Samsung PM981a temperature is really hot

[tiggywombat]

I'm using a 1TB Samsung PM981a NVMe SSD (OEM version of 970 Evo Plus) with a MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI motherboard. Currently, it sits in the M.2 SSD slot right above the GPU.

On idle (just browsing the web and watching YouTube) with the motherboard's M.2 SSD heatsink, the temps are as below:

The heatsink is also really hot to the touch and I can't put my finger there for more than a sec. With gaming, the temperatures can hit 70C for the NAND and 87-90C for the controller:

I tested without the heatsink, and temps are almost 95C for the controller. Should I be worried about these temps or is it normal for a high end NVMe SSD? I'm thinking that these temps are really high especially on idle, and I'm using a Phanteks Enthoo Pro M case with standard airflow.

 

[tabascosauz]

Are you sure the VDH heatsink is actually making proper contact...? Did you forget to take the plastic film off the thermal pad? I've had my PM981 in both laptops and desktops and it's never run nearly as hot as yours seems to be, on both controller and NAND readings.

Yes, it's the controller that cares about getting hot and not the NAND, but all your numbers are way way too high considering none of what you're doing is actually stressing the drive. Samsung PCIe 3.0 controllers aren't terribly hard to cool. It sounds like very poor case airflow + some other issue, possibly thermal pad.

If you have bad case airflow, M.2 slots sandwiched between x16 and socket can get a bit warm from the GPU, but not nearly to this degree.

I'm trying to remember if the 970 EVO is single or double sided for the 1TB density, if it's double sided and the VDH has no provisions for backside cooling (ie. thermal pad/heatsink on the board), stands to reason that bad airflow could cause this result.

 

[tiggywombat]

Are you sure the VDH heatsink is actually making proper contact...? Did you forget to take the plastic film off the thermal pad? I've had my PM981 in both laptops and desktops and it's never run nearly as hot as yours seems to be, on both controller and NAND readings.

Yes, it's the controller that cares about getting hot and not the NAND, but all your numbers are way way too high considering none of what you're doing is actually stressing the drive. Samsung PCIe 3.0 controllers aren't terribly hard to cool. It sounds like very poor case airflow + some other issue, possibly thermal pad.

If you have bad case airflow, M.2 slots sandwiched between x16 and socket can get a bit warm from the GPU, but not nearly to this degree.

I'm trying to remember if the 970 EVO is single or double sided for the 1TB density, if it's double sided and the VDH has no provisions for backside cooling (ie. thermal pad/heatsink on the board), stands to reason that bad airflow could cause this result.

Yes, I'm sure it's installed correctly and I double checked there's no plastic film on the thermal pad. It's single sided and the heatsink is having good contact with the SSD.

The SSD without a heatsink is already running really hot, around 80C for the controller (at idle after 15 mins). It will hit 95C during crystaldiskmark (with no heatsink).

Like I mentioned, even with the heatsink on I can't touch it for more than few seconds, it's really burning hot. And I'm not even running any benchmarks like crystaldiskmark, just normal use.

Is this a known PM981a temperature issue or just my SSD in particular having this high temps? Other than this temperature issue, the SSD itself runs just fine, benchmarks are all normal and within spec.

 

[Vya Domus]

I suggest you buy an aftermarket M.2 heatsink, the motherboard one doesn't seem to make proper contact for one reason or another.

 

[tabascosauz]

Yes, I'm sure it's installed correctly and I double checked there's no plastic film on the thermal pad. It's single sided and the heatsink is having good contact with the SSD.

The SSD without a heatsink is already running really hot, around 80C for the controller (at idle after 15 mins). It will hit 95C during crystaldiskmark (with no heatsink).

Like I mentioned, even with the heatsink on I can't touch it for more than few seconds, it's really burning hot. And I'm not even running any benchmarks like crystaldiskmark, just normal use.

Is this a known PM981a temperature issue or just my SSD in particular having this high temps? Other than this temperature issue, the SSD itself runs just fine, benchmarks are all normal and within spec.

Confirm low disk I/O as well? Hot heatsink pretty much confirms that the drive is actually putting out that much heat - doesn't sound like drive is actually idle, regardless of how dire the airflow situation might be. Even in very small ITX scenarios (~4L), an ordinarily heatsinked drive runs lukewarm at worst.

