Gigabyte's Spring Loaded SSD Cooler Drops Temperatures By 12 Degrees
Gigabyte has introduced a new SSD cooler design for its latest AMD 800-series Aorus Stealth Ice motherboards, called M.2 EZ-Flex. This spring loads the SSD backplate, forcing tighter contact between the SSD's various chips with the SSD heatsink. That leads to better thermal transfer when the drive heats up, prompting up to 12-degree temperature drops during peak load.
Storage cooling has rarely been something gamers or PC enthusiasts needed to consider. While classic hard drives could get toasty in jam-packed small form factor systems, SSDs haven't given us much in the way of thermal issues to date. But the latest generations of PCI Express 5 SSDs, which can perform sustained read operations close to 15 GB/s, are starting to generate a lot of heat. When the controller gets too warm, it throttles performance, reducing the drive's capabilities.
Hence, companies like Gigabyte are exploring novel ways to improve SSD cooling without resorting to active cooling methods like miniature fans. These are often noisy, have poor performance, and introduce another point of failure in the system.
Credit: Gigabyte
Instead, M.2 EZ-Flex seems to introduce notable temperature drops in fast SSDs without the need for active cooling. Gigabyte does make it clear that this is in reference testing only and is unlikely to be replicated directly in the real world, but shaved-off degrees are shaved-off degrees. Cooler SSDs tend to run better, so if you're looking for peak SSD performance, having a board that can keep it cool enough is paramount.
Although Gigabyte has introduced M.2 EZ-Flex on its flagship X870 AMD motherboards, it's also introducing it to more mainstream options, like its B850 Aorus Stealth motherboards. These are still quite premium designs, aimed at eliminating visible cabling by placing the ports on the back of the board, but they are more affordable. The entire Aorus Stealth Ice lineup includes other premium features too, such as Wi-Fi 7 support, 5G LAN connectivity, tool-free M.2 installation, and a BIOS Wi-Fi driver, as per TechSpot.
However, there seems to be no reason that such a spring-loaded design couldn't be added to just about any motherboard. If it proves effective and is likely a relatively cheap change to motherboard design, I wouldn't be surprised to see this in a wider range of Gigabyte boards before long. Especially if we keep talking about it.
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