I watercooled an NVME SSD... These results were unexpected!

[@tylercommons6479]

What I got from this video is that Jay should make a "water cooled everything" system since he doesn't recommend it and none of us ever will

[@dfsearles]

I second this motion

[@OGERTEC]

Third

[@SirDaffyD]

4th.

[@jurgmanx4644]

Revenge of the 5th. Do it meow!

[@roadwarrior1961]

Three loop system : 1 - CPU 2 - GPU(s) 3 - RAM and NVME Sit back with your favorite adult beverage and watch Jay's brain come apart running hard tubing - lol

[@cliffpajaro8418]

Just watched this video. I'm a former SSD FW engineer and currently do lots of storage device testing. What you're seeing with the low writes is because you filled up the SLC write cache. You should look at graphs of the bandwidth over time, you can add HWInfo and HWMonitor parameters into MSI Afterburner or pickup a testing utility. And the DRAM in an SSD is predominantly used for the FTL mapping table, there's very little space allocated for caching.

[@DarkAlaranth]

I'd recommend running windows 10's defrag between tests to trim the drive, then wait a few minutes for the SSD to complete it's cleaning. Otherwise it's gonna runout of it's write cache and your testing cache instead of temp effects. Think this is a good idea?

[@GS-hv9rd]

@@DarkAlaranth Cliff is a former Star Ship Destroyer, Forward Warp engineer, Keiran. He doesn't have time for replies... Also, SSDs are fast, but c'mon. We all know we haven't reached FTL warp yet

[@YY15UPC]

@@DarkAlaranth defragging an ssd is not a good idea

[@madhoward]

@@YY15UPC Defrag in Windows is safe. It only trims, rather than reallocates data.

[@TinMan445]

@Bimbomsanything is better than nothing. Gen4 and 5 run hot

[@rohanjamadagni]

The reason for the varying of write speed is the SLC cache filling out. 980 pro is a TLC drive, which means there three bits stored per memory cell. With SLC cache, data is written only 1 bit per cell until all the cells run out. During this the speed is extremely fast. Once you start writing multiple bits per cell the write speeds are slowed down significantly.

[@ChrisM541]

The SLC cache, unfortunately, is the Achille's heel of most M.2 SSD's. I'm wondering though, is there an easy/usable/quick way to flush the SSD's write cache so that we can (hopefully quickly) get back to full speed?

[@Jmcgee1125]

@@ChrisM541 Yeah, don't write 200 GB all in one go. The cache rebuilds itself during periods of inactivity. The time it takes varies per drive but usually isn't too long (

[@74_Green]

@Pyro-Lyro :)

[@Jmcgee1125]

@Pyro-Lyro Do NOT defrag an SSD. M.2 or SATA. All it does is waste write cycles and will provide no performance boost whatsoever. Windows doesn't even give you the option to do it.

[@Stephenm64]

@@ChrisM541 No, there is nothing you can do to flush the SLC write cache, the drive's controller will empty the SLC cache as it can in the background as long as the drive has enough free space. The best you can do is make sure you don't overfill your drive and make sure your drive and OS are using TRIM correctly.

[@andrewt9204]

Anvil's Storage Utility has an endurance test mode that runs indefinitely. He created it back in the earlier days to see how many writes different SSDs could take before failure.

[@canuyank6649]

I was just about to say the same thing. Exactly!

[@kaseyboles30]

Fun fact, if the nand gets cool enough it's speed goes down a tad, though longevity does go up. There actually is an optimal temp for speed in the Nand. The controller you want as cool as possible like most other IC's.

[@AKAtheA]

source? (genuinely interested)

[@viper4060]

@@AKAtheA Gamers Nexus has said this over and over and over again.

[@falkwulf3842]

@@AKAtheA Tech Jesus...AKA Steve at gamers nexus.

[@kaseyboles30]

@@AKAtheA I really don't recall exactly. This was discussed several years ago and I recall I read it in some analysis and related technical document. Though I think a few you-tubers have mentioned it. I'll do a quick check and see what I can find.

[@PantherSerpahin]

​@@AKAtheA There is multiple videos and posts about it on the internet from different people regarding this phenomenon. The big problem is the controllers are only getting faster and in turn hotter which leads to the throttling and performance issues. So actively cooling the controller without activley cooling the NAND is the best overall for the SSD in terms of performance and longevity. techquickie (Is COOLING Your SSD A MISTAKE?) has a good video about it with advice gained from Intel and how the science works behind it. TL:DR Cool the controller as much as possible with a little cooling on the nand is the best way to do it.

