Thermal pad for an NVMe M2 SSD

I have one NVMe drive in my main laptop and as the machine is a little slower than new (especially booting the device up) and I have kept it updated and cleaned up restore pointed etc etc What I was thinking if I add a thermal pad to the drive it might be a little faster (every bit counts). Could I expect any extra performance by cooling the drive as the Asus 17" Vivobook does not have one fitted and the air flow system in the machine is very basic and in my mind leaves a lot to be desired. Machine is now just over two years old and generally has given me no problems so making this a no brainer query in a way.

You mean if you cool down the

NVMe?​

I can't think how that would make it any faster as far as performance goes
you are just focused on it because it is a laptop
can you tell me what is the temp for you

NVMe?​

Also a thermal pad on it's own will probably act as an insulator unless it contacts heat conducting (like the aluminium shell of the device) material, a thermal pad is a thermal interface material.
The part of an SSD that requires cooling under high load is the controller, as that will throttle down when the temp goes over a certain threshold, so check the temps of the SSD against the manufacturers specs to see if you even want to bother using a pad.

NVMe drives are not especially Temperature dependent for performance, as we are used to with older, especially Mechanical, drives
Also the addition of any additional material, [The Thermal Pad itself], could affect the cooling of other components which are Temperature dependent by blocking airflow.

Have you tried to optimize the disk? This can improve performance. I know we are not supposed to do that, but I would also defragment the disk once in 2-3 months just in case. Yes, i know this affects the disk's life, but I don't think once in 2-3 months is too bad.

ICIT2LOL said:

What I was thinking if I add a thermal pad to the drive it might be a little faster (every bit counts). Could I expect any extra performance by cooling the drive as the Asus 17" Vivobook does not have one fitted and the air flow system in the machine is very basic and in my mind leaves a lot to be desired. Machine is now just over two years old and generally has given me no problems so making this a no brainer query in a way.

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Unless you are having a massive overheating problem causing your drive to constantly throttle itself, i'd pretty much guarantee that you won't see any difference whatsoever here.

NVMe can heat up pretty quickly up to 100C, but the temperature is generally ignored, because no one expects it to run at 100% for a long period of time, it usually peaks and then stops, just like CPU. But during heavy operations and running in a hot environment, it can be noticeable, especially in an enclosed laptop. I would test the speed while monitoring the temperature. I have a cooler, which brings down the temperature by 10C and yet it is running at 40C in idle. It jumps up by 10C during 1 minute then it steadily keeps increasing.

I recommend using a cooling base with a large fan or dual fans. A simple base that lifts the laptop from the desk is not enough, better to have fans.

spapakons said:

I recommend using a cooling base with a large fan or dual fans. A simple base that lifts the laptop from the desk is not enough, better to have fans.

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Better to have a Desktop :)

Thanks to all I don't have an overheat problem just I asked out of curiosity really my temps range from 42 -55 max so OI m not worried just thought that cooler components conducted electrons faster than hot ones and was just trying to gain some speed. The cooler pad I was thinking of was a copper topped one and the other issue is the poor design of the cooling air flow system in the Vivo book I have. So I shall give it a miss but I do appreciate everyone's replies Oh I meant to add I might just try one of those cooling pads instead.