My Crucial P5 2000GB, why we should not take advice from Reddit.

[Tired9]

So I run a Gigabyte Aorus x570 Elite board, the 2nd M.2 slot is where this drive is placed which is directly under my RTX 3070 GPU.

Reddit: No need for a heatsink by many users in buildapc.

With no other use of components, stress testing the NVME drive I hit 74c which is not very safe according to documentation.
I have not written any actual data to this drive yet but just let it sit in the M.2 slot.

In games which stress the GPU a lot, the drive hit 48c whilst not in use due to the GPU clearly, so this is another 16c on top of the minimum 33c.

I did purchase a heat sink. It is this one (I cannot link to it due to competitors).

Here are my results before and after. Both tests in an open case (Corsair 4000D Airflow) No side panel.

 

[Tetras]

Thermal performance of the Crucial P5 is slightly problematic as the drive can thermally throttle both from reads and writes. The vast majority of M.2 SSDs will throttle only with writes and run unconstrained no matter the read activity. When sitting in a case with zero airflow and hit with a tough non-stop load, the P5 will gradually heat up and start throttling after 200 seconds during reads and 130 seconds with writes. That's around 400 GB of data written in a very short timeframe—something that won't happen very often, if ever. While scientifically interesting, I wouldn't call it a dealbreaker. It would still be nice to see Crucial include a small heatsink in their package to appeal to enthusiast users.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/crucial-p5-1tb-m-2-nvme-ssd/15.html

A little surprising they said that when a review says this (and I saw others say it is a hot running drive), though obviously it depends on usage. The drive hitting 74C on a stress test is pretty normal really and not something I'd be worried about. Under 50C while gaming is also fine for a flash drive. What documentation are you referencing that says 74C is unsafe? Staying under 50c with the new heatsink is pretty good.

 

[HACO]

Honestly 74C for a SSD (whether that's NAND or controller/dram temp) is perfectly fine.

 

[mrk]

The thermals are rated much higher than 74 degrees anyway and throttling will kick in at the 80-85 mark anyway preventing any issue. The flash chips are supposed to be runing hot anyway, it's the controller that ideally should be kept relatively cool. I use my Z690's M.2 heatsink on the 970 Evo Plus but only cut out the flash chip area of the thermal pad so contact is only made with the controller for this very reason.