[@omegapr12]

To saturate and stress the NVME you could use a program called HDTune (The PRO version) in it, if a drive is completely wiped, (can use windows tool diskpart to do it) you can do a write test (on the benchmark tab) which is already very demanding, but if you go to file -> options -> benchmark and select full test (something along those lines I'm writing from memory) you will be doing a even more demanding test, this is the way I have found to stress test nvme drives as much as possible although when the test ends you still have to start it again but from my experience it takes a lot longer then crystaldisk, I hope this helps you guys! Edit: Don't forget to select the right drive you wanna test, on the drop down menu

[@shawncollenburg9147]

iometer is free, but a little clunky

[@Lutzol]

I would like to see the "all watercooled" build but without monoblock. Separat blocks for SSD, RAM, CPU, power supply, GPU, VRMs.....

[@James-wu8nn]

Same

[@wherearemytesticles]

All watercooled but no fan, that would be awesome! Gonna need a huge rad though.

[@suryakisku3895]

@@wherearemytesticles how u gonna cool rad without fan when fan is the core component for every type of cooling

[@zkilla4611]

@@suryakisku3895 passive cooling

[@suryakisku3895]

@@zkilla4611 passive cooling altogether is different kind of cooling if u r water cooling u will be needing fans to help remove heat from rad

[@j_m_b_1914]

You also have to be careful about write cache on these drives distorting your readings. For instance, if the test is writing less than the size of the units write cache, you may get numbers that are not indicative of normal long-term operation for the drive. So if you want to test how temps affect the read / write speed of the drives, just make sure you remove all other possible variables first. Thanks for your videos! Always look forward to them.

[@jamesbarlett246]

Ive always appreciated Jay taking us along for the ride as he learns. Some of the other channels spoil the fun knowing everything about it.

[@84GDi]

For testing try out HardDisk Sentinel PRO. You can do various surface tests ("write only" too), with user defined data, patterns, block-range (or whole disk), and times (up to 9999). Also great for Smart reading and logging.

[@tranquilitydeep8778]

I just wanted to say the same. HDS or ATTO. HDS surface test works closer to block level. ATTO is file level.

[@Vatharian]

Fun fact: NAND flash has it's operating temperature little bit higher than anyone would expect. But I heard that Intel and Micron's 3DXPoint, as in older Intel's 900 and 905 SSDs has to heat up every single cell to 400°C for write. I purposefully mention cell, as during the write more than one bit is affected (between 9 and 16 if what I heard is accurate). This is why it's so power hungry.

[@куятн]

Damn, Imagine cooking on a pile of the mentioned ssds when they reach 400c Lol

[@capifeed712]

@@куятн LOL give him a break ✌

[@lesserlogic9977]

I've only been using nvme 2 years. I think the highest I've seen is 70s in a Coffee Lake i9 laptop, loves to run hot. My other Samsung 970 evo, and now 980 Pro have never got beyond the 60 C range.

[@PeteJonesViciousKid]

my 980 pro was hitting 60-65. used a pci-e riser on my gpu, and the temps dropped to 45-50. I think the M.2 junction would be better somewhere else. But hey, if we can liquid cool it!

[@lesserlogic9977]

@@PeteJonesViciousKid 😂 truth

[@farmeunit]

@@PeteJonesViciousKid I always wondered why they put a drive there. I have never really watchd temps on my NMVe drives, though.

[@saucyscone]

In Windows, "cipher /w:c:\" on the command prompt will overwrite/encrypt all unused disk space on the C drive. It's for rendering data on free space irrecoverable, and also causes 100% disk usage.

[@Mr.Morden]

Pretty sure that doesn't work on SSDs though.

[@saucyscone]

@@Mr.Morden Just tested this on a 970 Evo Plus. Temperature went from 63°C to 83°C.

[@Mr.Morden]

@@saucyscone Remember that SSDs don't write to the block containing the information to be wiped. It merely marks the block as blank and then writes to the next most unused block. That's wear leveling. Only mechanical drives will respond to commands to overwrite the same block. SSDs require a special tool from the manufacturer to wipe, and then the whole drive will be cleared, not just free space. There are also third party tools that do it, and tools on Linux. There are some drives that support secure erasure but the drive controller has to support it and you need software that uses that specific feature.

[@Bonekinz]

@@Mr.Morden It's not wiping the drive though, it's running an encryption algorithm over the current data in the drive.

[@Mr.Morden]

@@Bonekinz As I said, that's not how a SSD functions, that's only possible on mechanical drives. The SSD file operations occur at the OS level, this method also kills lifetime write durability on the drive and does not wipe anything in the filename table either. Wipe operations function at a low direct hardware level and they can only wipe an entire drive securely. SSDs have no way to correlate the physical location of a file on a SSD with the NTFS/EXT etc filesystem entry. Slack space within each block is also not addressable. Using these tools only kills the lifetime of the drive and does not result in a complete wipe.

