Maximus X Hero, which m.2 slot would be cooler?

[bryantgl]

The asus maximus x hero has two m.2 slots. One has a angular heatsink with a thermal pad underneath and the other has an optional 40-50mm fan attachment. Which would run the coolest/provide the least throttling? The heatsink one or the other with a fan attached? Could I test it out, switch positions later easily or not? The m.2 drive would be the boot drive and only drive for now. Its going to be used for photo editing so I want the best performance possible

[MirceaR_]

I feel the need to contribute here:

-stay away from the adata active m2 cooler, it's a piece a s**it, vibrates from all the corners and the LEDs heat it more up
-ROG bracket cooler from the MB decreases with around 3-4 Celsius the load temperatures if used on the M2_2 (bottom slot) though in continues heavy load that difference tends to decrease

I for one found the best solution, bought an EK M2 black passive heat spreader and placed a noctua 40mm fan on it, I took off the label from the SSD top chips and now in stress benchmarks on a 960 I have 62-64 max temps, load/games operation does NOT go over 57, this is what I recommend at this point in regards to this topic.

[stainlineho]

MirceaR. wrote:
I feel the need to contribute here:

-stay away from the adata active m2 cooler, it's a piece a s**it, vibrates from all the corners and the LEDs heat it more up
-ROG bracket cooler from the MB decreases with around 3-4 Celsius the load temperatures if used on the M2_2 (bottom slot) though in continues heavy load that difference tends to decrease

I for one found the best solution, bought an EK M2 black passive heat spreader and placed a noctua 40mm fan on it, I took off the label from the SSD top chips and now in stress benchmarks on a 960 I have 62-64 max temps, load/games operation does NOT go over 57, this is what I recommend at this point in regards to this topic.

Wow I never break 35C with a 40mm Noctua mounted directly over my NVME with the mount that came with the motherboard.

[ixxxion]

MirceaR. wrote:
I feel the need to contribute here:

-stay away from the adata active m2 cooler, it's a piece a s**it, vibrates from all the corners and the LEDs heat it more up
-ROG bracket cooler from the MB decreases with around 3-4 Celsius the load temperatures if used on the M2_2 (bottom slot) though in continues heavy load that difference tends to decrease

I for one found the best solution, bought an EK M2 black passive heat spreader and placed a noctua 40mm fan on it, I took off the label from the SSD top chips and now in stress benchmarks on a 960 I have 62-64 max temps, load/games operation does NOT go over 57, this is what I recommend at this point in regards to this topic.

This is good advice. A couple questions:

1- how did you attach the fan to the EK heat spreader?
2- did you put the fan in push (air toward the EK) or pull (air away from the EK)?
3- how quiet/loud is that specific Noctua fan?

[Snakeyes]

Different strokes for different folks. I was seeing idling temperatures around 38° and in the mid 40s under heavy read/writes. I went the simple route of attaching 10 MM fan to the top of the OEM heatsink (Maximus X Code), blowing across the heatsink. Now idling is between 30 and 32° and the maximum under heavy load is around 35°.

960 EVO temperature at the bottom of the AIDA64 sensor panel.

[DirtyMacho]

Snakeyes wrote:
Different strokes for different folks. I was seeing idling temperatures around 38° and in the mid 40s under heavy read/writes. I went the simple route of attaching 10 MM fan to the top of the OEM heatsink (Maximus X Code), blowing across the heatsink. Now idling is between 30 and 32° and the maximum under heavy load is around 35°.

960 EVO temperature at the bottom of the AIDA64 sensor panel.

My idling is normally around 30-32 and max 35 on load. I am using 370-e the Asus stock heatsink is cool and i believe many are using samsung nvme. Is that fact that more write speed the more the heat generated . I hope its not the same case with my ADATA still read and write is good 2.5gig read avg 2.1 and 1.1gig write and it averges 800-1gig . SO some basic issues with type of nvme we use. Try to have a 40mm fan which can be mounted onto the bottom of the board per including fan holder.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[WiSH2oo0]

Where can I buy another Asus heat shield and fan bracket?

I'm already using the fan bracket to keep my VRM and mosfets cool.

[ixxxion]

My 950 PRO was idling at ~46C and maxing out at 65C under heavy stress test. I had been using the heatsink that came with the ASUS Maximus X Hero motherboard with the SSD installed in the upper slot just below the CPU.

I just installed the Advancing Gene NVMe M.2 SSD Cooler Heatsinks with 20mm Fan
https://amzn.to/2J0RS0G

My idle temps are now 42C and maxing out at 56C. So that's a pretty good improvement (keep in mind, I already had a heatsink on it, so this is an improvement over and above the existing Asus heatsink, so that's a 9C improvement, not bad, coming from no heatsink, I'm sure the improvement would be way more dramatic).

The tiny fan on the heatsink runs at 5000-8000 RPM, I control the speed using the Asus Fanxpert and normally idle at 5500 RPM (60% duty) and it is completely quiet. I can hear a slight hum at higher RPM, but that rarely happens. The downside is there is no way to tie the Fanxpert control to the SSD temp, you have to use CPU temp as the trigger, I wish we could select the SSD temp as the trigger for increasing fan speed.

Note that I run my case fans at a very low 700-800 RPM to keep the noise down. I'm sure if I bumped up the airflow in the case, the temps would be even better. But for me, this is a good balance of noise vs temps.

[WiSH2oo0]

I ended up buying this guy here. The only things I didn't like were that I had to drill mounting holes for my fan, I had to trim a little off one tab and I wish that it was a little taller.

https://www.shapeways.com/product/49NWE57QH/m-2-fan-holder?optionId=61616644

[Carlyle2020]

It blocks w_flow/pump without modification. Used it for the fan.

[will_s]

I have my M.2 in the bottom as the GPU can get very hot, also have plenty more airflow there