What should normal/safe operating temperature be for a M.2 NVMe drive?

I have a Samsung 960 Pro 512MB M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe drive. Does anyone know what the normal/safe operating temperature should be for this drive or any M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe based drive? My 960 Pro has an average operating temperature of 44 degrees Celsius. This is during web browsing, having multiple MS Office documents open and running several Virtual Machines.

I have this drive installed on a Gigabyte X299 Aorus Gaming 9 motherboard in the bottom-most M.2 slot (directly below the PCH) which I believe would offer the best thermals.

I'd be grateful for your comments

 

Hey tibo,
according to the 960 PRO datasheet, is supports operating temperatures (measured through SMART) from 0 - 70°C (32 - 185°F). (http://www.samsung.com/semiconducto...nt/Samsung_SSD_960_PRO_Data_Sheet_Rev_1_1.pdf)
Every (decent) M.2 NVMe SSD has an over-temperature protection, so it will throttle it's speed if running too hot.
From my experience a normal working temp is around 35-40°C and around 60-70°C in heavy workload. M.2 SSDs are getting a little hoter than SATA, but no worries. Best thing is to have a case fan in the area of the M.2 which provides a bit of air flow to the SSD surface. I have a 950 PRO cased in an alphacool M.2 SSD cooler, that lowered my working temps by around 3-4°C.
If you want to google around a bit, there are statements from hardcore techs, that suggest, that a higher temperature is better for working/powered flash cells (less wear). Since for unused storage (unpowered) a lower temperature can hold the data longer, but all that is nothing to worry about for average users.

 

Hi Joey,

Many thanks for your reply which I found very useful and informative. I really appreciate it.

 

If you do run into issue with your M.2. like blue screens in the os, or odd issues, try purchasing a heatsink for it. Make sure it fits and is compatible with your board and everything though, which shouldn't be an issue. Something like this...

https://www.amazon.com/EKWB-3830046991737-EK-M-2-NVMe-Heatsink/dp/B073RHHYCM

 

Thanks for the heads up. I'll definetley look into the EKWB heatsink

 

Heat will throttle your SSD it will not crash it.

 

Just adding in here -- never had problems with M2's getting up to around ~55c, such as when covered by a videocard. (in motherboards that do this design wise)

Installing a side chasis fan blowing over the PCI-E slots actually dropped the temps by almost 10c (at first reaching around 64c). Any small amount of airflow is pretty much all that they need.

 

Thanks A2Razor. My Samsung 970 EVO NVME was running very hot, up to 70°C. I put a fan atop my graphics card supported by the liquid cooler's tubes aimed at the NVME SSD. Went down to the low 40's C right away. Working way better! I appreciate the tip.

 

Sorry for being late to the party. I'm getting a lot of mix info on the internet. This forum seem to be the only one where "actual" users give their input.

I'm installing a NVMe in a HP ENVY - 15-as133cl, which is an ultra thin laptop. This will prevent me from possibly adding a heatsink, even a 3mm one. I also won't be able to do all the neat stuff mentioned in here about aiming the cooler or adding a fan.

My question is how hot can Mushkin Enhanced Helix-L M.2 2280 250GB PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe 1.3 3D TLC get?

https://www.poweredbymushkin.com/Ho...ix-l/item/1439-helix-l-250gb-mknssdhl250gb-d8

This NVMe runs at max active 4.5W or 1.36A. I assume that means it will run cooler since the examples above were from Samsung.

Samsung 960 Pro 512MB M.2 PCIe: 2.7A
My Samsung 970 EVO NVME: max active 9-10W (2.7-2.8A)

Can anyone confirm this? Because if this gets too hot, I might have to settle for a SATA instead.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mushkin-helix-l-nvme-ssd

Thanks!

 

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I've been wondering that too. My NVMe/PCIe 3.0/M.2 was running about 54*C after 30 min of CSGO gaming and I place my 2-fan GPU almost directly in front of the M.2 slot that has a heat sink (ASUS ROG Strix MB) and started using software to control GPU fans that have kept the NVMe SSD down to 43*C after gaming. I think the GPU fans are helping cool down the heat sink of the NVMe SSD that is directly sideways from the fans.

Also use ASUS Fan Xpert (in their AI Suite3) to control CPU/case fans and use the graph curve to set CPU fan at 100% at 60*C. My CPU used to get 85*C and now my various cores top out at 68-72*C.

GPU tops out at 58-60*C using MSI Afterburner, but I need to check out ASUS's MB software to do it on it's own.

So my peak temps are:
-NVMe SSD: ~43*C (was 54*C)
-CPU: ~70*C (was 85*C)
-GPU: ~60*C

If these are high, please let me know. I can't imagine how hot a Gen4.0 PCIE mb where NVME's can get to 7,000Gb/s (i'm only getting 3,400GB/s on PCIe gen 3.0)

 

I wonder though, are the temperature readings that we are shown, of the NAND chips or the controller?

 

Getting First M.2 SSD soon for my Main Gaming Desktop, Hopefully stays cool enough, gonna be a Samsung 970 Evo 500GB, where the One M.2 slot is on my board is right above video card, and beneath stock CPU cooler that i'm currently using for Cooling, Do have 3 Front 120mm intake fans, and 120mm Rear exhaust, can add two fans up top if needed

Board is Gigabyte B460M-DS3H, with an Intel 10700

 

How the hell normal m2 drive can have above 70C operating temp ? I haven't seen anything close to 50C on my ADATA 8200 .... normal operation is around 35C ....

 

No m.2 heatsink no airflow inside the case i guess. But yeah it operates around 40c in normal setting.

 

My WD SN 550 runs around 55 celcius, and I have GTA Online running right now in the background. Idle temps are in the mid 30's

 

My Samsung 970 is mounted under the active cooling of my motherboard (Asus Rog strix x570-e), it is around 40-45 degrees at idle, during gaming it can rise to 60ish

 

I am getting temps of up to 58C while gaming on 1TB Samsung 980 Pro as system drive, and 56C on a 1TB 970 Evo data drive. These are in the slots under the M.2 cover (which supposedly doubles as a heatsink) on the motherboard (Asus Crosshair viii Formula). I only have a single GPU so there is good airflow over that part of the board and other system temperatures are fine. It hadn't bothered me until I downloaded the latest version of Samsung Magician, which states that 58C is 'too hot'. I also have a 512GB 960 Pro on a PCIe adapter card and this runs 10 - 15 C lower, so this seems to be the best answer if you want lower temperatures. If I can find a PCIe 4.0 multi M.2 NVMe adapter for a reasonable price I may use that for all the drives.

 

Think it through, your Ryzen offers 16 lanes of PCIe 4.0 to power those x16 slots. When putting 2 cards of any type in there, it will flip to 2x PCIe 4.0 x8 ...
If you then stick say a full x16 card into that slot it will be connected by only 8 lanes.
From what I heard 2 ssds out of 4 are not connected then.
Just before you go out and buy a 4x m.2 adapter card ...

 

Are we talking NAND or ASIC temperatures?