[@Del_UK]

1) I have always believed, that it is the controller chip you need to cool down, rather than the memory chips. 2) To test a SSD based drive, try copy/paste from a similar sized drive, using HWINFO 64 to record results. I guess you could have similar results if you did a full backup and then a restore to test.

[@SarahC2]

Yeah memory in SSD's always runs warm... it's the controllers that burn!

[@RyuTheJutsu]

OG Title, "I watercooled and NVME SSD... These results were unexpected!"

[@IIlIIllII]

forever saved in internet history

[@chrisb0418]

@Coolio_Wolfus an

[@emmaorion]

But it should be "a" SSD... Not "an" SSD.. - Grammar Police 2022

[@neondemon5137]

@@emmaorion I think it's still an, since S makes a vowel sound (es).

[@ReaperLPN]

@@emmaorion You say 'an' before a vowel sound. "ess-ess-dee" begins with the vowel sound "ess". - BSc English Language Studies, Cambridge University 2009

[@creeperdrop2099]

I don't remember having seen any SSD stress tests tbh. One thing you could do, especially with Phil, is that you can write a small shell script or a batch script that does it for you, like read a 4 GB file then copy it then delete it then do the whole thing again while measuring speed, latency, etc. I do not think it would be too complicated. Maybe even a fun video idea?

[@Steamrick]

Funnily enough, NAND prefers to be a bit warmer, especially for good data longevity. Excessive cooling does your SSD no favours.

[@bundles1978]

Running things outside of their operating temp can be destructive, this also goes for running things cold. not everything works better with excessive cooling. Car engines and transmissions wear far quicker when they are cold.

[@Ziogref]

I purchased a heatsink for my nvme ssd in the server as it was sitting at like 45c and was spiking to something like 60c+. Despite the server being a 1ru with 7 fans giving plenty of air flow over the drive. I got the heatsink to stop those heat spikes. The drive sits at like 32c and peaks at like 40c. But it only gets that hot after copying over 100gb to it. Server kept throwing alerts at me.

[@Steamrick]

@@Ziogref Probably should've just disabled the server alerts regarding the SSD, but whatever, as long as it works. Most consumer SSDs start throttling somewhere upwards of 70°C (on the controller), not sure about server SSDs.

[@Fenlen]

@@Steamrick I wish it just throttled, the boot drive in my laptop causes a bsod with no meaningful error code and no crash logs when it goes over 70, which was a pain in the ass to troubleshoot.

[@OutOfNameIdeas2]

It's lowers the lifespan. These misconceptions are annoying. A cooled one will survive way way longer than a throttling one. 70c is worse than 40c. Only super low degrees can be a bit bad. But heat is still worse

[@montecorbit8280]

At 7:11 Back in the day, a program called "Eraser"was used to erase hard drives. It had the ability to set a 32 loop of various data in order to ensure the data was erased. I never used that because it took hours. If you filled your hard drive with various data, (You are a KZbinr with gigabytes of video data laying around, you can find data to just fill an SSD), then set it to its Max and wait it will fill it with all zeros all ones several times and mixed with various zeros and ones and it will take a while....no matter how fast the drive is.

[@ScottGrammer]

It's good to see that even the big KZbin channels occasionally make an editing error, not just me. 12:53, 13:00. BTW, any chance of testing some of the fan-equipped NVMe cooler, like the "Titanium Micro TMHSFM3 Nitro M.2 NVME 2280 Heatsink Dual Cooler with 30mm PWM Fan"?

[@techboy95]

yeah i'm surprised though. i really wouldn't expect a channel that is so big to make those mistakes. I guess this is partly why Linus has like 50 employees lol

[@bidlis]

@@techboy95 channel is 3+1, big only in sub/views numbers..

[@JasonW.]

My testing on gen 3.0 and 4.0 drives shows no need for a fan on nvme as long as you have good thermal pads, a decent heatsink (pure copper is best), and a little airflow (minimal, but not stagnant air pocket in case). I tested many nvme and many heatsinks.

[@CantankerousDave]

Jay.exe probably got caught in a brief loop again.

[@justsomeguywashwd_jbm821]

Jay - a couple of things, 1 about this vid & 1 about an older 1. This vid - for stressing an NVME, if HWInfo can monitor throughput/performance, & not just temps, then you could use it for that, & make some sort of batch script to repeatedly write, delete, write again to the drive as many times as needed. Older vid - so I happened to watch that vid where you were modding a plastic model of an engine into a case, & saw the way you went about bending the acrylic (or whatever type of plastic it was, I forget exactly). If you wanted to do stuff like that more often, you could get (or maybe even make your own) acrylic bending machine. If you're not familiar, they do them on Amazon.

