m.2 NVME SSDs that don't run too hot

Very few reviewers ever mention drive temperatures, and most users don't seem to care either - all while NAND has its limits and being pushed to 95C is simply unhealthy for it, and controllers in particular suffer from high temperatures, which can lead to drive failure. Many if not most notebooks have neither space for heatsinks nor airflow to keep the hotter NVME drives within their operating temperature range, creating absolutely unnecessary risk for data stored on them. Thus, I believe this topic is important enough for a dedicated thread.

So far I found two NVME drives that run much cooler than competition, even under heavy load:
* WD SN730
* Hynix P31 Gold
Sadly, they both top out at 1TB, and are only available in 2280 form-factor. Still, that is better than nothing.

In this thread, I propose to discuss the issue, and collect information about other NVME drives that run warm rather than hot. I will update this post once other drives that manage to stay within reasonable temp range inside poorly ventilated laptop cases are discovered.

 

My Samsung 970 Evo Plus runs reasonably within the range, not too hot.

 

@ellalan what about heavy loads? I read in multiple sources that 970 Evo Plus and its cousin PM981a push as high as 95C without heatsink - although maybe it was some old firmware...

 

My WD SN850 2TB gets to about 55C after a run of ATTO disk benchmark, with onboard m.2 with the Maximus 12 Extreme motherboard heatsink (nothing else running), and 42C on the Maximus 13 Extreme with the dimm.2 riser heatsink (ATTO, nothing else running), and 44C in CrystaldiskMark 8.0.1 (tested while playing Overwatch).

 

SN850 is a beast, even outperforms the 980 Pro in most cases...
as for the OP's question, definitely not the 970 Pro, im already idling in the 40s to 50s with a heatsink on

 

@Starlight5,
These are my temperatures while running Userbenchmark, I also have stock heatsink installed in my Nitro.

 

Sabrent Rockets! Craps over any Samsung SSD in real-world sustained performance

Idle:



Right after benchmark:



MAX Temp during the benchmark was 43C and this is with no SSD Heatsink or pads.

@tilleroftheearth

 

Nice. Samsung got owned by Sabrent that offers better performance and space w/o breaking your bank/wallet.
I observed the battery life was better with non-Samsung NVMe's and default MS driver. Otherwise, on heavy IO battery life gets tanked pretty quickly.

 

might be nice and well, but curious to see how long term reliability holds up. after all, a fast drive doesnt help if its craps out on you, taking all your data with it
but yeah, ive recently "built" my first nvme usb stick and put a sabrent rocket 1TB M.2 2242 SSD into a small enclosure, speeds are pretty sweet!

 

It's not just the Sabrent, that specific Phison controller if I recall correctly is paired with Toshiba NAND in that model, so any brand using that combo essentially should have similar characteristics, ie possible the Inland Premium may use the same combo. the Sk Hynix (Hynix custom controller) is excellent only let down by the 1TB max for drive size. One edge Samsung usually has had over competitors putting aside empty drive tests was 1/2 to full drive performance where their controllers usually were the best, haven't tested the 980/980 PRO series so don't know about that series though.

 

I stick with the Phison based M2's and haven't had many issues with them. The thing to check though is the FW version and update it before loading data to them to get the best performance.

I started / still use the BPX Pro 1TB and then added to the mix a CS3030 from PNY and get better performance out of it even though they're basically the same. Also the CS3030 has more useable space vs BPX.

 

BPX just reserves more space out of the box for inherent overprovisioning for better performance/endurance as the drive fills. The Corsair MP series does that too if I recall correctly.

 

I find the BPX to be good but, the CS3030 goes faster on copies. The BPX seems to top out / throttle to about 1GB/s and the CS will push 1.5GB/s. They both get hot but, that's the nature of the M2 drives on sustained I/O.

Now the other test is in my USB enclosure which of course has a max of 1GB/s but, tends to float in the 700-800MB/s. The USB seems to have a bottleneck somewhere as I tested out a few of them and got similar results. The 1.5GB/s is internal testing drive to drive since it has 2 x NVME slots + a 2.5 SATA available. I would be tempted to try the 3.2x2 (20gbps) but, there's no way to do it on the laptop but, there's a couple of PCI cards for desktops if there's a need for that sort of speed.

 

My Samsung (PM951) was super laggy and got very hot touched almost 90C during bootup. Had to replace it with QLC P1 SSD. Its good thing I had Macrium Image for easy restore otherwise i'd been dead. My spinning HDD used for backup went dead after encountering 1 bad sector. It was almost 11-12 y.o. Had to buy new portable HDD.

too bad Hynix P31 Gold was not available in India. It had some of the best 4k/seq speeds I've seen and power efficient till date!

 

interesting topic.
Just curious, wouldn't a short length SSD, such as those 2240 or shorter(commonly found in DELL laptops) be more hotter than the longer ones as the flash chips are more closer and cluttered?

 

It doesn't really have as much to do with the chips being close or more dense on the PCB it's the controller chip being used that makes the difference along with the firmware that is applied to it.

I.E. your RAM doesn't get hot // you don't see heat sinks / fans being applied to RAM in normal applications

 

I voted yes because 95deg is WAY to hot, if it is between a NVME running 43 and one running 46 then No.

 

It all depends on how you're using these. The Samsung I have in my "server" doesn't have temp issues.


01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVME SSD Controller SM961/PM961/SM963




The 2 NVME's in my laptop sit side by side and don't typically have temp issues unless I'm doing huge transfers / backups with sustained use on the controllers.

 

I have updated the firmware for the Samsung 970 Evo Plus, it improved the benchmark slightly but pleased with the performance.