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Published: January 27, 2017 | Source: GamersNexus | Author: Mark Campbell

MSI’s M.2 Shield has been found to raise SSD temperatures

MSI's M.2 Shield has been found to raise SSD temperatures

MSI’s M.2 Shield has been found to raise SSD temperatures

 
In some recent thermal testing that was conducted by GamersNexus, the website found that MSI’s M.2 Shield has actually had a negative effect on an M.2 SSD’s thermal performance, raise SSD temperatures instead of lowering them like advertised.  
 
Below is GamerNexus’ video on MSI’s “Heat Shield”, which showcases several design flaws on the product, which uses an exceptionally thin metallic shield as a heatsink which does little to help cool the SSD (adds little to no additional surface area to cool the SSD) and has the unwanted side effect of actually trapping heat under the SSD, increasing the temperature of the underside of M.2 SSDs. 
 
In GamerNexus’ testing, it was found that the top side of the SSD had thermals lower by 1-2 degrees celsius at idle and under load, with the bottom of the SSD having thermals increase by around 4 degrees at both in idle scenarios and under load. 
 
 

  

This raises a major issue with modern M.2 SSDs, which have components on both sides of the PCB, causing heat to be produced at both the top and bottom of the SSD. This makes these SSDs difficult to cool effectively, especially when under heavy loads. 

While some M.2 SSDs have been found to suffer for thermal throttling under load, it must also be said that this only happens under benchmarking loads, as no day-to-day applications can produce enough data to cause such thermal loads. GamerNexus’ tests were conducted over a 60 minute period under IOMeter, which is an SSD load that is higher than any consumer system could produce outside of benchmarks.  

Modern M.2 SSDs can offer speeds in the realms of several GB per second, which is not a load that any system can deliver in a real-world scenario for 60 minutes. This would require multiple terabytes of data to be written to the SSD, which is not only larger than the capacity of all M.2 SSD but far in excess of anything that could be defined as a consumer workload. 

 

MSI's M.2 Shield has been found to raise SSD temperatures

 

 

While MSI’s M.2 Shield has been found to increase thermal loads under benchmarking loads, the question needs to be asked if this is if this will actually affect consumers. Will anyone actually have their SSDs under full write loads for 60-minutes at any given time? 

 

You can join the discussion on MSI’s M.2 Shield raising SSD temperatures on the OC3D Forums. 

 

MSI's M.2 Shield has been found to raise SSD temperatures

MSI’s M.2 Shield has been found to raise SSD temperatures

 
In some recent thermal testing that was conducted by GamersNexus, the website found that MSI’s M.2 Shield has actually had a negative effect on an M.2 SSD’s thermal performance, raise SSD temperatures instead of lowering them like advertised.  
 
Below is GamerNexus’ video on MSI’s “Heat Shield”, which showcases several design flaws on the product, which uses an exceptionally thin metallic shield as a heatsink which does little to help cool the SSD (adds little to no additional surface area to cool the SSD) and has the unwanted side effect of actually trapping heat under the SSD, increasing the temperature of the underside of M.2 SSDs. 
 
In GamerNexus’ testing, it was found that the top side of the SSD had thermals lower by 1-2 degrees celsius at idle and under load, with the bottom of the SSD having thermals increase by around 4 degrees at both in idle scenarios and under load. 
 
 

  

This raises a major issue with modern M.2 SSDs, which have components on both sides of the PCB, causing heat to be produced at both the top and bottom of the SSD. This makes these SSDs difficult to cool effectively, especially when under heavy loads. 

While some M.2 SSDs have been found to suffer for thermal throttling under load, it must also be said that this only happens under benchmarking loads, as no day-to-day applications can produce enough data to cause such thermal loads. GamerNexus’ tests were conducted over a 60 minute period under IOMeter, which is an SSD load that is higher than any consumer system could produce outside of benchmarks.  

Modern M.2 SSDs can offer speeds in the realms of several GB per second, which is not a load that any system can deliver in a real-world scenario for 60 minutes. This would require multiple terabytes of data to be written to the SSD, which is not only larger than the capacity of all M.2 SSD but far in excess of anything that could be defined as a consumer workload. 

 

MSI's M.2 Shield has been found to raise SSD temperatures

 

 

While MSI’s M.2 Shield has been found to increase thermal loads under benchmarking loads, the question needs to be asked if this is if this will actually affect consumers. Will anyone actually have their SSDs under full write loads for 60-minutes at any given time? 

 

You can join the discussion on MSI’s M.2 Shield raising SSD temperatures on the OC3D Forums. 

 

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