[@chrissimmons4503]

There's a reason there's no software out there to stress test an SSD; stressing an SSD legitimately shortens its lifespan. SSD's have a finite number of reads and writes. Debaurer has great vid on SSD life expectancy relating to new cripto types. Its a real concern and shouldnt really be attempted if you actually want to use the SSD afterwards

[@The_Man_In_Red]

Yeah but doesn't really apply to Jay or any techtubers whose job is to push things to their limit and see what happens then report the results to us. Average users definitely shouldn't be stressing their drives to see how hot they get, but videos serve the purposes of demonstration and testing so we don't have to :P

[@raynman6466]

Yeah but that's the same for gpus and cpus besides yhe fact they can cost thousands of dollars and an ssd can be under $100

[@Adroit1911]

Who better to have that type of program than the KZbinrs that don't always plan on using the products they get sent. I think someone at LTT wrote one up for one of their videos.

[@JSTheAnonymousOne]

@@Adroit1911 I remember that one, the $20 SSD video. I believe it was Anthony, I recall some Linux wizardry

[@IzzyIkigai]

Every drive has a finite number of everything. SSDs just have a pretty well defined limit on writes. You won't kill them with a hand full of stress tests tho, even most consumer drives nowadays are rated at 100s to 1000s of TBW. The MP600 has 1.6 PBW, meaning you'd have to *fully* write it 1600 times to even get close to the end of the lifespan. So you'd have to constantly write a 1TB MP600 for multiple weeks before you'd get anywhere near the end of it's lifespan.

[@dr.decker3623]

The Varying Write Speed is because of 4k file writing, it does normal, 2k and 4k in sequence.

[@pcallycat9043]

Nice to see some validation that cooling is largely unnecessary on nvme drives. Suggestion, refrigerate it and show when write speeds throttle at low temperatures.

[@Florian.K.]

I agree, and you probably won't find yourself in a scenario of constantly writing to your drive over and over again very often. One thing to keep in mind though is that in a "real" build you might have considerably higher ambient temperatures depending on your case.

[@Bryanhaproff]

NOT EXACTLY , I have had 2 SSD's NVME Burn out just playing a few of the more modern games. Got 2 SSD coolers one with fan and temp gauge other just heat sink... The ssd without my heatsink and fan just heatsink only .. will over heat when playing certain Titles. As i have fried a couple already I refuse to use an SSD and Game without a cooler. IT IS NO JOKE!

[@legendaryjimbob7685]

@@Bryanhaproff Either you had some lowest quality junk SSD or your SSD's were faulty, had all of my games on SSD's for about close to 3 years now. Currently i have 3 SSD's in my pc and i have never needed to replace or switch any of them. One of them is about 5 years old and its still perfectly working

[@Bryanhaproff]

@@legendaryjimbob7685 No Man's Sky PC .. That game in particular and Satisfactory on Steam Will over heat your drives. I've not had a single SSD make the cut without a heatsink. Skyrim. Fine though, game is great on SSD

[@Bryanhaproff]

@@legendaryjimbob7685 Oh WD BLACK is not a bottom tier SSD

[@ThineHolyBacon]

I've got a 970 Evo that throttled due to thermals during writes because of how the motherboard's M.2 slot was laid out. The motherboard designer, for some reason, decided the best place to put an M.2 drive, with no cover, was directly under the primary GPU's slot. Soon afterwards I changed the motherboard to one were the M.2 slot is above the GPU slot and had a heatsink cover and it dropped down to 78C full tilt.

[@alexandrunisioi6350]

Now you have to do what you said: Do a whole water-cooled system

[@DireThreat]

12:54 tripped me out when. Heard the same sound bit 2x in a row.

[@gucky4717]

Try using an old Samsung 960 Pro (512GB). Even with a Heatspreader AND a Fan blowing on it, mine still gets over 60°C. Without Heatspreader and Fan it throttles at over 90°C. Those Temps don't come from benching it, it is that hot just by being my bootdrive... Many M.2 are also used on ITX-Boards and mounted to the Backside...those cook quite nicely as well in CPU Heatsoup^^

[@kidShibuya]

Yeah I am sitting here with a 960 just idling and it's over 50c with an EK heatsink.

[@JustinDavis90]

My go to for filesystem benchmarking/stressing are IOR and MDTEST. Both are MPI based tests. IOR specifically drills on read and write performance. MDTEST is designed to hammer on the metadata performance. Usually these are done against large networked filesystems, but they can be run against a local filesystem as well. Just be careful not to fill your OS drive by accident.

[@silentdissonance]

One could write a shell script to do this in linux. It would just write over and over to the drive logging the time it took to write, time it took to read, and the temp before/after, flushing cache after every one. I have no idea if linux under windows subsystem has that kind of direct drive access though, to do the same there.

[@barongerhardt]

Yep, dd and sync are your friend. On a large write you can hit dd with a USR1 interrupt to get ongoing stats.

[@christiancurec3574]

Hello Jay, You are the main culprit in building a water-cooled PC. And my best teacher regarding water-cooling until today. I am an usual old (54) Romanian guy but I still love to upgrade and build PC"s. In my water-cooled system I have a Samsung NvMe SSD, and it never worked according to specs. until I cover it with a EK heat-sink. Let me share my two cents: SSD to cool - bad, SSD to hot - bad. There is a middle spot temperature and they will work fine.

[@iownanacura6782]

with time we'll get to watercool an usb stick.

[@sp00n]

Maybe H2testw will work. It was originally designed to test USB sticks and to identify counterfeit sticks that were labeled with higher capacity than they really are, so it tries to write to the stick/disk until it's full. It seems to work for disk drives as well, so probably also for NVMes. You just have to keep in mind that depending on the type of flash memory used, write speed might drastically reduce after a certain amount of used space.

[@anthonyc417]

I feel like I have been seeing way more failures of loops on Reddit time for another how to watercool video. Show how to mix and test the pH of liquids.

[@chrisvandijk99]

Jay make that overkill water cooled everything! would be cool to see, just for fun!

[@daffhead4975]

So the conclusion is that even without a heatsink, it's not running hot enough to actually slow down enough too make any difference in real world gaming situations. So these coolers are just a waste of money.

[@JosephArata]

The way they are marketed, absolutely. But it could be useful for use on an NVME used as a video editing drive for 4k 60 fps footage where the drive is being read/written to almost 24/7.

[@TheHerrHorst]

For longer storage tests try the Microsoft Tool DISKSPD it's for testing storage via cli on servers and if I remember right Chrystal disk mark uses it on its core. The tools allows for long tests which you usually have to do to on enterprise grade storage to fill up all the caches

[@thatdiyguyraymondmonk1225]

I would have done the test while cloning a drive. 2 tb to 2 that is a real worst case scenario.

[@brianschumes4249]

Hey Jay, idk if you've seen, but derbaur uses it, there is a a heavy storage stress test in 3dmark, well according to derbaur it's good at stressing, so idk but it think I trust his word

[@dailyfilmfix469]

I foresee motherboard manufacturers integrating raised NVME SSD slots to accommodate cooling blocks on both the top and bottom for drives with storage chips on both sides. But as you said, it leaves more room for failure with added cooling blocks within a cooling system. Sooner or later we're gonna reach a point where we'll need even more cooling to cool the cooling system!

[@wil8115]

I have a Sabrent Rocket with SB-HTSK.. it was 26 bucks and if the drive lasts longer, money well spent.

[@EndLess1UP]

I was in a micro center discord and everybody was telling me that PCI4 isn't worth it and I was trying to tell them that makes no sense. I left that group.

[@WorBlux]

Depends on what you're going, but it's going to be less true going into the future as consoles have it, and game engines intend to take advantage.

[@scubasteve5659]

3dmark released a storage benchmark about 6 months ago. I haven't used it and don't know how long you can run tests for.

[@drtaru]

Jay: "I change drives kind of a lot..." Yeah, you're the only one, I've had the same NVME for like 3+ years now.

[@rebuiltHK47]

Glad you made this video. I have been wondering my NVMe's temps and keep forgetting to look. Mine is using the stock x470 Taichi MB heatsink and it's sitting (idle) at 48-50C. It's in a 5000D Airflow, and a junky GPU (for now) so it's not getting much heat off that even when gaming.

[@pcfan1986]

Isn't it so, that NAND cells have a recommended operating temperature of about 40°C? Cooling it to much might shorten the liefetime of the cells. So these coolers sometimes are designed to cool not to much, so the heat from the controller heats up the NAND chips a bit.

[@TeslaMaster2]

Jay minding the Mythbusters credo in this video, I like it. "If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."

[@damonbfpv]

When you are so early the title is wrong 😂

[@trylaarsdam]

AIDA64 has a disk benchmark option under "tools > disk benchmark" which has a loop mode under "options > loop mode"

[@TheMugwump1]

A few years back I said I'd never build a complicated hardline custom loop again. Was building a complex custom hardline water loop with expensive distro plate and managed to destroy it when I slipped getting a tube off and snapped the fitting out of the plexi. I've a simple soft tube setup running now that was zero headaches to get running.

[@FinnishArmy]

Jay.. you know you need to make a completely crazy water cool build. Water cool every component. GPU, CPU, Mobo VRMs, RAM, nVME, ect. You know you have to.

[@vladpetric7493]

I really appreciate JayZ's scientific approach.

[@foamysking]

The black magic hard drive test might be a good idea for this testing as it just does a constant read write hammering of the drive from when you hit test until you tell it to stop

[@allinaxford]

My laptop probably does it the best, thermal pad for the controller, but not the storage chips, since the storage lasts longer if it operates at a higher temperature.

