Heatsink/Thermal pad between NVMe drive and motherboard.

Question

Good evening, everyone.

Another long one, I'm afraid...

In the near future, I plan to swap out my stock 512Gb NVMe drive for a Crucial 2Tb drive, on which I will have cloned my boot drive.

I removed the current drive while in the case the other day, to see exactly how it was situated. Oddly, there was a small, square spongy pad under the contact end of the drive. Reinstalling the drive involved inserting the contacts, and pressing down the drive against this pad to fasten the screw at the opposite end.

I now know that this pad is a standard thermal pad (20x20x5.25mm) for this system.

But I am a bit confused and concerned. Why so thick (though it seems to set the drive level on both ends)? And if a thermal pad, why just on that first 20mm? That would seem to place a bowing effect on the drive as the pad was compressed into place.

All this is leading to my upgrade concern: when I put the new drive in place, I would like to place a "normal" (120x20mm) thermal pad under the drive (the top has a heatsink pre-installed). Will I need to build or layer something 5mm thick to allow the drive to sit properly?

And is it even a good idea to transfer heat to the motherboard?

Better to leave the 20x20mm pad in place? Is the smaller size designed to allow airflow between the other section of the drive and the motherboard?

Ideally, I would like to layer two 1.5mm pads on either side of a 1mm thick copper plate, for 4mm total.

I will do a dry fit of this setup and see if the drive can be installed normally and without stress.

I guess I just need to know if this idea would do more harm than good.

The Dell designs are odd, but the systems work.

Any wisdom regarding this issue will be greatly appreciated.

Chino de Oro · Accepted Answer

Dell uses thermal pad 20x20x5.25mm because the heat is mainly concentrated at the controller, near the M.2 connector. The pad was used to transfer the heat to PCB, not for leveling the SSD.

When upgrading the SSD, you can remove the Dell thermal pad and use the SSD's manufacturer provided air cooling heatsink or aftermarket cooling solution of your choice.

redxps630 · Accepted Answer

thickness per se does not matter as long as it has good thermal conductivity. when in doubt just use Dell validated oem thermal pad for the model. If it is the OptiPlex 7760 here is the oem DP/N

HM1P2

PLT,THRM,PCLE SSD,7450/5250/30.

$3.99

PLATE, THERMAL, PCLE SSD, D8MFF/D8AIO

THRM, PAD, MFF, 30X20X2.5, D8

HM1P2

WDBillDavis · Answer

Exactly what I needed to know. Thank you very much.

drummond52 · Answer

At the moment my OptiPlex 7760 has a 2.5 inch 500GB SATA Hard Drive and I want to change it to a WD SSD, which aftermarket Thermal pad should I get.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide me

John

bradthetechnut · Answer

@drummond52​  Could you please be more specific about the SSD you want?  A 2.5' SATA SSD (shaped like a credit card) requires no thermal pad.  Still a big improvement over an HDD.

drummond52 · Answer

Thank you for the reply bradthetechnut the SSD is M.2 2280 PCIe 80 x 22 x 2.38 mm. John

bradthetechnut · Answer

Thanks for the info.  I'm going to let @Chino de Oro answer the thermal pad question.

drummond52 · Answer

@bradthetechnut​ Thank you

drummond52 · Answer

What thickness of thermal pad should I use between the M.2 2280 and the motherboard please, of all the searching I have been doing I cant find the thickness required. Thank you

bradthetechnut · Answer

May be @redxps630 can answer?  Please & thank you.

drummond52 · Answer

Thank you for the information

Inspiron Desktops

Heatsink/Thermal pad between NVMe drive and motherboard.

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