Asus GenZ.2 card thermal pad question

[mouks]

Should I put thermal pads on the PCB of this card? I would guess the answer is yes and I can see "m2 pad" written in the middle but it's strange that they only pre-applied one on the heatsink. On the motherboard slots and the included PCIe NVMe card, they put thermal pads on both sides and the manual doesn't say anything about this. Could it be that with drives on each side of this small PCB, there would be no benefit of using it to spread some heat? I want to install 2 dual sided gen4 SSDs in there.

 

[ir_cow]

Only if you want to . Also depends on which side the controller/ nands face.

Mine happen to be on the side on the thermal pad, but I do have drives facing the opposite

 

[mouks]

Only if you want to . Also depends on which side the controller/ nands face.

Mine happen to be on the side on the thermal pad, but I do have drives facing the opposite

They're Kingston Fury Renegade with the controller on the heatsink side and NAND + DRAM chips on both sides. Do you think it's fine without a pad underneath? Maybe I should try with and without and check the temperature.

 

[ir_cow]

I think if your using it casually, one side is fine. But. If your hammering it all day, a 2nd pad will give it more longevity. Though, how much idk. Can't hurt either way.

 

[anonuser57]

It's fine either way regardless of whether you're SSD is double sided or not. The only thing a thermal pad between the SSD and PCB will do is make it hotter or colder depending on what it is doing and what is happening on the other side. The longevity of the drive won't be impacted, just how long the SSD can go before throttling.