[@Nareimooncatt]

16:20 "watercool everything" I've tossed around the idea in my head of a theme build with that in mind. Half red, half blue flex tubing everywhere. The pump/reservoir would have a fake heart covering it with the tubing going in and out through the heart valves. Even better if I could do it in a case similar to the demon case from the Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell series.

[@j_m_b_1914]

One quick production suggestion -- check out a stabilizer or gimbal for your video camera. The camera movements are sometimes slightly jerky and it can be really noticeable at times. Also monitor screen shots don't appear to be white balanced (sorry I used to do some post production work) :) I do like the background of your setup with the multi colored dim lights. That's a really nice touch. Anyway, thanks as always!

[@NunatakPL]

I'm totally not suprised, I bought EK heatsinks when they're appear and well... There was so less improve in temps that I stopped bothering SSD cooling at all.

[@ewenchan1239]

Great video! I started looking at the temps of my Intel 670p Series 2 TB NVMe SSD only because someone referred me to an article by Patrick from STH and I was getting prepared to deploy said NVMe SSD in the MinisForum HX90. I ended up using a EK heatsink (not the waterblock), and that performed took it down from the projected 73 C max temp (as reported by STH) down to ~45 C (based on my initial CFD analyses/simulations/projections). (That was under peak load/max temps. At idle, it was a lot lower than that, somewhere around the mid 30 C range, IIRC.) Sidebar: SOME motherboards only have ONE of the included M.2 NVMe plates for ONE of the drives, even if the motherboard has three M.2 slots. (e.g. both my Asus Z690 Prime-P D4, and my Asus X570 TUF Gaming Pro WiFi motherboards are like that). And in the MinisForum HX90, if you order it barebones, it doesn't come with one. (Not sure if it would come with one even if you ordered it with a NVMe SSD drive.) re: "thermal mass" The heatsink, I would think, should have more "thermal mass" because you literally should have a bigger hunk of metal with the heatsink than you would with just that plate. But as the data shows though, it would appear that the flat plate is better for natural, convective cooling rather than forced convection. re: application of the motherboard included plate or heatsink Also from the CFD simulations that I performed, if you applied the heatsink over top of the sticker so as to not to void your warranty, the max temps would be, I think it was something like 2-3 C higher than if you took the sticker off said NVMe SSD. (In my physical tests in the HX90, I kept the sticker on, so as to not void said warranty.) So that will also be another consideration as well. Great video though! re: stress testing your NVMe SSD tool You might want to try the Flexible I/O tester (fio) tool. I don't think that it has a pretty GUI like CrystalDiskMark, but it would be a lot more potent than CrystalDiskMark for stress testing the drive for max temps. You might even have been able to get away with just using `dd` if you were just writing a gigantic, sequential file (which you can use by enabling Windows Subsystem for Linux in Windows 10) and installing pretty much ANY Linux distro just to be able to get access to `dd`. Again, doesn't have a pretty GUI like CrystalDiskMark, but it might serve this purpose, better.

[@1701odin]

From what I have read from some of the engineers of these NVMe devices, they say that the "cooling too much" is typically not going to be an issue because the temps where too much cooling is problematic for longevity is like 0°C which you aren't going to have in a normal system. For high temp, they said you would generally want to keep them under 70°C. So even with no heatsink the 980 is fine, especially in a case with a little airflow. But the newest 990's, SN850X, etc. do get hot. I have some passive heatsinks on mine and they stay around 50°C. That's all they really need. The motherboard covers should also be sufficient for most things. The PCI-e 5.x ones may need a heatsink vs. being able to just run out in the open.

[@ArchangelHornet]

That mythbusters approach is the best, i hope you do this on future tests as well. Push these stuff to its limit!

[@wickedwonka999]

So I left the peel on the pad of one of those motherboard covers, and the port was behind my 3080. Was fine for like 2 months but eventually the peel melted and fused with the pad, and my 1tb crucial p2 started immediately overheating. It was my boot drive so the whole pc would just crash. Fun rookie mistake.

[@stevefreeman6646]

No problems with ones on 4.0 compiling huge C++ files. Manufacturers test with covers in layout and design of the module. FET junctions work more on voltage (potential) transfer instead of current. Storage is a charge, so refresh uses current. Current is work (e.g. electron/hole movement) and produces heat. Operating at lower temperatures may show longer life, as storage cells are disabled over 5 - 10 years in consumer grades. Covers can provide good RF shielding in a dirty localized RF field. Now, CPU/GPUs are another matter.

