Nvme heatsink necessary?

Nevakonaza

Nevakonaza

Nevakonaza

Soldato
Joined
7 Jan 2009
Posts
6,625
Is a heatsink really needed for a Western Digital Sn850 nvme gen4 drive?
Or will it be perfectly fine just as is with airflow going over it anyway from the front intake fan's?
It's going to be the main system drive with Windows on but also games etc.
Cheers :)
 
For the vast majority of uses no, you'd only really see throttling if you were writing massive amount of data to the drive.
 
Kautya said:
Think gen4 drives tend to generally run hot, so would recommend to use the heatsink that it came with or use the mobo one.
Click to expand...

Gen 3 too. My 970 Evo Plus 1TB hits 76 degrees when under loads.

I did a lot of researching into the use of NVMe heatsinks and came to the conclusion that it is not necessary at all unless you have very poor cooling (as in no cooling) in the PC case.

Samsung even replied to members who asked them about it on their community forums:

29-05-2020 01:15 AM in Computers & IT

I received this info from Samsung Support when I qqueried my high temps:

A high drive temperature does not necessarily mean that the drive is faulty, especially if it is within the recommended temperature when used.

Please note that Samsung does not manufacture nor recommend the use of a third-party radiator or heatsink on its SSDs, since it is not necessary.

This is because the 970 EVO Plus has advanced thermal control solutions that enhance performance with reduced heat risk. Dynamic Thermal Guard (DTG) technology proactively prevents overheating, and a heat spreader with an integrated thin copper film dissipates heat more efficiently. Additionally, a nickel coating on the Phoenix controller also helps to dissipate heat faster during heavy workload use in order to ensure the high levels of quality and reliability.

You, therefore, do not need a radiator specifically for your SSD 970 EVO Plus.

Please be informed as well that using a heatsink on your SSD will require the peeling of the label on the drive. Removing the label on your drive will automatically void the drive’s warranty and warranty service will no longer be possible.
Click to expand...

Also many comparisons have shown a hotter drive within normal operational temps performs slightly better than a cooler drive due to how flash storage behaves.

Also also, worth noting that when manufacturers state operational temperatures of a drive, they refer to the ambient operational temp the drive is used in, so using the Samsung as an example, they state an operational temp of 0-70 degrees which means the drive can be used in an environment up to 70 degrees, so the thermal threshold of the drive is actually considerably higher anyway and a drive idling what might be considered "hot" at say 60 degrees is in fact perfectly fine. The life will almost certainly still be several years or more.

1uQKG7L.png

I chose this 970 Evo Plus because it's been out a while and I've yet to read any failure issues with it, even though it runs what is considered "hot" - But this sort of hot is actually normal running conditions. My SATA SSD an all HDDs in the case are at the 32 degree mark idle for comparison and this is my first NVMe so wasn't sure what the juice is with temps on these things so did some digging to come to this conclusion.
 
You probably don't need to worry about putting a heatsink on, but it can be beneficial. The now ancient Toshiba XG3 (outlived their NAND division) will overheat depending on what firmware you put on it. When I had a performance oriented FW on it from a Dell precision laptop (that has a heatsink and in airflow), the controller will sit at 60c ALL THE TIME. I remember EA's Anthem keeps crashing my system (XG3 was nude without airflow) because the game continuously writes to the drive causing it to overheat, I ended up switch my CPU AIO cooler to a down-drift cooler and that solved the issue.
 
I am a cooling nut so always my answer on these things is "why not?". It's going to cost you £5 to buy and fit a heatsink so why would you not do it?
 
mrk said:
Mainly because warranty void if sticker removed.
Click to expand...
I must admit that I didn't know removing the sticker voids your warranty with Samsung. But I fitted a heatsink to my Samsung Evo Plus without removing the sticker and haven't noticed any negative effects.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom