Antony Leather is Custom PC’s modding editor @antonyleatherUnlike the original
RTX 2060, the
Super version
can be easily fully
water-cooledThe latest PCI-E 4
SSDs are based on a
Phison controllerThat’s fantastic news for a couple
of reasons. Firstly, the RTX 2070
Super has a waterblock available
immediately via existing RTX 2080
waterblocks, although it’s worth
checking with manufacturers first
to be sure the block will fit. When I
was writing this article, EKWB and
Corsair had confirmed compatibility
with their RTX 2080 waterblocks and
the new RTX 2070 Super reference
or Founders Edition PCBs.
The best news, though, is that the
RTX 2060 Super is compatible with
reference or Founders Edition RTX 2070
waterblocks, and again EWKB and
Corsair have already confirmed
compatibility with their existing blocks.
Sadly, the original RTX 2060 remains a
tricky card to water-cool, but at least the
RTX 2060 Super, which is a decent
choice in the £350-400 range at the
moment, can be water cooled. I’ve taken
a look at how to water-cool your shiny
new RTX Super card on p106.
If you have a third-party Super
card, it’s also worth keeping an eye
on the various online configurators
and manufacturers’ websites to see
if your card is compatible with older
waterblocks too – this information
will start to become available
once more PCBs land in the laps
of waterblock manufacturers.
Cooling a PCI-E 4 SSD
I’ve been playing with Aorus’ new NVMe
M.2 PCI-E 4 SSD for the past few weeks
as part of our ongoing 3rd-gen Ryzen
coverage and I’m absolutely in awe of its
speed. Both Corsair and Gigabyte have
added heatsinks to their PCI-E 4 SSDs, as
have other manufacturers, which is a
great idea. Just in terms of aesthetics, if
your motherboard lacks a heatsink, you
won’t have an unattractive label sticking
out like a sore thumb.
I’ve been advocating SSD heatsinks for
a while, and we also conducted a small
M.2 heatsink group test a while ago too.
The heatsinks included with PCI-E 4
SSDs are heftier than these ones
though. The double-sided copper
heatsink on the Aorus SSD is huge and
weighs a lot too.
However, there are reasons you might
want to replace a PCI-E4 SSD heatsink
with one of your motherboard’s ones, if it
has them. For example, some boards,
such as MSI’s Prestige X570 Creation,
integrate the M.2 heatsink into a large
single piece that can be cooled by the
chipset fan. In terms of looks, I’m also not
a big fan of the bare copper seen on the
Aorus heatsink, especially if it’s sitting on
a motherboard that’s predominantly
black with a splash of chrome.
I was interested to see what happened
if I removed the Aorus’ stock heatsink
and used the motherboard’s own
heatsinks instead. The heatsink is easilyremovable, and only thermal pads and
screws hold the two sections together.
Dropping the Aorus SSD into the MSI
Prestige X570 Creation’s lowest M.2 port,
I set about performing some load tests
and was pleased to see that the Aorus
SSD sat at exactly the same temperature
of 53°C using the motherboard heatsink
as with its own heatsink.
Interestingly, YouTuber Der8auer
has also found that PCI-E 4 SSDs don’t
actually consume more power than their
PCI-E 3 counterparts. In a recent video, he
demonstrated that it’s the chipset, rather
than the SSDs, that are power-hungry.
Basically, if your motherboard has a
decent M.2 heatsink, there’s no reason
you can’t use it to replace the stock
heatsink on your PCI-E 4 SSD. In my
testing, they performed the same in
terms of both drive temperature and
performance during extended load tests.
There are a few extra components on
the underside of the PCB, which are
admittedly passively cooled by the stock
heatsink, and not by the motherboard
heatsink, but again, this didn’t seem to
impact performance or temperature.
As far as I can tell, if you do want one of
these new PCI-E 4 SSDs based on a
Phison controller, a decent motherboard
heatsink will still cool it fine.