity, maybe buy an add-on heatsink to ease your anxiety.

I've pounded my M.2 with no heatsink with 3 TB of writes in 6 hours. That's as much as I normally write in 6 months. Max temp reached was 72.

The drive has never throttled. It wouldn't throttle until it hit 80. Typical temps are maybe 5 degrees higher than a standard 2.5 inch SSD.

 

[Endre]

Motherboards of the Z390 era likely didn't include heatsinks for M.2 drives.

M.2 drives sold at the time Z390 was introduced (2018?) were typically sold without heatsinks.

If you are highly concerned about temps and think that there is a strong correlation between heat and longevity, maybe buy an add-on heatsink to ease your anxiety.

I've pounded my M.2 with no heatsink with 3 TB of writes in 6 hours. That's as much as I normally write in 6 months. Max temp reached was 72.

The drive has never throttled. It wouldn't throttle until it hit 80. Typical temps are maybe 5 degrees higher than a standard 2.5 inch SSD.

Hello!

Gigabyte did provide heatsinks on all 3 M.2 slots of the Z390 Aorus Master. They didn't cheap out.