m.2 drives, with heatsink or use motherboard heatsink?

Soldato
Joined
29 Aug 2010
Posts
8,160
Location
Cornwall
So when planning my new build I've been looking at motherboard with built-in m.2 heatsinks and then pricing up m.2 drives with no heatsink. But when looking at slightly cheaper motherboards of a different brand I noticed some of them don't have heatsinks for all the m.2 slots. I guess in this case you'd have to buy m.2 drives with a built-in heatsink. Initially I didn't like this idea, but I'm now wondering about it as a possability, not just for the slot without a heatsink but for all the m.2 drives.

What do you guys tend to do, get m.2 drives without heatsinks and use the motherboard heatsinks or buy m.2 drives with heatsinks (and not use the motherboard ones)?

As I see it the pros for using the motherboard heatsinks are:
  • m.2 drives are a bit cheaper without heatsinks
  • bigger heatsinks in theory should cool better?
  • looks nicer

And the pros for using m.2 drives with built-in heatsinks are:
  • much easier to remove/change as you don't have to worry about the thermal pad sticking to the drive.
  • being built-in the heatsink might be attached in a more efficient way than a generic thermal pad and so might be more effective (thus countering the smaller size)
 
Back
Top Bottom