SSD Heatsink Guide: The best cooling options for your NVMe drive

When NVMe heat sinks first hit the market, many of the units included with certain motherboards were gimmicks and actually resulted in higher SSD temperatures. Cooling m.2 drives wasn't really a concern back then, but today's PCI-e Gen 5 SSDs aren't able to sustain their peak performance without some form of cooling. The controller found in many PCI-e 5 SSDs currently on the market is Phison's E26, which has a TJ Max (maximum temperature) of 125C - much hotter than previous generation products.

With temperatures up on modern SSDs, the need to keep modern Gen 5 SSDs cool has resulted in a market for m.2 heat sinks and there's a wide variety of choices to consider. Heat sinks of sizes large and small, in a variety of form factors and even with active cooling, are now available to keep your SSD cool. But what's best for your use case? We'll go over a few of the best SSD heatsinks on the market with this guide, and the usage scenarios they're best combined with.

If your SSD comes with a heatsink, you probably don't even need to think about an aftermarket heatsink. Unless you're running storage intensive workloads or just want something that looks visually attractive, just use the heatsink that comes with your storage drive. You're not going to gain any significant performance with an aftermarket heatsink unless the included one is of very poor quality.

If you're using a PCI-e 5 storage device, you'll need some sort of heat dissipation to prevent throttling. However, most users on the market don't need a beefy heatsink or a cooler with an active fan. For the vast majority of users, I recommend Iceberg Thermal's IceFLOE SSD heatsink.

The IceFLOE has a petite profile which means it can be installed without any compatibility concerns, no matter what other equipment you have installed in your computer. If paired under a strong air cooler, the heatsink is capable of handling most storage workloads without throttling. It is also very cheap - currently available for only $6.99 on Amazon.com

If you're a professional with storage intensive workloads, you'd be wise to invest in a stronger heatsink to prevent throttling. Thermalright's HR-10 Pro has a relatively moderate height of 10mm and an integrated active fan. It is one of the best heatsinks I've tested for modern SSDs.

Like other Thermalright products, the HR-10 Pro doesn't break the bank - it's currently available for $11 USD on Amazon.com. If you're interested in it, check out our previously posted review of this heatsink.

If you want the best cooling performance for your SSD, bar none, then the best option on the market is Jiushark's M.2-Three. This isn't a small heatsink, it's about the same height as an AIO's CPU block.

But if you're looking for the best performance period, this is the heatsink to purchase. Unfortunately, this heatsink's distribution is limited outside of Asia - so you'll probably have to import it through AliExpress, where it is currently available for $11 USD.

If you're looking for a strong heatsink that has low clearance but doesn't have an active fan, Acidalie VB01 is the product I recommend. It features two copper heatpipes and a small radiator with fins to provide effective thermal dissipation.

It shouldn't have compatibility issues with most GPUs on the market, with the exception of the thickest RTX 4090 GPUs available.

You can check our previous review of it here, and if you're interested in this SSD heatsink it is currently available from Amazon for $19 USD.

If you're looking for a truly exotic cooling solution, TeamGroup has an AIO with both CPU and SSD blocks included.

This type of niche product doesn't come cheap, but if you find this interesting it has a MSRP of $399 USD. However, it isn't commonly available for purchase.

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