{"id":3922,"date":"2022-07-21T18:31:41","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T18:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/21\/you-know-youve-made-it-when-you-have-a-gold-plated-ssd-heatsink\/"},"modified":"2022-07-21T18:31:41","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T18:31:41","slug":"you-know-youve-made-it-when-you-have-a-gold-plated-ssd-heatsink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/21\/you-know-youve-made-it-when-you-have-a-gold-plated-ssd-heatsink\/","title":{"rendered":"You know you&#8217;ve made it when you have a gold-plated SSD heatsink"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As SSDs get faster and faster, it only makes sense that they get hotter and hotter. A heatsink on an SSD is a good solution to mitigate this, but if you&#8217;re like me, you like to keep things stylish and flashy. These shiny metal heatsinks by EK will cool your SSDs while also looking cool.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The EK-Quantum Convection heatsink is a passive aluminum block for M.2 NVMe SSDs. According to the product page, it will &#8220;prevent thermal throttling in cases with sufficient airflow or otherwise significantly prolong the time before thermal throttling of the SSD occurs,&#8221; which is precisely what heatsinks are supposed to do. So a gold star for EK there.<\/p>\n<p>The heatsinks are made of &#8220;high-grade&#8221; aluminum with a nickel finish and are plated with real gold. The colors available are black, silver, nickel, and gold. What&#8217;s surprising is that EK is not going the liquid cooling route considering its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ekwb.com\/liquid-cooling-kits\/quantum-kits\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Quantum line of products<\/a> is all about that. And it&#8217;s not like we haven&#8217;t seen companies put a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/forget-the-slim-heatsink-teamgroups-making-an-ssd-with-its-own-aio-cooler\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">liquid cooler on an SSD<\/a> to stave off throttling. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This heatsink is compatible with single and double-sided M.2 NVMe SSDs, and it&#8217;s tested on drives up to 4TB. Unfortunately, EK doesn&#8217;t indicate how well it cools down the SSD though it should be better than not having a heatsink on your SSD.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Installation seems pretty straightforward, you flip the backplate, and it&#8217;ll align with the mounting holes to another set of screws on the heatsink. The backplate moves away from the heatsink&#8217;s main body, leaving room for double-sided SSDs. Essentially nothing someone with a little screwdriver and a positive attitude can&#8217;t handle.<\/p>\n<p>So, do you need a heatsink for your M.2. NVMe SSD? I&#8217;d say so. The larger storage density on these drives leads to overheating, affecting performance. A heatsink will help preserve its longevity and how long it&#8217;ll maintain top performance during large file transfers. Now, do you need a fancy gold-plated heatsink? Only you can answer that. Do I need a fancy gold-plated heatsink? My wallet says no, but my heart says yes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The heatsinks are available through the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ekwb.com\/shop\/ek-quantum-convection-m-2-nvme-gold\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EK website<\/a>. They retail for $36 and ship in about a week. Until then, I&#8217;ll be here thinking about how good my SSD will look in gold.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[#item_image]You know you&#8217;ve made it when you have a gold-plated SSD heatsink<!-- wp:html --><\/p>\n<p>As SSDs get faster and faster, it only makes sense that they get hotter and hotter. A heatsink on an SSD is a good solution to mitigate this, but if you&#8217;re like me, you like to keep things stylish and flashy. These shiny metal heatsinks by EK will cool your SSDs while also looking cool.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The EK-Quantum Convection heatsink is a passive aluminum block for M.2 NVMe SSDs. According to the product page, it will &#8220;prevent thermal throttling in cases with sufficient airflow or otherwise significantly prolong the time before thermal throttling of the SSD occurs,&#8221; which is precisely what heatsinks are supposed to do. So a gold star for EK there.<\/p>\n<p>The heatsinks are made of &#8220;high-grade&#8221; aluminum with a nickel finish and are plated with real gold. The colors available are black, silver, nickel, and gold. What&#8217;s surprising is that EK is not going the liquid cooling route considering its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ekwb.com\/liquid-cooling-kits\/quantum-kits\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Quantum line of products<\/a> is all about that. And it&#8217;s not like we haven&#8217;t seen companies put a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/forget-the-slim-heatsink-teamgroups-making-an-ssd-with-its-own-aio-cooler\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">liquid cooler on an SSD<\/a> to stave off throttling. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This heatsink is compatible with single and double-sided M.2 NVMe SSDs, and it&#8217;s tested on drives up to 4TB. Unfortunately, EK doesn&#8217;t indicate how well it cools down the SSD though it should be better than not having a heatsink on your SSD.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Installation seems pretty straightforward, you flip the backplate, and it&#8217;ll align with the mounting holes to another set of screws on the heatsink. The backplate moves away from the heatsink&#8217;s main body, leaving room for double-sided SSDs. Essentially nothing someone with a little screwdriver and a positive attitude can&#8217;t handle.<\/p>\n<p>So, do you need a heatsink for your M.2. NVMe SSD? I&#8217;d say so. The larger storage density on these drives leads to overheating, affecting performance. A heatsink will help preserve its longevity and how long it&#8217;ll maintain top performance during large file transfers. Now, do you need a fancy gold-plated heatsink? Only you can answer that. Do I need a fancy gold-plated heatsink? My wallet says no, but my heart says yes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The heatsinks are available through the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ekwb.com\/shop\/ek-quantum-convection-m-2-nvme-gold\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EK website<\/a>. They retail for $36 and ship in about a week. Until then, I&#8217;ll be here thinking about how good my SSD will look in gold.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/wp:html --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}