SSD Temperatures

As well as the three onboard M.2 ports we have the PCIe expansion card and DIMM.2 module to test here and for the comparison with other motherboards, we've included the best results of the three locations. The only disappointment was the lower M.2 heatsink, which did result in minor throttling with our PCIe Gen 5 SSD and seems to be more of a contact issue rather than cooling capacity as our Gen 4 SSD also saw its highest temperature here and by a wide margin.

Thankfully, the rest of the results are exceptional, with the ROG Crosshair X870E Glacial topping both our PCIe Gen 4 and Gen 5 charts. This was thanks to the ROG Hyper M.2 expansion card, allowing the Glacial to become the first motherboard to get under 60 °C with our PCIe Gen 5 SSD, and beating ASUS' own ROG Crosshair X870E Hero BTF and ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme, which slip to second place.

The top M.2 heatsink on the PCB and DIMM.2 module also did well with our PCIe Gen 4 SSD, gaining the equivalent of top ten spots, while the top heatsink's 70 °C result with our PCIe Gen 5 SSD was fairly decent and well away from throttling, but it's proximity to our graphics card meant that we have seen better. In short, for PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, any location will do, while for PCIe Gen 5, either the ROG Hyper M.2 card or top M.2 are the best and lower heatsink for those SSDs should be avoided, especially for double-sided SSDs, unless your own testing shows otherwise.

PCIe Gen 4 Performance (Samsung 990 Pro)

PCIe Gen 5 Performance (Team Group T-Force Z540)