The Czech company Axagon has a lot of SSD coolers with attractive designs. You can see this at a glance – a monolithic, well-articulated heatsink always works. You can’t “go wrong” there. We’ll go through all available variants of Axagon coolers in our tests, but we’ll start with the one this company started with. The CLR-M2 has been enjoying user favor for a long time and in the tests we will find out if rightfully so. Read more “Axagon CLR-M2: Large surface area (fins) with low height”
Over time, we have tested ten motherboards with Intel B660 and Z690 chipsets in great detail. From more than 5000 different measurements, we can thus confidently deny some speculations that are usually spread on the Internet from the ignorance of the authors of articles or comments (in discussions). But this is natural. The less substantial the reviews are, the more fertile ground they create for various confusions. Read more “Analysis: What have we learned from motherboard tests”
The coexistence of third-party SSD coolers that are sold separately with the ones you get in the price of the motherboard invites closer examination. Which of these solutions makes more sense and when? We’ll start answering that question starting now, beginning with an analysis of the BeQuiet MC1 cooler, which will be the first to be confronted with a whole host of motherboard SSD coolers. Read more “Test: BeQuiet! MC1 compared to SSD coolers on motherboards”
Do you know what first carried the BeQuiet! logo? It wasn’t a cooler, it wasn’t a fan, it wasn’t a PSU, and it wasn’t a case. These components were added to the portfolio only later. BeQuiet! started on something completely different, relatively simpler. Over time, however, the range of components has grown considerably. Let’s take a look at what the company has been gradually getting up to. Read more “It’s been two decades since the creation of BeQuiet!”
Are the SSD heatsinks that come with motherboards not enough? For such situations, Thermalight now has alternative solutions that don’t seem to lack cooling performance even for SSDs supporting PCI Express 5.0. The HR-09 2280 and HR-09 2280 Pro coolers are characterized by a more segmented design even compared to designs used for cooling CPUs in laptops or minicomputers. Read more “PCIe 5.0 SSDs are coming and Thermalright has big coolers for them”
Many different SSD coolers with atypical designs have been released over the years. But not a single one resembles the Ineo M12. Not only is it copper (but that doesn’t make it unique), but most importantly, it doesn’t use the traditional heatsink profile. In fact, this is most likely the only cooler with a wire heatsink. It also returns to the cooling philosophy of the bankrupt Nofan. The Ineo M12 uses an “icepipe”. Read more “Copper wire fins, the basis of the Ineo M12 SSD cooler”
More complex, tall coolers for SSD always attract attention. However, their fin area tends to be significantly oversized, at least for current semiconductor storage models. No extremes are needed for cooling ten watts at most. However, higher cooling performance might be warranted later, for PCI Express 5.0 SSDs. From this perspective, the ElecGear active cooler is a rather timeless novelty. Read more “Two heatsinks, a heatpipe and a fan; the new ElecGear SSD cooler”
Corsair has been dealing with SSDs in recent days. In a short time sequence, it first announced and then released two extra-fast SSDs, of which the cheaper one with NAND QLC memory. These are not yet widely used among models with PCI Express 4.0 support. But the real curiosity is the third thing on the list – a water block with which you can order the more expensive SSD or buy it separately for your own one. Read more “Water block on SSD? XM2 Hydro X started selling for $40”
Icy Box IB-M2HSF-702, compared to competition, is specific in terms of size but also a fan. Users often have prejudice towards active cooling in non-traditional spots inside a PC case. Especially in cases where it is believed that it is possible to design at least as efficient a passive cooler or that a higher cooling performance is still not on point. This SSD cooler will not avoid doubtful looks either. Read more “RaidSonic has an SSD cooler with extreme 25-watt TDP”
Here are some questions that everyone who wants to tune their computer to the last detail deals with: Does it make any sense to remove a sticker from a powerful M.2 SSD format? Is it worth the effort and, if something goes wrong, the breach of warranty? How much will the heating be reduced? As a part of detailed tests, we also replaced the original stickers for ones of commonly available materials (paper, plastic foil, aluminum…) just out of curiosity. Read more “Should you remove an SSD sticker before mounting a heatsink?”
Simple and optimally milled aluminum plate, sounds like a good basis for some SSD heatsink with the potential to achieve high efficiency at low cost. Fast, easy installation and great compatibility with graphics cards is also quite important, plus the look is not bad. Akasa probably wanted to create an ideal compromise of all the key elements. This could easily became a bestseller because the price is just 4 euros. Read more “Akasa SSD heatsink: really cheap and efficient solution”
16,500 rpm is extreme. A tiny fan in the unique SSD cooler by Adata can run at such a speed. We expected that it will be possible to regulate it and choose a reasonable setting, but there is no compromise in this design, and frankly, so many imperfections make it very difficult to see something positive about this product, which is a shame because the “core“ is pretty effective. Read more “Adata XPG Storm: good looking but not efficient”
Efficient and quiet cooling in combination with small fans is usually just a utopic wish. But it looks like that they don’t give up easy. We just discussed Evga board with two 30mm fans which are supposed to cool the power supply circuit, and here appears another similar case – M.2 SSD active cooling. Read more “Fans that are even smaller and faster: 16 500 rpm for M.2 SSD”
After the review of SSD coolers, we found some long-forgotten GPU memory heatsinks. Of course, we tested them right away and the results were excellent. It makes us wonder if (and when) is it worth to pay for commercial solutions, because a set of these small “hedgehogs“ costs up to five euros and one packing is usually enough for more uses. Read more “Small VRAM heatsink on a SSD NVMe? Cheap and efficient…”
With increasing IOPS, SSD cooling demands also increase. This applies even to powerful models (NVMe) for common customers. In most cases, controllers can take a lot, but high temperatures do not add to their performance nor lifespan and they can cause problems even in very quiet computers or in a room with higher air temperature. An additional heatsink can do wonders. Read more “Duel of SSD coolers: Alphacool HDX M.2 vs. EKWB EK-M.2”
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