What's your latest tech purchase?

[dorsetknob]

oh nice. Is that a Silverstone expansion card?

Pretty sure its this

PA04-1N M.2 NVME / Ngff TO PCIE Card Adapter PCI-E X4 ( 1 ) ONE M.2 2230 / 2242 / 2260 / 2280 / 22110 Slot

www.itcreations.com

Paid £4.50 ( 4x riser included )+ postage
Nvme 512gig (not included )

 

[tabascosauz]

Eneloops are awesome, I still use the ones I initially bought for my first DSLR back in ... 2008? Something like that. They still work great, and don't seem to have lost any capacity. It's been a while since I ran my Xbox controllers off AAs though (I've got rechargeable packs in all of them), but back then they lasted a lot longer than 7-10 days. How many hours a day are those controllers used?

Like 4 hours a day? Not been much to do in the past 6 weeks. Sounds about right if they're rated for about 30 hours per charge on the unitary charge pack. Been playing a shit ton of Genshin

The fact they still put a microUSB on these things in 2020 is a goddamn travesty

 

[cst1992]

I've ordered mine too, let's see how it performs!

Installed it today!

The black screwdriver below came with the adapter. It's too small for me though, and considering the M.2 slot was actually sandwiched between the heatsink and graphics card, I had to use the yellow one.
I also had to remove the case fan temporarily.

The pads have a little bit of adhesive on them, but I'm thinking it's not enough to hold both the heatsink and the SSD; so good thing they included the rubber bands!

All installed! The slits at the two ends are used by the slot, so the middle two are the only ones that we could use.

Benchmarks and temps:

Idle(before and after):

Load(before and after):

Sequential results seem a bit underwhelming, but at least now I'm able to fully utilize the SSD.
I appreciate the adapter, but right now I'm feeling it was just a waste of money to include the heatsink.
One thing could be that I'd have to peel off all the stickers from the SSD and clean the chips with alcohol to remove residual glue, but honestly, I'm not going to do that.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I only look at main read/ write and you're only a couple hundred off spec's using a pci-e card.
You'd have to show both temps sensor reading to really know how well the heat sink is doing but sammy m.2's do need one they do get terribly hot.

 

[cst1992]

What other sensor is there? I only have the one sensor for drive temperature.

 

[biffzinker]

What other sensor is there? I only have the one sensor for drive temperature.

NAND temp sensor?

^No heatsink btw

 

[Valantar]

Installed it today!

View attachment 186225View attachment 186231
The black screwdriver below came with the adapter. It's too small for me though, and considering the M.2 slot was actually sandwiched between the heatsink and graphics card, I had to use the yellow one.
I also had to remove the case fan temporarily.
View attachment 186227View attachment 186230
The pads have a little bit of adhesive on them, but I'm thinking it's not enough to hold both the heatsink and the SSD; so good thing they included the rubber bands!
View attachment 186232
All installed! The slits at the two ends are used by the slot, so the middle two are the only ones that we could use.
View attachment 186233View attachment 186234
Benchmarks and temps:
View attachment 186236View attachment 186239
Idle(before and after):
View attachment 186255View attachment 186256
Load(before and after):
View attachment 186260View attachment 186259

Sequential results seem a bit underwhelming, but at least now I'm able to fully utilize the SSD.
I appreciate the adapter, but right now I'm feeling it was just a waste of money to include the heatsink.
One thing could be that I'd have to peel off all the stickers from the SSD and clean the chips with alcohol to remove residual glue, but honestly, I'm not going to do that.

Aren't those rubber bands just supposed to go around the heatsink and SSD? I don't think you're supposed to stretch them all the way around the adapter. Might be too much tension for them over time, especially in a hot environment like a PC case. Also note that having the SSD installed in that slot has likely cut your GPU to PCIe 3.0 x8. Won't make much of a difference, but it's worth noting.

 

[cst1992]

NAND temp sensor?
View attachment 186278
^No heatsink btw

Nope, don't have that one. Only have one readout for "drive temperature". What version of HWINFO do you use?

Aren't those rubber bands just supposed to go around the heatsink and SSD?

