SSDs with or without heatsinks on new Asus Strix Z790 mobos?

[bfollowell]

So, with all the talk of SSD and memory prices going up in 2024 and already seeing some evidence of that, I'm planning to going ahead and purchase the SSDs and memory that I'm going to use in the build I'm planning for late spring or early summer. My question is about all of the new drives having a heatsink option and whether or not I should get mine this way. I know most of the Asus mobos have SSD covers and I'm curious if they double as heatsinks and, if not, will using an OEM SSD heatsink interfere with these covers? I'm planning to use an Asus Strix Z790-H as my mobo and I'm planning to use Western Digital SN850X 1TB and 2TB drives.

Thanks!

[JohnAb · Accepted solution]

None of my SSDs suffer from any heat issues. The fastest I have is Gen 4, a WD Black Sn770. I use it for the OS and I've never seen it go much above 40C, even in the summer. All my drives just use the covers supplied with the motherboard, which do function as heatsinks. Mind you, if you are planning on getting a Gen 5 SSD, then it would be a good idea to use the heatsink option supplied with the drive. 

[bfollowell]

I went back and read through the Z90-H docs, and all of the Asus Z790 boards for that matter, and it looks like Asus is calling these M.2 heatsinks, so I guess that answers that. If they're acting as heatsinks, rather than just covers, I'm assuming SSDs with OEM heatsinks likely wouldn't fit well, on top of being a little redundant.

[bfollowell]

It looks like you were replying as I was replying to myself. Thanks for your reply!

The WD Black SN850X drives I plan to use are theoretically about 40% faster than yours, but are still Gen4 drives, even though they do push those specs to the absolute limit. Unless I hear differently, I think I'm going to buy the non-heatsink versions.

[JohnAb]

Yes, I think you'll be fine 👍

The only extra cooling I've added are two small 8cm fans pointed at the PCH chipset. They keep it to about 56C on average. Might not even be an issue on your board. The PCH can operate a lot hotter, I just like to keep it cooler.