SSD Temperatures

Both heatsinks appear thinner and smaller than those on other ASUS boards we've looked at recently, but our main concern is whether to use the top heatsink for PCIe Gen 5 SSDs as they're far more tricky to cool under heavy workloads. It's not just size that helps, but good thermal contact and whether the SSD benefits from underside cooling too and here the top heatsink performed reasonably well, taming our toasty PCIe Gen 5 SSD and keeping it sat at no more than 70°C, so a good 10°C away from any throttling. It didn't respond well to the lower slots, though, either due to poorer contact or lack of underside cooling, or both as the temperature was 10°C higher.

This is a shame given the lower PCIe Gen 5 M.2 slot is perfectly usable too without stealing PCIe lanes from your graphics card, but realistically, we doubt anyone owning this board will be considering a PCIe Gen 5 SSD, never mind two. Still, you'll want to use the top slot if you do, and it even benefitted our Samsung 990 Pro too, which was also warmer in the lower slot.