[kkielhofner]

Glad to see attention brought to this issue. I recently started using these:

ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 4.0 X4 Expansion Card Supports 4 NVMe M.2 (2242/2260/2280/22110) up to 256Gbps for AMD 3rd Ryzen sTRX40, AM4 Socket and Intel VROC NVMe Raid https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084HMHGSP/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_ZY...

If you have a spare x16 slot I highly recommend. I’ve torture tested the latest and greatest hot screaming NVMe drives with it and between the massive heat sink and fan I’ve never seen NVMe temps rise above 40c.

Supporting more than one NVMe is tricky, though. You need to make sure your motherboard supports PCIe bifurcation. Common in server motherboards and some recent high end consumer motherboards but virtually unsupported with everything else. That said if you’re experiencing NVMe throttling due to temperature it’s worthwhile for even one drive.

[Arrath]

Having no need for 4 expansion slots, I got this last year:

SilverStone Technology M.2 PCIE Adapter for SATA or PCIE NVMe SSD https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075ZNWS9Y/

Its worked like a charm. I've only put a drive into the M.2 slot so far.

[someotherperson]

Is there any real benefit over some thermal pads and heat sinks? I've passively cooled CPUs to idle at 40 degrees and max out at 60 degrees during benchmarking. I imagine $10 worth of pads and heatsinks would achieve the same outcome as this expansion card.

[kkielhofner]

In my use case I needed to support four x4 NVMe drives (actually eight NVMe across two x16 slots). The low temperatures in a very dense chassis by doing nothing other than mounting the drives is a nice bonus!

[someotherperson]

That makes a lot more sense. Thank you for expanding. Glad to hear the setup is working for you well :-)

[jeffbee]

Most SSDs have temperature thresholds at 85C or higher. Why do you care if yours maintains 40C?

[zozbot234]

There are reasons to assume that data retention might drop exponentially as temperature increases. So if you care about the data, you'll want to avoid overheating your storage media.

[jeffbee]

Power-off storage temperature is a problem for MLC NAND, but when powered on the NAND cells need to reach a high temperature to operate properly. If you are cooling the flash chips with a heatsink (rather than cooling the controller) you will be forcing the device to dump power into the cells to heat them to a temperature where they work properly.

3D NAND hits its best program time and raw bit error rate at about 70C.

Edit: See data table on page 27. Retention is directly proportional to device active temperature, i.e. higher cell temperature during programming leads to higher retention. https://www.jedec.org/sites/default/files/Alvin_Cox%20%5bCom...

[touisteur]

That might be one of the most counterintuitive durability fact I've heard in a long time. Thanks a lot for sharing.

[kkielhofner]

I noted in another comment I needed eight x4 NVMe across two x16 slots in a very dense chassis. I was pleasantly surprised at the temperatures.

The hardware is in a colocation facility and I like to have plenty of buffer with standard operating temperatures in case of a cooling failure, etc. Is maintaining 40C necessary under normal conditions? Nope, but it's definitely a nice to have regardless.

[joenathanone]

Just bought one on your recommendation, we'll see how it works out.