March 10, 2024

Adding a heat sink to M.2 NVMe drive.

Adding a heatsink to my XPG SX6000 M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD drive.

Call me paranoid, but it was bugging me how hot my M.2 NVMe XPG SX6000 was running. It may have been within specs, but I wanted cooler as I did not like it running that HOT to the touch. When it was doing duty as my C drive it was consistently running around 55C.  This was with the included heat sink. So I decided to add a better heat sink then the on they included.

I had an old air cooled videocard still in a box of junk parts, so I decided to remove a few of its heat sinks to see if I could find one that would fit on it. One of them fit perfectly on the NVMe drive.  I did not have a way to attach it, so I ordered some Thermal Adhesive tape from Amazon. This is the tape I used
Sywon Professional Thermal Adhesive Conductive Tape Double Sided Cooling Tape for IC Chipset Heatsink LED,10mm x 25m
Now I have enough Thermal tape to last me a lifetime. The good part was after adding the heat sink, it dropped the Temps of my drive around  10C – 15C. When running as my C drive it now hovers around 40C. The heatsink is warm to the touch an no longer as hot. This new heatsink really seems to dissipate the heat well. If you end up buying a similar drive and want it cooler you could always try going with one of the aftermarket heat sinks available on amazon like this  one LINK. It was pretty reasonably priced. They do also have more expensive and cooler looking ones. I am not sure how well this one would work compared to the one I installed below as mine has some really large fins on it.

As with any DIY on this site. I am not a professional and this is just how I chose to fix my issue. Your situation may be different and I will not be responsible if you try it and run into any issues.

One other benefit was I saw an improvement in speed as well as running cooler.  I have the Before and After stats below.

Adding the tape to the heatsink side first.

Here it is the XPG  SX6000 with the new heat sink attached.

Here it is in my motherboard. It doesn’t look to bad. This heatsink would not be an option if I was to put this in a laptop now.

Here are the stats before and after.