Thermalright's new M.2 heatsinks point towards a scorching hot M.2 future
Readers used to building PCs back in the 90's and 2000's would remember the days of some rather extreme northbridge coolers. Companies like Thermalright were leaders in that aftermarket cooling category. These days M.2 drives sit in the same place that the northbridge chipset used to, but rather than keeping the memory controller hub cool, these modern day heatsinks are designed to keep your M.2 NVMe SSD cool.
Thermalright new HR-09 2280 and HR-09 2280 Pro M.2 coolers (via Tom's Hardware) are designed to cool standard form factor M.2 NVMe SSDs. Their heatpipe design and large surface area promise to keep your hot M.2 drive running cooler, with less throttling than you might get from a motherboard's integrated cooling or low profile (or aluminium strip) M.2 coolers.
The HR-09 2280 Pro really does remind us of those old school northbridge coolers. It's 86mm in height, which is taller than a lot of CPU coolers. It's got enough surface area to ensure that even a small amount of airflow should be sufficient to keep a drive cool, particularly if its receiving air from an adjacent CPU cooler fan.
The lower profile HR-09 has a bit more of a subtle look, though it should still deliver cooling that's superior to stock solutions. Well, we'd hope so, otherwise there's little point to it!
Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and AMD Best gaming motherboard: The right boards Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game first
The fact that these coolers exist at all points towards a hot M.2 future. PCIe 4.0 drives surprised us when we saw how hot they could get, and how easily many could throttle. PCIe 5.0 drives are set to run even hotter. It's easy to see how M.2 drives will require
Read more on pcgamer.com
