Header banner
Revain logoHome Page
Jonathan Suarez photo
1 Level
814 Review
37 Karma

Review on ๐Ÿ”ฅ EK Water Blocks EK-M.2 NVMe Heatsink in Vibrant Red for Enhanced Cooling by Jonathan Suarez

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Small temperature difference; works fine but I was hoping for more

I have purchased several crypto mining gaming desktops and they all came with Western Digital (WD) Blue 500GB NVMe drives except one with 240GB SSD. I replaced them with either a Samsung 970 EVO NVMe or a WD Black NVMe, all 1TB. I immediately noticed that all 1TB drives ran significantly hotter, averaging 50-53C. I wouldn't worry, except after installing HD Sentinel when the NVMe drives hit 45, the color changed to yellow and then to critical red once they hit 50. Although many technical articles say these drives can handle temperatures of up to 70ยบC, what bothered them was that HD Sentinel reported that the temperature was too high (marked in red). These EKWB radiators were surprisingly easy to install. As others have noted, due to the different thicknesses of the NAND chips, I had to mix and match adhesive thermal pads (this was really noticeable with the Samsung NVM). One thing I did NOT do is remove the stickers that said "Warranty voided upon removal". I've paid too much for NVMe drives to sacrifice the 5 year warranty that comes with them. Some people will throw caution to the wind and remove said labels, but I'm not one of them. The temperature difference was very small, only a few degrees. Instead of a hot 50-53 ยฐC, the discs now work at a hot 48-52 ยฐC. So the temperature drop is a sure thing, but I was hoping for more. Defending heatsinks, you'll find that NVMe is in a "horrible place" on a cellphone. Two desktops have ASRock Intel boards and one has an ASRock AMD board. You'll notice that the NVMe slot sits just above the GPU and behind the memory slots. This means NVMe and heatsinks get very little direct airflow. Of course, air blows through the memory chips, but the heatsink/NVMe doesn't get *direct* airflow. Because of this, I only docked one star. I think if the airflow was improved the temperature reduction would be better. One thing I noticed was that NVMe drives didn't get as hot when using Crystal Disk Mark. They reach the high 50s but never the 60s. Without a heatsink, drives easily hit 65-70 when testing CDM. So all in all a solid 4 stars.

Pros
  • Great for outdoor activities
Cons
  • Not sure