I don't think that's the case. As you can see from the photo, there are two thermal pads. Obviously those are supposed to go both ways around the SSD, effectively gluing it to the PCB on one end and heatsink on the other. If not, why'd they include a second one? It doesn't make sense to have an extra one for 2 years down the line. By then, how many % of people still have the packaging?
Another giveaway is the cutouts on the adapter where there should be active, working PCIe lines. Why are they there if not for routing the rubber bands through?

Also note that having the SSD installed in that slot has likely cut your GPU to PCIe 3.0 x8. Won't make much of a difference, but it's worth noting.

I know, I'd mentioned it in an earlier post. Effectively, my CPU-to-GPU bandwidth is a quarter of what it should be(that's funny, because till yesterday the SSD was in that position), but that's okay for most games. It's been shown in benchmarks that it only makes a few % of difference; it matters more to have a good GPU-to-VRAM bandwidth than CPU-to-GPU bandwidth.

@damric How have you installed yours? IIRC yours and mine are almost identical.

 

[biffzinker]

6.40.4330
Samsung remove the temp sensor from the NAND area?

 

[cst1992]

cutouts on the adapter where there should be active, working PCIe lines

Okay, so I did some reading, and it turns out the extra cutouts are there to allow compatibility with x4 and x8 slots in addition to x16 slots.
Still doesn't explain the extra pad.
One thing I'll say is I prefer something like the following over just holding with rubber bands:
WARNING! Skip the first and last 10 seconds or mute your PC. The intro and outro is LOUD!

It's 2x as expensive though

 

[tabascosauz]

Okay, so I did some reading, and it turns out the extra cutouts are there to allow compatibility with x4 and x8 slots in addition to x16 slots.
Still doesn't explain the extra pad.

Extra pad mostly likely if you need to replace the heatsink again, or if you got a new mobo and wanted to use its integrated heatsink. Thermal pads are not supposed to be reusable.

All the aftermarket M.2 heatsinks on the market either clamp on or use rubber bands. You're not supposed to wrap it around the entire adapter PCB. The extra pad also isn't for buttressing the drive, the single screw should be plenty to hold it in place.

 

[cst1992]

6.40.4330
Samsung remove the temp sensor from the NAND area?

I'll update and report back.

You're not supposed to wrap it around the entire adapter PCB. The extra pad also isn't for buttressing the drive, the single screw should be plenty to hold it in place.

I guess this is what I get for not using my head...
Also blindly following directions...

I'm guessing these guys just saw these on Aliexpress, ordered a couple thousand for $5 a piece, drew some rudimentary diagrams and launched it on Amazon.

Working at least, so I'm not complaining.

 

[tabascosauz]

I'll update and report back.


I guess this is what I get for not using my head...
Also blindly following directions...
View attachment 186286
I'm guessing these guys just saw these on Aliexpress, ordered a couple thousand for $5 a piece, drew some rudimentary diagrams and launched it on Amazon.

Working at least, so I'm not complaining.

Judging from the broken Engrish, I don't blame you lol

I guess they think that having an extra pad can dissipate heat from double sided drives, but the PCB of the adapter isn't really a heatsink so dunno what they're trying to accomplish here. It is a thick pad so I'm assuming that's what they intended.

Plus, it's the controller that needs cooling and that's always on the front side of the drive.

 

[cst1992]

PCB of the adapter isn't really a heatsink so dunno what they're trying to accomplish here.

The PCB below the the drive is covered by a copper mesh.
Copper has pretty good thermal conductivity, so maybe it could work? Assuming of course that it goes through the SSD and is not simply a film...

 

[tabascosauz]

The PCB below the the drive is covered by a copper mesh.
Copper has pretty good thermal conductivity, so maybe it could work? Assuming of course that it goes through the SSD and is not simply a film...

If it looks like this, then Silverstone had the same idea.



But like I said it's the controller that needs a heatsink and the Samsung controller already has a metal heatspreader to transfer heat out the front side of the drive. Even if it's a double sided drive, the only thing on the back would be NAND chips, whose z-height further reduces the likelihood that the thermal pad can make proper contact with the bare back of the PCB behind the controller.

