EKWB Begins Selling Heatsink for Intel’s Optane 905P M.2 SSD
by Anton Shilov on February 14, 2019 7:45 PM EST- Posted in
- SSDs
- Intel
- Passive Cooling
- EKWB
- Optane 905P
Previously launched late last year as part of a bundle with Intel's then-new Optane 905P M.2 SSD, EK Water Blocks has started selling its custom-built M.2 905P heatsink as a standalone item. The cooling solution is meant to ensure consistent performance of the drive under high loads. Until now the cooler was only available with the purchase of a M.2 905P from Newegg, so this marks its transition into wider availability.
As Intel’s first M.2 form factor 3D XPoint SSD for desktop systems, the Optane 905P M.2-22110 handles a tough balancing act between getting Intel's powerful (and somewhat power-hungry) 3D XPoint memory into a M.2 form factor drive, and then keeping the dense drive from throttling itself due to heat. But with a peak power consmption of around 11.7 Watts during active writes – an amount that isn't easy to dissipate on a bare drive – the M.2 905P can still run into its 80°C throttle point. Because of this, EKWB has developed an aftermarket heatsink for the drive in order to better cool it, keeping its temperatures down and improving the drive's performance and longevity.
The heatsink is of course as simple as it can be: it's comprised of thermal pads that transfer heat from 3D Xpoint memory and Intel’s proprietary controller to two aluminum heatsinks featuring nine fins. To maximize efficiency of the device, its owners will naturally need to ensure proper airflows inside their PC cases.
As mentioned earlier, EKWB has been shipping the drive for a few months now as part of an exclusive Newegg bundle with Intel's drives. However as the drives themselves don't come with a heatsink and are now readily available in the wider channel, there's a growing supply of bare drives, giving EKWB the opportunity to sell the heatsink as an aftermarket item.
A statement from EKWB on the matter goes into a bit more detail:
"The reason we started on as selling it separately is that not everyone has access to Newegg and not everyone shops on Newegg. We are just making the heatsink itself more available on the market so people who are after the maximum performance of the Intel Optane 905P M.2 SSD are given the opportunity to purchase the cooling solution."
The EK-M.2 Intel Optane Heatsink is now available directly from the company as well as from its resellers in Europe at an MSRP of €19.90 with VAT included.
Related Reading:
- New Generation of Optane M.2 SSDs Coming Soon
- Intel Expands Optane 905P SSDs To 1.5TB
- Intel Previews M.2 Optane SSD 905P 380GB
- EKWB Launches Aftermarket EK-M.2 Aluminum Heatsink for M.2 SSDs
- EKWB Reveals Velocity: A Water Block for Custom LCS with RGB Lighting
- EKWB Announces EK-Vector RTX Water Blocks for GeForce RTX 2080 & RTX 2080 Ti
Source: EKWB
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PeachNCream - Thursday, February 14, 2019 - link
Hmm...its too bad products like this are actually useful. Granted we are packing a lot of storage capacity that can read and write data quite rapidly into a very small space so heat problems are to be expected, but it is a pity that companies designing such storage technologies aren't paying closer attention to thermal issues. It does leave room for quick-reacting companies to slice and paint some metal bits to land sales though.limitedaccess - Thursday, February 14, 2019 - link
There are companies selling PC DIY market oriented products with heatsinks.An issue is that the m.2 spec itself has Z height restrictions and therefore OEM products and specifically things like notebooks/laptops would require that m.2 products used for them meet those small Z height restrictions.
Further more if say 90% of your user base is going to rely on burst work loads that aren't affected by the thermal issue while only 10% is, which group do you spec and optimize your design for? The real distribution would be even less in of % of workload affected by thermal issues.
Lord of the Bored - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
It seems overpriced to me. I'd understand if it was copper, but... it isn't. Aluminum doesn't cost that much. A bag of stick-on heatsinks is what, five bucks? I think they're literally buying the same stock extrusion and then making fewer cuts.This is the cheapest possible heatsink design.
Eliadbu - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I'm sure they have excellent quality control and design to make sure this won't be some cheap pieach of metal attach to your SSD, for the price it is more expensive than their regular m. 2 heatsink but remmber that they are selling it for very limited audience that have no issue paying the extra considering the price of the optane drives. Again this is not your average 5$ mass produced chinese crap that has horrible design.PeachNCream - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
You don't understand manufacturing and branding do you?Eliadbu - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
More than youPeachNCream - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Clearly not.Lord of the Bored - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
It is an aluminum heatsink, of the simplest kind. How much design and quality control do you think there is?Like I said, if there's any sanity in their production process they're buying a stock extrusion and cutting it to length.
PeachNCream - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
You're probably right. In looking more closely at it, the design seems remarkably similar to the plethora of RPi heatsinks so EKWB probably put in a bulk order from a similar supplier for the same design cut at longer intervals. I highly doubt a company like EKWB owns the manufacturing and machining capacity to produce most of what they design, but instead farms it out to other comapanies. I mean even Apple just submits a design to Quanta for their laptops and gets a finished product back.watzupken - Thursday, February 14, 2019 - link
At the rate they are going, I am not surprise an active cooling solution is not that far away. Intel's Optane while fast consumes too much power.