Tuesday, March 7th 2023
Aftermarket PlayStation 5 M.2 SSD Cooler Taps into Airflow of the Console's Main Fan
German company GRAUGEAR, an aftermarket/OEM cooling solutions company, released an interesting M.2 SSD cooler for PlayStation 5, which taps into the airflow of the console's main intake fan. The G-PS5HS01-Cov cooler from GRAUGEAR is meant for bare M.2 NVMe SSDs. It consists of an aluminium monoblock heatsink with a single flat 7 mm copper heatpipe running underneath, making contact with hot components on the drive's topside, through silicone-based thermal pads. This heatpipe sneaks up to the intake fan vent of the PS5, with a copper-channel stack in its end, which dissipates some of the drive's heat to the airflow. The company claims that this design offers 50% better cooling compared to drives with heatsinks that maximize the space above the M.2 slot of the PS5, and can lower controller temperatures by 15-20°C, since it is essentially an active cooling solution. The cooler weighs 70 g. The company didn't reveal pricing or availability information.
33 Comments on Aftermarket PlayStation 5 M.2 SSD Cooler Taps into Airflow of the Console's Main Fan
its not needed, just use a regular heatsink.
If you slap a rare drive into PS5 that overheats for some reasons, not sure how PS5 can trigger such states, but you are the problem needing vanity items such as this heatsink. It is totally fine without one.
As I said. PS5 is very balanced and thought out device, it has no reserves to tamper with the thermal envelope, that is designed as cheap you can. It is not a PC, but a closed ecosystem, it is a grand difference.
Even if the SSDs don't thermally throttle, very high temperatures (above 100℃ on PCIe 4.0 controllers already) surely can't be good for longevity.
But the only time that controllers will get that hot is when you are consistently stressing the drive by repeatedly reading or writing massive amounts of data from/to it, which quite simply isn't how game workloads currently function. The much-hyped DirectStorage, which was supposed to change this, is still only implemented by a grand total of one game, and appears to make very little appreciable difference.
That's why Samsung has issued ZERO press releases when they concluded that there is a bug in early firmwares of 980 Pro and 990 Pro SSD drives - all the users that bought their drives with older firmwares and didn't update them face a high probability their drives will fail, and take their precious data with them - but Samsung has calculated that press release would have greater impact on brand image and percieved quality. After all, people gathering on forums and bitching is just anecdotal evidence.
But most SSDs aren't made with PS5 in mind - even the ones that are sold as PS5 compatible - it just means that their SSD fits all the basic requirements, especially these:
Length: 30/40/60/80/110 mm
Thickness: up to 11.25 mm (up to 8.0 mm from above the board, up to 2.45 mm from below the board)
- Temperature Alert
- Your M.2 SSD is too hot.
- Close the game, turn off your PS5, and wait until the temperature goes down.
When PS5 launched most SSDs weren't as hot as they have started making them since. You can find tons of articles on which aftermarket heatsink to use with your PCIe 4.0 SSD that displays overheating alert.SSD's, the current GEN5 flops, that everyone urges to be watercooled are not discussed here. Gen4 drives are okay overall. Because the whole PS5 turns glowing hot and overheats while gaming and it also heats up the the drive as the cooling barely is enough. Games are getting more new gen unlike last year and are using more and more resources.
This thing is like attaching a plaster to a corpse. It is not a fix.
The other SSD manufacturers cottoned on to this, probably because they cut a deal with Sony behind the scenes, and started spewing out their own "PS5 optimised" SSDs-with-unnecessary-heatsinks, also for ridiculous premiums. In short, it's nothing more than marketing aimed at the ignorant - and like most such marketing, it's working exactly as intended.
:p