My PM981 runs pretty normal 30-50C temps even with paper-thin laptop heatspreaders with minimal backside cooling.

Last I recall 970 EVO Plus might run a bit warmer than it's predecessor, but nothing out of the ordinary compared to its PCIe 4.0 successors. Honestly, easiest way to tell for sure is just to swap in any other M.2 drive and see how it behaves.

What's the airflow situation like in your case and with the rest of your components?

 

[tiggywombat]

I wish mine runs at 30-50C, I've tried other M.2 SSDs like the Kingston A2000 but the performance is not as high, and they run much cooler.

Only this Samsung PM981a runs really hot. I can confirm the disk I/O at idle is practically zero, around 500KB/s or less at idle but temp remains at 56C (NAND) and 73C for controller in Hwinfo.

Airflow in my case is quite standard, 2 front and 1 rear fan (all 14cm) in a pretty standard mid range case which is the Phanteks Enthoo Pro M.

 

[Carlyle2020hs]

Between the big controller and the ram chips is one itty bitty chip regularly blowing a bubble into my pad after few months of heavy use.

That´s frigthening seeing it the first time (and a bit funny as well).

Concensus seems to be to cut the pad in 2 for the best results (unveneness of chip heigth is mentioned which i can´t test).

Personally i now smear paste on that spot and then use a full cover pad, cut in two pieces. No bubbles anymore.

 

[P4-630]

Yeah quite hot yours..

My SSD's with 21 ambient:

The 32 degrees ones being M.2's (C being a 980 Pro 1TB and H being a 970 Evo 500GB)

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Yeah I'm in the deep south so warm
970 evo plus has always been a hot one idle and otherwise
Here's one after dusting it off and installing it again
It should show 3 temperatures I only have two on this screen shot not sure why it's not there
I downloaded a new version and it does now

I'll post another screen shot later I'm doing a system image before mounting win-11 23h2 on it
But i do use a blower style m.2 cooler I flipped it and the third = highest temp is a lot lower now
Just showing what I use on it you shouldn't need one just a regular should be fine
Thermalright has some good ones on sell for like 8.us on amazon I have one on my sn850x 4tb on the same rig.

Amazon.com: Advancing Gene NVMe M.2 Cooler Heatsinks with 20mm Smart Fan (3rd Gen) : Electronics

Buy Advancing Gene NVMe M.2 Cooler Heatsinks with 20mm Smart Fan (3rd Gen): Heatsinks - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

www.amazon.com

Here it is

Amazon.com

Nope here's the one I got

Amazon.com

 

[SPDIF]

Wow maybe bad contact, mine never get hotter then around 40 with intensive use. Maybe not enough airflow inside the case?
970EVO is not Power Hungry at all. Install there an 990PRO or SN850X, and you will get temperatures around 90 degrees or more, until they throttle down the speed, or even freeze your system.

The bigger the SSD in memory, the hotter it becomes. So for an 1TB drive that kind of temperatures is not normal at all.
Many of the motherboard around have the first M.2 slot just above the video-card, the most bad spot you can think off.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
What ?
SN850x with a 7.us thermalright heatsink is cooler than 970 ever will be here and yeah 970 definitely needs a good heatsink which mother boards hardly ever provide.

 

[SPDIF]

Hi,

Well i measured some SSD how much Power they use, and as you know, more power means more heat;

Samsung 970EVO Plus; uses 2.7A at 3.3V
Samsung 970PRO; uses 2.9A at 3.3V
Samsung 980PRO; uses 2.9A at 3.3V
Samsung 990PRO; uses 2.5A at 3.3V! Very energy efficient!
WD SN850X; uses 2.8A at 3.3V

So maybe your EVO Plus uses other parts, but it not comes so hot, only the 990PRO does it better.

But you could be right, there are different versions around of the 970EVO Plus, mine is from the year 01/2019 Made in Korea. What's yours?

 

[tiggywombat]

Mine's not exactly a 970 EVO Plus but the OEM version, which is PM981a. It says it's from March 2020, Product of China. It just runs really hot even on idle with a heatsink (passive cooling).

