SSD Temperatures

There are a number of options when it comes to installing SSDs, but with PCIe Gen 4 SSDs the warmest temperature we saw was 63°C, with a respectably low 52°C temperature in the bottom M.2 slot.

We tested our PCIe Gen 5 SSD in both PCB slot locations and the M.2 Xpander-Z Slider Gen 5 card. Thankfully, all locations and heatsinks prevented our double-sided PCIE Gen 5 SSD from throttling, which you'd expect on a board of this caliber.



The M.2 Xpander-Z Slider Gen 5 card's fan is quite noisy above 3,000 rpm, and you definitely don't want to have it at its maximum 5,000 rpm. Thankfully, the included cable allows you to hook it up to a motherboard 4-pin header. With the fan off completely, the SSD temperature peaked at 72°C, but even limiting the fan speed to the highest speed we found to be inaudible, which was 2,000 rpm, saw this fall to an excellent 64°C. At maximum speed it only fell another 2°C, so we'd suggest having the fan spin at around 2,000 rpm constantly. You could also attach one of the thermal probes to the card to use it as a temperature input.

PCIe Gen 4 Performance (Samsung 990 Pro)

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