Polished a little before installation, choose the smoothest side to drive. I used a 0.5mm thermal pad as there was little space between the drive and the bottom cover of the laptop. The motherboard already had a thermal pad behind the drive. The Intel SSDPEKNW512G8H 512GB before installation had a temperature of 27°C at idle, 42°C under Crystal Disk Mark 64. Under load, not bad.