[@GlennsFastReviews]

Really interesting and useful! Clearly, a vaned heatsink is - and I think it's obvious why - superior to a flat one, as long as there's good airflow. No point (yet) in using watercooling - the benefit doesn't (yet) outweigh the hassles.

[@sunrun176]

Funny coincidental moment at 18:22 when Jay blows on the drive to cool it down after having hit it with the heat gun and the RGB on the mobo *just happens* to cycle red --> orange --> yellow, so it looks like blowing on campfire ashes, which blowing on makes hotter xD

[@noone5014]

A year later, we now have Gen5 SSD. I wonder if this is now necessary.

[@shauns28]

Its always a small victory to see the video before it's renamed. I will forever remember you water-cooled and nvme for about 3 hours

[@xnonsuchx]

SSD manufacturers’ utilities (e.g. Samsung Magician, ADATA SSD Toolbox, etc.) will also give temps, often on regular HDDs too.

[@ElifasTeQ]

To be honest, I loved this video😅 Investigation of such things and searching for pros and cons is one of the thing why I am watching these videos. coz I can't check it by myself. Thanks!

[@ogremair803]

Now Gigabyte Auros NVMe Gen 5 is here, you should try watercooling that. It will start making sense now watercooling it.

[@jeffreyjeffrey007]

Have you tried the BMD disk test? It can run 5gB read/write chunks in perpetuity and stress your drive.

[@agw5425]

Do you not get longer life and stability out of your M2 nvme if you keep it as cool as is practically possible?

[@emu071981]

NAND flash doesn't really care if it gets hot, it actually performs more reliably at somewhat higher temperatures (40C-50C) and can become unreliable at lower temperatures (

[@martine-e-dee]

To answer your question, yes, I did experience thermal throttling on an NVMe SSD drive without a thermal pad looong ago. Figured it out pretty quickly and even overdid the thing... it was an Asus E-Gaming Strix x299 board with vertical NVMe slot. Right. In. Front. Of. A. Monster. CPU. Cooler. Fan. I put it there. it was quite cool. Tho, had it snapped out, it might have gotten shredded to pieces. That didn't happen.

[@Hostyl176]

"Nine Times"... Jay must be a "Ferris Bueler's Day Off" fan!

[@szaszm_]

12:40 A heatsink without fan can still radiate heat away. That's what they do in space, where there is no air. But it's slow, even convection matters more.

[@foghornmalone4971]

I love the 'Mythbusters' vibe. Always helpful, Jay & Co.

[@foghornmalone4971]

@JayzTwoCents I have emailed your business email address with a very important question, and I would like an answer please. Immediately, please.

[@charlestilley2576]

I've had success with plain old air since upgrading my ASRock Z97 Extreme6 (from 2013-14), with 2 NVMe SSD's, big for it's day & earned a Tom's Hardware Product of the Year badge. Never have used either of the M.2 slots (one 3.0 x4 at 32Gbps max & another at 10Gbps), rather used a $12 Sintech PCIe adapter found on Amazon. Installed my first NVMe, the 1st Samsung retail model 512GB 950 Pro. With fan under load runs 15-16 degrees less than with fan not installed, so certainly worth the $12. Now it's cooling in the same PC a 512GB Samsung 970 Pro, their last model NVMe with true MLC (2-bit) technology. And for now, the smallest fan in the build, believe 50x50x15, original was only 10 thick. That's the only and inexpensive needed upgrade on adapter, a fan with double ball bearings, as the rifle one included begins squealing in less than 2 months at boot. So this is why it's not a great idea not to place an NVMe SSD underneath a large GPU. Give it some airflow (or love), just as with the rest of components, won't throttle when needed the most!

[@TheNuclearGeek]

The overlooked issue with these kinds of things is the pressure & flow consequences caused BOTH by adding another component to the loop and especially in the case of a tiny component like this is the cross-sectional area of the heat sink. There is always a tradeoff with components in a loop. Pressure drops will occur when you keep adding more components to the loop. If the cooler has the smallest cross section (which could very well be likely), that's going to restrict your overall flowrate.

[@Laszlo34]

The write speed variation is due to Sea Hag flying overhead. They come in from the sea to feed and as they fly overhead they cause all sorts of electronic disturbances.

[@ChrisStoneinator]

If it’s above the temp ceiling for the cooler, it literally HAS to come down. Black body radiation plus a better conduction gradient means it cools (as in loses energy) faster the higher the temp is. You’ll always converge on the same temp.

[@1steelcobra]

I got 3 of the EK heat sinks for my new build, for two reasons: 1: Not entirely confident in the two slower drives being left uncovered, since the mobo only came with one SSD plate that only fits in 2 of 3 M.2 positions. 2: I think the nickel fins fill out the board's appearance a lot better than the SSDs on their own would.

[@MarkBarrett]

Gravity is similar to magnetism. Remember I said so. Use a coil of optic fiber.

