Question NVMe Drive OEM heatsink vs MoBo heatsink... What's better?

[Caveman]

Some very basic questions below.

SK hynix Platinum P41 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen4 M.2 2280

WD_BLACK 4TB SN850X NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280​

These are 2 drives I'm looking at for the next build. The last build I did was about 6 years ago and a lot has changed. I see that heatsinks for NVMe drives are now the thing and that they will either be supplied with the drive or as part of the MoBo provisioning. Assumption is that the drive OEM will provide the best cooling but not sure of that. Would you only buy NVMe with their own cooling solutions or rely on the MoBo. Why or why not? On the one hand, the OEM should be best contact to the drive but the MoBo should provide the largest mass flow rate of heat way from the board and to the air...

Also, any other random installation facts you can dump on me would be great. I've never installed one of these before. Is it just plug and play or is there a "best way" to install?

 

[Tech Junky]

The best solution is good airflow.

While drives do put off considerable heat they aren't as bad as some make them out to be. Most of the heat is when you're doing a long duration copy/writes to them. Normal use though they tend to not be above 50C.

In my laptop I don't have a heat sink option and run dual drives SN850/SN770 and there's not a huge temp issue. On the server side I run the 850 with just the mobo sink and it's in the same ballpark for temps.

It's just a bunch of hype to sell some add-ons in my opinion.

 

[In2Photos]

The best solution is good airflow.

While drives do put off considerable heat they aren't as bad as some make them out to be. Most of the heat is when you're doing a long duration copy/writes to them. Normal use though they tend to not be above 50C.

In my laptop I don't have a heat sink option and run dual drives SN850/SN770 and there's not a huge temp issue. On the server side I run the 850 with just the mobo sink and it's in the same ballpark for temps.

It's just a bunch of hype to sell some add-ons in my opinion.

Agreed. Under typical everyday use all of my 980 Pro drives sit at or below 50C using the motherboard heat sinks and 800RPM fan speeds on all case fans.

Only thing to remember when installing them is to remove the plastic layer covering the thermal pads if using the motherboard heat sinks. Some boards have built in fasteners so you don't need screws to hold the drive down. Some twist, some clip up and down, some move forward and back. Easiest hard drive installation I've ever done.

 

[WelshBloke]

Easiest hard drive installation I've ever done.

Unless it's replacing an existing one or adding one to an already set up system and the slot is between the video card cooler and CPU cooler! Looking at you ASUS!