I was looking at the Asus Z370 motherboards and was wondering about the integrated M.2 heatsinks at the bottom right of the boards. Does anyone have any experience of using those? I wonder how you verify it's making good contact with the chips when you can't see anything?
Asus Z370 M.2 Heatsink
- Thread starter Pocah
- Start date
I'm not entirely convinced they need heatsinks unless your board is getting really hot, in which case you've got more important issues, I think the Samsungs operating temperature is up to 70c, although you wouldn't want run it that hot I'm sure. so I wouldn't worry.
Not sure about the Asus boards but my Gigabyte Gaming 7 has an integrated M2 heatsink only on the top most M2 slot. You can test it by mounting and removing to check for any indentations or imprints in the thermal tape. On the Gaming 7 there was a light impression which means decent contact at least. Although for any of them do remember to peel off the sticker that usually comes on top of the M2. Unless someone has more information to prove me wrong, it's not thermally conductive so chip --> sticker --> thermal tape isn't the best way to achieve decent cooling. Having said that, unless you constantly hammer the M2 it's not getting anywhere near thermal throttling temperature. OS and gaming are very light loads.
Ah good point ( imprints ), never thought of that. I did notice that the board has a foam pad under the M.2 to stop it bending! It only slightly concerned me becuase the heatsink is part of the overall look of the board but if it doesn't contact well with the controller then it will only make matters worse and frankly it would be better to just leave it off.
Unless Asus have truly awful customer service, replacing the thermal pad shouldn't impact warranty at all.