NVME drive what happens to temperature when double speed vs capacity?

So, I have got a 256GB Gen3 NVME WD Black drive which is too small for my purposes now. What I noticed was that the WD drive runs quite hot, and that makes me cautious in getting a larger or faster drive because I don't want to pay for something that is just going to throttle or die on me when I need it most. Indeed, others have cited that there device runs hot too, so it is not a unique issue with that manufacturer.

What I want to know is what happens to temperature of the drive when using

• 2TB Gen3 drive 3500 MB/s, or
• 1TB Gen4 drive 7000 MB/s?

Are they likely about the same temperature, or does the temps double if you double speed or capacity? Are either of them instable without a heatsink? Is Gen4 more temperature efficient than Gen3?
I cannot find much published on the Internet, so I was wondering about people's opinions or experiences on the matter. Thanks.

Gen4 will run hotter than gen3 (and it is faster on Gen4 motherboard).

Do you have a heat-sink on your current drive? Is there air circulation around it?

I have a a 1TB Gen4 and a 2TB Gen 4. When I make a high-speed (> 1 GB/s aggregate) backup of the former to the latter, the temperatures are 35c and 50c respectively. They only raise a few degrees. My Gen3 motherboard has built-in heat-sinks and I use those.

There are two temperatures you should be aware of. One is for the NAND chips and one for the nvme onboard controller. The former is usually what you see displayed (though it may be a composite temperature). The latter runs much hotter and is usually not displayed.

Is Gen4 more temperature efficient than Gen3?

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They vary depending on the manufacturers choices. Some manufacturers are more interested in getting high scores in the usual benchmarks because the go faster buyers will only look at that.

Other manufacturers use a more balanced design. SK Hynix and their other brand ( Solidigm) pay a lot of attention to power consumption and heat.

If you must use gen4, the sk hynix p41 and solidigm p44 are worth looking at and also have a pretty good endurance rating.

For gen3, the sk hynix p31 is in a different league to all the others using much less power and generates much less heat. Mainly because the controller saturates the gen3 bandwidth using 4 channels, whereas all the others use 8 channels. Ideal for laptops or any body that wants low power consumption while still getting class leading gen3 performance and pretty good endurance rating as well.

By that do you mean does Temp/transfer rate? That I do not know.

I think he means the temp goes up during a lot of writing to disk.

iko22 said:

So, I have got a 256GB Gen3 NVME WD Black drive which is too small for my purposes now. What I noticed was that the WD drive runs quite hot, and that makes me cautious in getting a larger or faster drive because I don't want to pay for something that is just going to throttle or die on me when I need it most. Indeed, others have cited that there device runs hot too, so it is not a unique issue with that manufacturer. ....

Click to expand...

Define hot in temps?

Personally, I think too many are worrying about thing not worth worrying about. These drives today are designed to handle the heat they generate without issue. I have two Samsung 970 Pros - 512gig OS drive, 1TB Photography drive. The OS runs at a constant 47ish Celsius temp. Been that way for 4 years now. Zero issues. In fact, I don't even check temps on it anymore. Simply stopped worrying.

Yes, sometimes it reaches 55ish. Still no worry as it's never throttled caused performance issues. I'd read somewhere these drives can go up to mid 70's before you need to worry.

The bottom line these drives are designed to run a little hot so unless the drive starts acting up, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

My two cents.

As far as I know, there is no simple connection between heating and capacity.

It may also be hard to generalize about heat. Drives of the same PCI-E generation and speed may make different temperatures.

(Temperatures double? Are we speaking of Celsius or Kelvin? )

The endurance of a drive (the amount of data that can be written before the drive wears, spec'd in TBW, terabytes written) is directly proportional to its capacity. Drives of a given capacity vary a lot among manufacturers as regards endurance. I'd prefer a high-endurance drive, even if it makes no meaningful difference in use.

If you have an AMD Ryzen 5 5600/MSI B550-A Pro, that has a PCI-E 4.0 M.2 slot. I'd prefer a PCI-E 4.0 drive. The MB has a built-in heatsink for that slot. It should be adequate for any M.2 drive.

I suggest a 2GB drive, if one fits your budget.

Dru2 said:

Define hot in temps?

