This is a topic that's been discussed ad nauseam here; my contribution is as follows: Reminder that I have two HighPoint 7101A cards in my Mac; each with four Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB drives. I first installed them with the shroud and fan and everything completely assembled, and was immediately annoyed at the fan howl from both cards. My cards are an earlier generation and their fan headers are 2-pin. Meaning no speed control other than "plugged in" and "not plugged in".
The next experiment was following some of the other suggestions here: taking the fan off the card, and the small front plate off the shroud. This creates a small wind tunnel, if you will, from the front of the card out through the Mac's PCI back plate. Quiet, not as cool, but still within spec. And that's how I left my cards for the last few months.
I've noticed that, every so often under high use, my drives can get up near 150*F or around 65*C. That's 20*C below the Samsung's warning temperature, so still within spec. But I wanted to see if there was anything I could to improve it. NVMe drives generally perform better when they're warmer, but they last longer when they're cooler. The latter is more important to me than the former given the Sammy's already excellent performance.
To that end, I got a set of EK NVMe heat sinks and a small copper self-adhesive heatsink for the controller chip. I just completed one of the cards and popped it back in the Mac. The results are pretty telling, but the work involved was ... uh... ***** annoying? EK's heat sinks have a bit of a reputation for being an obnoxious install because of the clamps they send. The drive is sandwiched between a back plate and the main heat sink; each having its own thermal pad attached to it. You then use two clamps to snap everything together and hold it. Putting the first clamp on is pretty easy. The second one? Um. Nigh impossible? I managed to get one of the drives fully clamped. The rest? Jury-rigged using one clamp and one small rubber band. #Winning.
The box is around the card with the heat sinks. It's the one with the drives that have run hotter, too, since it's the second card in the Mac, sitting above the first. Heat rises... yay! Before the upgrade, the drives on that card would run 4-5*F warmer during the BlackMagic disk speed test. That screen shot was taking during another running of it, and you can see they're cooler. In some cases by quite a bit.
Once I complete the second card, I'll snap a quick pic of it so you can see what I mean.
The next experiment was following some of the other suggestions here: taking the fan off the card, and the small front plate off the shroud. This creates a small wind tunnel, if you will, from the front of the card out through the Mac's PCI back plate. Quiet, not as cool, but still within spec. And that's how I left my cards for the last few months.
I've noticed that, every so often under high use, my drives can get up near 150*F or around 65*C. That's 20*C below the Samsung's warning temperature, so still within spec. But I wanted to see if there was anything I could to improve it. NVMe drives generally perform better when they're warmer, but they last longer when they're cooler. The latter is more important to me than the former given the Sammy's already excellent performance.
To that end, I got a set of EK NVMe heat sinks and a small copper self-adhesive heatsink for the controller chip. I just completed one of the cards and popped it back in the Mac. The results are pretty telling, but the work involved was ... uh... ***** annoying? EK's heat sinks have a bit of a reputation for being an obnoxious install because of the clamps they send. The drive is sandwiched between a back plate and the main heat sink; each having its own thermal pad attached to it. You then use two clamps to snap everything together and hold it. Putting the first clamp on is pretty easy. The second one? Um. Nigh impossible? I managed to get one of the drives fully clamped. The rest? Jury-rigged using one clamp and one small rubber band. #Winning.
The box is around the card with the heat sinks. It's the one with the drives that have run hotter, too, since it's the second card in the Mac, sitting above the first. Heat rises... yay! Before the upgrade, the drives on that card would run 4-5*F warmer during the BlackMagic disk speed test. That screen shot was taking during another running of it, and you can see they're cooler. In some cases by quite a bit.
Once I complete the second card, I'll snap a quick pic of it so you can see what I mean.
