Which would run cooler?

In a gaming laptop, which do you think would run cooler, the Samsung 860EVO SATA in the 2.5" or the M.2 format?

 

2.5", by a long shot. Even if the m.2 would be faster (peak), it may not be in a sustained, long term use scenario.

 

No SATA SSD suffers from thermal throttling as far as I know, but for loading games, aka static storage an NVMe SSD won't over-heat as well, because it will be in use in bursts of a couple seconds..

 

@senso, yeah, normally, agree. But 'in a gaming laptop' which is used for a few hours at a time with CPU and GPU heating up the entire unit, the m.2 SSD will already be at or above its throttling threshold. Nothing worse than having 'top of the line' components and they all work together to make crap that a decade-old platform with spinning rust could overtake.

 

A throttling NVMe SSD will still trample all over a SATA SSD, more so when compared to an HDD..
And if a laptop is raising the temps of an idle M.2 drive into the 80ºC range, its either a garbage laptop that wont let neither CPU or GPU run at even base clocks, or you are gaming with the laptop on a duvet..

 

Once in a while, I take a trip back to HDD town just to have a sanity check on how fast SSD's supposed are.

You'd be surprised how little difference there is just doing productivity work (other than 4K video editing/etc., of course).

Sure, rebooting the system makes it obvious an SSD isn't in use. As doing any kind of maintenance on it too (updates, virus scans, etc.). But nobody sits there babysitting their system when it's doing that stuff either, and the HDD's are not shaming themselves at all.

On a notebook/mobile platform, of course, an SSD is king. But between a third-gen Core i7 (45W) with a 2.5" 2TB SSD vs. an eighth-gen Core i7 (15W) and an m.2 2TB SSD, the 45W is still the performance king on sustained workloads (storage-wise).

Unless you are blowing air directly on an m.2 drive, it is barely above a good 10TB or larger 7200RPM 3.5" HDD, on sustained usage workloads.

 

I’m asking about the SATA specific version of the 860EVO in both the 2.5” and m.2 form. Their speeds are equivalent and their power usage is very close to one another.

I’m thinking the encasement of the 2.5” would act as a heat sink for the components inside. But would that tend to cool or prevent cooling of the component inside?

My MSI GE65 Raider has space for both types. I’m wondering which to go with If I only install one or the other.

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

I would still recommend the 2.5" as you have that option. Unless your Raider is designed to actually cool the m.2 slot (actively).

 

Haven't had the bottom off yet so see how much room there is around the spare m.2 slot, but one might get away with affixing one of those very low profile, full length heat sinks to the drive. I guess that's known as "passive"?

Thanks for the thoughts.

 

You'll be fine either way with a SATA m.2 or 2.5"