Personally, I think too many are worrying about thing not worth worrying about. These drives today are designed to handle the heat they generate without issue. I have two Samsung 970 Pros - 512gig OS drive, 1TB Photography drive. The OS runs at a constant 47ish Celsius temp. Been that way for 4 years now. Zero issues. In fact, I don't even check temps on it anymore. Simply stopped worrying.

Yes, sometimes it reaches 55ish. Still no worry as it's never throttled caused performance issues. I'd read somewhere these drives can go up to mid 70's before you need to worry.

The bottom line these drives are designed to run a little hot so unless the drive starts acting up, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

My two cents.

Click to expand...

I agree 100% with this post. I have WD SN750's and SN850's. Never had a care in the world about the temps of any of them. As far as I can tell, they have never throttled.

Worry less, enjoy your PC more.

iko22 said:

What I want to know is what happens to temperature of the drive

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This is what I would suggest


Heatsink: choose the one that fits nicely in your PC case


Thermal pads : between heatsink and NVMe.


You probably wont get the full 3500 speed in real life. I have a Samsung 970 EVO plus in my other notebook (MSI GT73 Titan) that has close
to 10,000 hrs on it and just a few months ago I Benched it and came in at 2500 Write so, do not expect 3500 write from any GEN 3 NVMe.
And, don't worry about heat , they really don't heat enough to throttle. Just use a thermal pad between the heatsink and the NVMe and
you will be fine.

I would suggest other drives but, I'll get hollered at for it. Just ask Glasskuter what I suggested and what she ended up doing.

Flashorn said:

This is what I would suggest

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-MZ-V7S2T0BW-970-EVO-Plus/dp/B07MLJD32L/ref=sr_1_5?crid=26EAUVU5OMS5K&keywords=samsung+980+pro+2tb&qid=1699332702&sprefix=Samsung+980+Pro%2Caps%2C171&sr=8-5

Heatsink: choose the one that fits nicely in your PC case

Amazon.co.uk : nvme heatsink pc

Thermal pads : between heatsink and NVMe.

Amazon.co.uk : thermal pads

You probably wont get the full 3500 speed in real life. I have a Samsung 970 EVO pro in my other notebook (MSI GT73 Titan) that has close
to 10,000 hrs on it and just a few months ago I Benched it and came in at 2500 Write so, do not expect 3500 write from any GEN 3 NVMe.
And, don't worry about heat , they really don't heat enough to throttle. Just use a thermal pad between the heatsink and the NVMe and
you will be fine.

I would suggest other drives but, I'll get hollered at for it. Just ask Glasskuter what I suggested and what she ended up doing.

Click to expand...

Not a PCI-E 4.0 drive? The OP's CPU and motherboard combination supports PCI-E 4.0. I admit that a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro may be more expensive than the 970 Evo Plus.

On the other hand, the real world difference between a Gen3 and a Gen4 M.2 drive may not be worth a premium.

I'm not broadly familiar what's available in M.2 drives at the moment. I have used drives from WD, Sabrent, and a Crucial CT2000 (Gen5) one. All have worked well.

The heatsink built into the OP's motherboard (M.2 slot off the CPU) should be adequate.

Why not look at some tests? For example

I'm using WD Black SN770 in my laptop (specs in My computer section). It runs quite hot. Usually idles at abot 50-50°C composite temp. I solved the "issue" by tuning the fans to kick in at lower temps. In this way there is nearly constant airflow in the laptop chasis and the ssd temps drops. Also unless benchmarking or performing solely ssd operations the other components like cpu will also be involved and the fans will lower the ssd temp.

bobkn said:

Not a PCI-E 4.0 drive? The OP's CPU and motherboard combination supports PCI-E 4.0

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Well, that's not how I read the post.The opening line clearly says that the OP has a Gen 3 NVMe and is too small.
and no mention of Gen 4 . Hence the 970 evo plus

IF the mb does support Gen 4 and would be the primary drive then yes, I was wrong in suggesting the Gen 3 but
could not have known as I didn't read all the other comments.

In which case, this should do the trick if he/she can get his / her hands on one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SK-Platinu...99338008&sprefix=sk+hynix+2tb,aps,142&sr=8-26

There's also the SK Hynix Gold Gen 3 and the Solidigm P41 Plus and the Solidigm P44






It's also good practice to have thermal pads between the ssd and the heatsink.