[@iRaffale]

To have something like cinebench for hard drive, you can see what is done in professional VFX studios. For exemple big simulations (water, fire, smoke...) that can be multiple terabytres each. If you have a machine powerfull enough, you will put some stress on you storage device because the machine needs to read the scene, then write that big file (can be 0.5-10 Go per frame) and then do all of it again. I bet with a worst case scenario the computing time in between every read and write could be very short

[@BigZBeatZ503]

Jay you should do a build with all these crazy things you said could be water cooled. The m.2, power supply, ram, gpu, cpu etc. I would watch.

[@NoizyCr1cket]

Water cooled water pump

[@kiwigeeknz]

I often wonder why you use degrees Celsius. Glad you do as I am from NZ, but surprised you dont use Fahrenheit!

[@fghsgh]

To benchmarks a drive better, I can recommend: - copying a large file off it for reading, or copying a large file to it for writing (then monitor the temperature somewhere else) - on linux, gnome-disks (the standard disk manager) can do benchmarks, or alternatively use dd to read the entire contents of the drive to /dev/null (or write /dev/urandom to it) my uncooled Samsung 970 Pro in a laptop when reading starts around 3.5 GB/s but after a while it climbs up to 80°C and throttles to 1 GB/s

[@davidbutler7225]

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test will do what you want. Tests up to 10TB in size and I'm fairly sure it just sits there and loops continuously until you tell it to stop. I'm too paranoid to actually let it do more than a few loops, so I've never actually tested if it will loop forever, but that's the feeling I get from the UI. The primary use is to show you which video formats your storage is capable of reading/writing. Currently tests for resolutions up to 12K/60, so you'll still have to monitor your temps with other software, but at least you'll really be putting the SSD through the wringer like you want.

[@Shmey]

I built a Mini ITC computer with an admittedly not small case. The motherboard had the M.2 slot on the back of the motherboard. The case had no airflow there. I cut a perfectly sized hole for a heat sink I bought for my drive. I'll have to test thermals now to see if the effort was worth it. I certainly haven't noticed any major issues so far.

[@HappyDude1]

I saw videos were they watercool an ssd m.2 and it performs slower when its to cold

[@vaggelismanousakis6147]

Hey Jay, you could also compare your results by running a performance test to the drive with Samsung Magician also.

[@j_m_b_1914]

I like using Linux / fio to test drives but you have to make sure you clear the page cache to get rid of all possible caching. nvme-cli and smartctl are both good programs to see drive health / temperatures.

[@StillShatter]

"Our open air test bench without a fan blowing on it is kinda the worst case scenario here and its still not overheating" thought I was going crazy 🤣 @ 12:53

[@Stanzinator]

I was thinking that a real world example for this would be to make a couple of Chia plots. that really pushes mine up, had to put a small fan on them to keep them cool.

[@grumpyoldman3597]

is a reason for the write stutter, due to chipset temps, since you used those lanes instead of direct to cpu? P.S. what is with all the bots saying to text them, youtube is really going downhill.

[@MSquared135]

Correct me if mistaken. Small detail but don't recall Jay using EPMD rubber tubing until this video. Its practical, versatile and flexible (maintenance-wise) compared to other alternative soft and hard tubing alternatives for water cooling in addtion to having a certain H.R Giger aesthetic appeal.

[@pctrashtalk2069]

On Amazon there is a "ineo M.2 2280 SSD Rocket Heatsink Built-in Cooling Fan [M3]" It has heat pipes to a heatsink with a small fan. It is taller and the fan noise might be noticeable.

[@emryssambrosias9007]

"...until the first time you go to take a part out and you realize just how much that sucks." This is why I put quick disconnects into all of my builds. Makes it quite easy to swap out individual parts when placed strategically.

[@TheRealLink]

I've seen ATTO give pretty in-depth tests for drives but obviously not still SSD-specific. Might be worth a try. I think AIDA 64 also has some disk stressing tools.

[@richardclark7679]

Just copy a large file, like a VM. Windows shows you a nice little graph of rate vs time. If it slows down, then it's crap. You should be able to run full speed over an entire 200GB file.

[@Dr.TimeWizard]

why isn't it convential to record speeds in gigabytes for drives?

[@GPSJayDog22]

Thank you for covering this topic. My 1 TB (1TBx1) Patriot Viper Gaming VP4100 Series (PCIe Gen4) NVMe M.2 SSDs have a heatsink and I was curious if they would benefit from adding liquid cooling. I do not overclock, I am just an old retired guy gamer, builder, EK Products tard, enthusiast. I'm running separate custom loops on 420mm rads set up push pull. (Retired HAVCR engineer) One for the video cards and one for the CPU only. Great coverage. Thank you again. Jay-N6WIP