Re: Effect of colour in SSD heatsinks

On 6/1/2025 3:39 PM, Pimpom wrote:

On 02-06-2025 02:26 am, Don Y wrote:

On 6/1/2025 1:19 PM, Pimpom wrote:
>
Most (all?) of the desktop machine I see (about 1,000 per week) still have
3.5 and 2.5 inch bays.  I only see M.2's in things like NUCs.
>

This thread is about *personal* computers, mostly standalone units. Most

    "... in my desktop and other computers"
You've not stated where the "desktop" (and other computers) were sourced.
Most businesses use SFF and USFF machines, for the past decade.  Are they
not "*personal*" computers?

reasonably new ones have at least one M.2 NVMe SSD these days. Many cases

Now you're talking about cases.  Are you building beige boxes?

intended for personal use no longer have traditional drive bays and may come with some provision for fitting just one, maybe two, 2.5 and 3.5-inch drives somewhere on the floor or vertically the wall.

SFF and USFF are typically single drive machines.  Even many NUCs support
a 2.5" drive.

Again, you should be more interested in what the internal temperature
inside the case is.  That will be the limiting factor AND will affect the
effectiveness of any heatsink as they look for delta T.

>
That would be the correct approach *if* this were about designing a new computer system from the ground up but it isn't. This is about adding an additional safety margin to a well established norm that already works fine in most cases without the added heatsink.

If you're concerned about moving heat, then you need to know where (and IF)
you can move it *to*.  A heatsink on a box that has achieved thermal
equilibrium isn't going to buy you much.

Perhaps this is comparable to a TO-220 device dissipating half a watt idle, occasionally going up to a watt or so. These SSDs dissipate something like a watt when idle and up to 4-5W when actively writing, but they have a much larger surface area than a TO-220.
>

Also, make sure you know what the "ambient" inside the case is as that
will ultimately set the lowest operating temperature that you can achieve
(the SSD will report the temperature it is experiencing internally)

 As above.
 

Are the "colors" applied by the same process (e.g., anodized with different
chemistries)?  Or, are there differences from color to color?  E.g., real paint
will behave different than an anodized surface.

 Probably anodized. I haven't seen one up close yet but it's highly unlikely that the colours are painted on.

There are other ways to "apply color" besides "paint".

Note, also, that heat sinks increased surface area allows more places for
"dust blankets" to accumulate.  can you access these easily enough to make
cleaning practical?  (2.5 and 3.5 inch drives are usually designed to be
relatively easily accessed; M.2's are often buried under things (so, keep
in mind the added height/thickness that affixing a heatsink will entail)

 The M.2 SSDs are easily accessed in most cases, more so than HDDs in traditional drive bays, especially when only one M.2 drive is installed. It's usually located in a clear space between the CPU and the graphics card port. A second drive may be obscured by a graphics card if one is installed.

The boxes I see have the disk right on top (cover removed).
An M.2 is down on the PCB -- often UNDER the disk bay or even
the CPU cooler.  The smaller the box, the more buried the
devices that MUST attach directly to the PCB.