Flashorn said:

Well, that's not how I read the post.The opening line clearly says that the OP has a Gen 3 NVMe and is too small.
and no mention of Gen 4 . Hence the 970 evo plus

IF the mb does support Gen 4 and would be the primary drive then yes, I was wrong in suggesting the Gen 3 but
could not have known as I didn't read all the other comments.

In which case, this should do the trick if he/she can get his / her hands on one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SK-Platinum-Internal-Compact-Factor/dp/B09QVD9V7R/ref=sr_1_26?crid=21YRS1O2XE6Q6&keywords=sk+hynix+platinum+p41+2tb&qid=1699338008&sprefix=sk+hynix+2tb,aps,142&sr=8-26

There's also the SK Hynix Gold Gen 3 and the Solidigm P41 Plus and the Solidigm P44

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B099RHVB42/ref=emc_b_5_t

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SolidigmTM-Internal-solid-state-Drive/dp/B0B9855VGS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=79FWE6JEQGOU&keywords=solidigm%2Bp41%2Bplus%2Bseries&qid=1699339228&s=computers&sprefix=Solidigm%2BP41%2BPlus%2Ccomputers%2C140&sr=1-1&th=1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Solidigm-P44-2280-PCIe-NVMe/dp/B0BLMBCTZF/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1R6ZW4KMVSPSA&keywords=solidigm%2Bp44%2Bpro&qid=1699339462&s=computers&sprefix=solidigm%2Bp44%2Ccomputers%2C259&sr=1-2&th=1

It's also good practice to have thermal pads between the ssd and the heatsink.

Click to expand...

I assumed that the motherboard in question was the one in "My Computers". That may not have been correct, but the OP's post could have been more detailed.

The built-in M.2 heatsinks of the motherboards I've had that included them also had thermal pads in place.

@Flashorn and @bobkn , you are both correct.

Yes, the motherboard in question is the MSI B550-A Pro.
And yes, the Original Post states that I own a Gen3 NVME card.

The motherboard supports one Gen4 and one Gen3 slot, so I am interested in the possibility of either Interfaces. Your suggestions are welcome.
The Gen3 card that I own is the remains of my old computer build, which was entirely Gen3. It is all I currently have to go by, when tasked with making any decision. Sorry for any confusion.

geneo said:

Do you have a heat-sink on your current drive? Is there air circulation around it?

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Yes, I have an EK-M.2 Heatsink on the current card. There was air circulation around it when in the old computer build. Now I have moved to a new build, air circulation may be a problem. I might need a new case and CPU AIO cooler to increase the airflow ...

Dru2 said:

Define hot in temps?

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Hot to touch is the first observation I made. When I looked into it, I realised that these cards are designed only to operate at temperatures below 70 Celsius. So, on that call, 70C is too hot!

bobkn said:

If you have an AMD Ryzen 5 5600/MSI B550-A Pro, that has a PCI-E 4.0 M.2 slot. I'd prefer a PCI-E 4.0 drive. The MB has a built-in heatsink for that slot. It should be adequate for any M.2 drive.

I suggest a 2GB drive, if one fits your budget.

Click to expand...

The MSI board has two slots. The built-in heatsink only covers one slot, so I would need to invest in a second heatsink, I suppose ...

You mean 2TB? I was thinking of getting one x 1TB drive and one x 2TB drive. But, it has just occurred that I could invest in one x 4TB and keep the second mobo slot spare. If only the temps were tame enough ...

abactuon said:

Why not look at some tests? For example

WD Blue SN580 1 TB Review - Incredible Price/Performance

Western Digital's new WD Blue SN580 is the best budget M.2 SSD drive out there. Despite its impressive price point of $45 it comes with fantastic performance that easily matches most high-end drives. Compared to the SN570, the interface has been upgraded to PCIe 4.0, and the SLC cache is now...

www.techpowerup.com

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Yes. I have seen similar NVME tests from that site. To the sites credibility. all the tests seem to be in the same format. However, the tests favour comparing price/performance. I wanted to see temperature/performance and temperature/capacity benchmarks.

iko22 said:

Hot to touch is the first observation I made. When I looked into it, I realised that these cards are designed only to operate at temperatures below 70 Celsius. So, on that call, 70C is too hot!

Click to expand...

But what is the actual temp?

My WD 850's seem to run around 40C at idle and I see 50-55 max....which is well under 70C and hence reason I don't have any concerns.