What is the official stance from Framework for using a heatsink on the SSD? I have not seen heatsinks on the Framework order page but looking at other vendors they seem to be popular. Would a heatsink for the WD850 series of SSD even fit? Seeing that air flow is kinda limited, would it improve SSD life by a noticeable amount or is it useless bling sold to gullible users?
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There is no reason to use a heatsink and most probably wouldn’t even fit. The ones that do fit are probably so thin, that they don’t do much anyway.
Heatsinks are only somewhat useful in workstations or servers where there are constant writes and reads. Or in some desktop gaming PCs, they’re more there for the looks and to protect the SSD against mechanical damage. A laptop SSD doesn’t get that hot with normal laptop workloads, and even if it does, it simply throttles down instead of damaging itself.
The official maximum SSD dimensions are posted here: Height limitations when using double-sided SSD for Primary Storage
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Thank you for confirming my suspicions!
I believe NRP said that one option, at least for the 2280 drive, was to install a thin (I think he gave the dimensions, but I’d have to dig to find the post) thermal pad on top of the drive and it would contact the aluminum plate that installs above the mainboard to act as the base for the keyboard. This could help pull some heat away from the drive. There isn’t enough space for a separate heatsink, or really enough airflow for one to make a whole lot of difference.
And, obviously, the points others made about the generally short, peaky loads a laptop will put on an SSD are generally not going to benefit much from a heatsink anyway.
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The drives with heatsinks are intended for Desktop PC and game console use. The dimensions for suitable SSDs are in the knowledgebase.
Anecdotal but fwiw I tested this at work with my framework 11th Gen and my SSD was averaging 45 C with a disk I/O heavy workload. Could you find a workload or edge case that caused the SSD to throttle? I’m sure you could. I don’t think it’s worth worrying over though.
Most of the 1st gen of the PCIe 4.0 SSDs ran extremely hot, just under regular use. I think the current/latest ones are much better, but it still could possibly be an issue for a non-trivial number of folks.
Did they give a recommendation as to what/where to buy that sort of thermal pad that’d be of the right thickness?