I’m from Vault 19., I mean Batch 19 (too much Fallout in my recent days). I’ve been hands on with my FW16 for three weeks now. I’m really enjoying my unit so far.
I purchased my NVMe drives separately. I ended up picking out the following:
WD Black SN770M 2TB | 2230 @38C (after 1hr of lite use)
Solidigm P44 Pro 2TB | 2280 @44C (after 1hr of lite use)
They are both single-sided (and I’m sure you already know but there is ‘NO’ room for a heatsink unless it is very thin, and that may only apply to the top side of the 2280 stick). I had considered running WD Black in 2230 and 2280 or replacing the WD Black 2230 with the Corsair MP600 Core 2230 or possibly even a Sabrent Rocket 2230. In the end based on the info I could find concerning single-sided, lower power use, and lower heat generation, the WD Black & Solidigm P44 Pro are my starting choice.
Solidigm’s Windows monitoring app is the Solidigm Synergy Toolkit. The Solidigm Synergy tool shows good detail for the WD Black considering different heritage. The Synergy Toolkit shows at least the following info for both drives: Temp, %Life, Make, Model, Serial #, Firmware version, and NVMe controller info including driver versions, and partition data.
My FW16 has the AMD Radeon RX 7700S graphics module. So I’m not sure if will play a little into higher NVMe temps vs the standard fan blank/dual NVMe holder (which I will be picking up to reduce weight, size, and battery life when traveling). I have not loaded any hardware specific utilities like HWINFO and the like to get a real good idea on overall performance and heat management yet. I’m sure I’ll get around to it eventually.
I’m dual booting Zorin OS Core Linux from the WD Black 2TB 2230 and Windows 11 Pro Workstation from the Solidigm 2TB 2280. It works very well and everything appears to work on Zorin OOB so far. Mousepad, LED Matrix panels, finger print scanner, audio, camera.
When it comes down to it, I guess the best thing to say about NVMe drives for the Frame.Work16 are to get the largest capacity, single-sided Gen4 NVMe drives that perform well as close to max Gen4 speeds while being energy efficient (which should help cut some heat). Since the drives are about in the middle of the total footprint of the laptop and the cooling fans are at the back mostly taking care of the processor and discrete graphics (if you purchased that add-on) then make sure you have checked performance/heat/cost of your combination if you want to fill both the 2230 and 2280 slots.
I’m enjoying mine. I hope you are enjoying yours. Good luck and have fun!
Thanx,
Wio
Texas