Most 3.0 drives work just fine on motherboards without any heatsink on the front side or thermal pad on the back. They generally throttle at about 80C.

 

[cst1992]

Mine doesn't go above about 53(even when it was mounted directly), so I'm good I guess.
It's also not my boot drive. So it sees use only in gaming or watching 4K movies.

 

[jboydgolfer]

Neither one of them looks like it's the PC I'm referring to.
To be clear, I'm referring to this PC with the reference NVIDIA card and black CPU cooler:

thats a Meshify-C, with an RTX3090 & a Noctua Chromax. & for size reference, those are 140mm Noctua fans in there except for the black one mounted to the Chromax. the reason the meshify looks different, is because ive changed some of the components since taking the picture with the two cases stacked on each other. but originally, you asked in regards to the picture above if it was an rtx 3070, to which i replied, no it is a RTX 3090

EDIT-
Heres my daughters new Corsair 4000 white w/ Tempered Glass $75 on newegg with promo notice the power button

 

[silentbogo]

Got this little puppy
Best bang for the buck in my region.

MSI Modern 14 B4MW
Spec as follows:
- Ryzen 5 4500U (6c/6t)
- 8GB DDR4
- 256GB NVME SSD
- FHD IPS 14" display
Had some upgrades for it in my office already. Fortunately it's one of those mainstream laptops that still comes with two RAM slots, and replaceable everything (except CPU, of course).
It's relatively cheap, and you can feel it, but it's no different than comparable new Thinkpads and ProBooks.
All I have left, is get an Intel AX200 adapter and it's ready to go. Too bad it still has that stupid warranty seal, which I'll have to void in the next couple of days.

 

[Valantar]

The PCB below the the drive is covered by a copper mesh.
Copper has pretty good thermal conductivity, so maybe it could work? Assuming of course that it goes through the SSD and is not simply a film..

That kind of copper plating with plated through-holes is a standard design for thermal conductivity through a PCB, so there's definitely some thought put into that. What there clearly wasn't put much thought into was how to fit the rubber bands and the thermal pad. I would cut the rear pad slightly to allow the bands to fit around the rear - as @tabascosauz pointed out there isn't much benefit to cooling the rear of the SSD anyhow.

 

[cst1992]

I would cut the rear pad slightly to allow the bands to fit around the rear

Either that, or install the heatsink with the rubber bands first on the SSD and then stick it to the second pad like with double-sided tape. The screw should hold it in place regardless - we're not dependent on the "stickiness" of the pad as already mentioned by @tabascosauz earlier.

 

[witkazy]

Rpcs3 here i come

 

[cst1992]

I'll update and report back.

I updated to HWINFO 6.40 and these are the results:
Idle:

Load:

Speeds:

This is a bit worrying.
What could cause the drop in write speeds? Queued sequential speeds are 2/3 of the expected, whereas sequential is half.
Is this the cache?

 

[Athlonite]

What sort of read/write speeds do get using Samsung's Magician software also those temps are well within spec or actually a little to cool sammies like hot nand when writing and over cooling it the controller is having problems writing to it so the heatsink you put on it may actually be a hindrance more than a help

 

[Valantar]

I updated to HWINFO 6.40 and these are the results:
Idle:
View attachment 186353
Load:
View attachment 186355
Speeds:
View attachment 186356
This is a bit worrying.
What could cause the drop in write speeds? Queued sequential speeds are 2/3 of the expected, whereas sequential is half.
Is this the cache?

Could be, I also noticed that the total host writes number jumps nearly 250GB and reads nearly 500GB between your idle and load numbers - is anything else accessing the drive? Is Steam downloading updates?

 

[cst1992]

Could be, I also noticed that the total host writes number jumps nearly 250GB and reads nearly 500GB between your idle and load numbers - is anything else accessing the drive? Is Steam downloading updates?

No, I'm using a test size of 8GB for the test, since the drive is so fast.
That means it's reading 320GB and writing 160GB for each full test.
I think I should use a smaller test size or do fewer runs.