Other than that, the SSD is great and hasn't had any problems.

 

[ThrashZone]

Mine's not exactly a 970 EVO Plus but the OEM version, which is PM981a. It says it's from March 2020, Product of China. It just runs really hot even on idle with a heatsink (passive cooling).

Other than that, the SSD is great and hasn't had any problems.

Hi,
Which heatsink ?
Thought it was the mother board cover heatsink you were using.

 

[Edwired]

Seems like something is accessing the m.2 SSD causing it to rise in temperature regardless if it just idling or doing something that you don't see the disk activity. As it recommended to stop certain services like indexing and pagefile to the drive to reduce temperature and life cycle. I would be surprised if it died by temperature related let alone losing all data to the drive which is costly to be recovered by data recovery services

 

[R0H1T]

970 evo+ is hot, I have two right now running at similar (hot) temps for over 3 years & only 1% drop in health on the OS drive. Unless you're having some issues with it or a sudden change in SMART values I wouldn't worry too much. They're pretty solid

 

[natr0n]

Put a fan blowing in that direction. It's very simple. I do this never have any issues with heat.

Anything running hot point a spare fan at it.

 

[Edwired]

I have three crucial SSD which are mx100, mx300 and mx500 the highest recorded temperature never exceeded 56c most of the time it idles well below that and often hover around 45c give or take due the drives are located in front of the pc case as it inside the hard drive cages next to the front intake fan. As for the m.2 it not placed in ideal place on the board due to lack of air flow and it heat soaking most of the time.

If only there was someone to come up with a different design where the m.2 slots is on a seperate board that connected by pcie slot or special connector interface and have active cooling at the same time it would solved the issues in the first place than having to buy sketchy heatsink that may not fix the temperature issue due to it been designed differently

 

[SPDIF]

Put a fan blowing in that direction. It's very simple. I do this never have any issues with heat.

Anything running hot point a spare fan at it.

Correct, a blowing fan in the case is the best thing one could do, to cool down that bloody hot SSD. And those PCIE5.0 SSD's out there almost does not work good without cooling solutions... Soon a 100W SSD?

Hi,
What ?
SN850x with a 7.us thermalright heatsink is cooler than 970 ever will be here and yeah 970 definitely needs a good heatsink which mother boards hardly ever provide.

Hi,

Why is your WD SN850X so slow? I think connected to a PCIE3.0 slot or PCIE4.0 x2? Then it should be okay. This is what you should get of speeds from a SN850X working at PCIE4.0.

 

[ThrashZone]

Correct, a blowing fan in the case is the best thing one could do, to cool down that bloody hot SSD. And those PCIE5.0 SSD's out there almost does not work good without cooling solutions... Soon a 100W SSD?


Hi,

Why is your WD SN850X so slow? I think connected to a PCIE3.0 slot or PCIE4.0 x2? Then it should be okay. This is what you should get of speeds from a SN850X working at PCIE4.0.

View attachment 326158

Hi,
Yes that is my z490 rig 3.0 indeed still needed 4tb storage though so I got 2 sn850x's
My new acer laptop is quite different with 4.0 but not quite that high

 

[SPDIF]

Good luck friend! Yup super fast machine with that!

 

[ThrashZone]

Good luck friend! Yup super fast machine with that!

Hi,
Yeah that 1tb stock acer m.2 isn't bad at all

 

[T-Cat]

From my experience using a samsung 4TB 990 pro yeah these temps can happen and its "within" spec... though longevity at these temperatures (especially the controller) are definitely questionable. In fact the 87 degrees was colored red so you were possibly outside spec but not by much. you should probably install a heat-sink specifically designed for M.2 SSDs and just leave the motherboard heat sink off.

From what I have heard the Sabrent M.2 rocket heatsink is good for this purpose and can be gotten for around $20-30 bucks so a bit expensive but if it keeps temps low then it should make your SSD last longer and you can reuse it. Though there are plenty of other options you can get for cheaper (and lower profile if needed) so just look around until you find something suitable. Oh and make sure the thermal pad connects to the SSD and heatsink properly as this can be another issue.

If for some reason you are still having thermal issues... backup all your important files. You should have backed up everything beforehand anyways but if not do so immediately.