Asus Rog Strix X570 & NVMe overheating

[enios]

Hi everyone

I have a Samsung 970 Evo Plus on the first NVMe slot, on my Asus X570 motherboard.

the location is a bit cramped, with the Dark Rock Pro CPU Cooler above it, and a massive RTX 2080 below it.
Case is Phanteks Eclipse P600S.

It always overheated from the beginning, rarely going below 58°C in idle in Samsung Magician, and often going above 60°C.

You might think this is a normal temperature for NVMe but it often triggered sudden reboots.
I bought Thermal Grizzly Minus 8 pads to replace stock pads recently and it didn't help much.

I added a Noctua 60mm fan in front of it, loose, sitting on top of the GPU, between the cooler and the exhaust fan, perpendicular to both.

I tried both sides, meaning the fan was either blowing air on the NVMe heatsink or pulling air from it. Things improved initially, with temps dipping below 50°C for the first time.
Now it's back between 55° and 58°C, but no longer above and never triggered a reboot since then.

My question is: how can I have a permanent solution?

A PCIe card wouldn't help: first slot is too close to the GPU, second slot is too close to the PSU, riser+vertical is too close to the glass panel, so neither would provide enough airflow I guess. And to top it off, it'd drop the GPU to 8x PCIe instead of 16x as they'd have to share the lanes.

I doubt newer models (Samsung 990) would overheat less... can anyone suggest a better solution?

Would it be possible to remove the stock heatsink to install something else like a Thermal Grizzly or Be Quiet! NVMe heatsink? Would it even help?

[The_Brain]

>I remember this table, but does it really mean that a single card placed in the 2nd slot will only run x8? The table seems to be for a dual >and  triple card setups.

That N/A referred to the single PCIe config makes me think it won't work as 16 lanes also on a X570 mobo. But you can still give it a try and see what happens. 

>It's a bit annoying to run into such issues when you invest in expensive high-end components 

I know. That's why it usually takes 10 times longer to optimize a machine than to put it together ‌‌ 😅

Anyway, if you're mostly fine now, play around with the intake/exhaust fans a little more and see if you can bring the temperatures down even further.

[enios]

I think you are right, the 2nd one is 8x even in isolation.

I am thinking of switching the top fans to intake, this would leave me with only one exhaust fan in the back, and 5 intake (3 fronts, 2 top)

This should lead to a lot of positive pressure inside the case and hopefully push the hot air out (keeping the dust out)

If I were to replace the NVMe, I can try if using thermal putty instead of thermal pads would improve things. Potentially use a 3rd-party heatsink if I remove the mobo's heatsink.

The 970 Evo Plus would be relegated to an external SSD, or on the 3rd PCIe 16x slot (which unfortunately would mean the GPU would run at 8x, which according to GamerNexus, only has a minimal impact)