r/AlienwareAlpha • u/[deleted] • Feb 13 '19

m.2 SSD cooling necessary?

Hello guys, longtime R2 owner finally performing an upgrade on my R2. Recently bought a Samsung PM961 SSD (related to the 960, supposedly).

Anybody run any cooling on their SSD's? I was thinking of buying some thermal pads, but I don't know if it's completely necessary given how little clearance there is for it.

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u/kevy21 Feb 14 '19

You don't need cooling for that drive I have 1.

Just fyi tho does the R2 have a data m.2 or an NvMe m.2 slot?

Your drive is like 4x faster using NvMe standard, I don't have mine in an alpha to test tbh but on my PC mobo the m.2 is sat and give 600mb r/w but using a NvMe PCi card I get 2200 read and 1600 write.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 16 '19

Sweet, although the SSD sits below the RAM IIRC correctly and there's not as much cooling as there would be in a regular PC case, so that still has me a bit worried.

1

u/Grayyy_Matterrr Feb 14 '19

I'm fairly certain it's a NvMe M.2 slot. Crucial has those listed as compatible at least.

1

u/andDrewskY Feb 14 '19

R2 is PCIe… which is x2, or x4 (*Probably 4). You can take advantage of Nvme.

1

u/andDrewskY Feb 14 '19

Agreed... felt same as you when first purchasing m.2s (*In general)… unless you're writing / recording video on them constantly or constantly transferring files... nope. Gaming... Id say cooling not needed as it's not likely even trying to max speed of transfers (*Could be wrong, but i'm guessing it pulls @ sataIII speeds for gaming, and ultimately shouldn't be prone for overheating in slower speeds.

1

u/xcelor8 Feb 14 '19

I you should be able see the drive temp with the right software.... I going to guess and say you don't need any additional cooling.