CPU Tower-Style Cooler Reduces M.2 SSD Temps By Over 50 Percent

JuiShark M.2 Three heatsink and cooler for SSDs
(Image credit: JuiShark)

Chinese PC components maker JiuShark (via SI-129) has launched a new M.2 heatsink with active cooling, called the JuiShark M.2 Three. The JuiShark M.2 Three's appearance could easily be mistaken for a modern CPU cooler, adopting the popular tower-style form factor. Over recent months we have seen increasingly elaborate and powerful M.2 cooling solutions launched to cool the best SSDs. The trend appears to be in preparation for M.2 drives getting hotter, with the introduction of super-fast PCIe 5.0 capable M.2 SSDs that'll accompany AMD's Ryzen 7000 processors.

JuiShark's marketing spiel is that, as M.2 drives get faster, it is all the more important to keep them sufficiently cool for the sake of performance and data integrity - or something along those lines - as we had to rely on machine translation of the official blurb.

The renders show the M.2 Three without much else in the frame for reference. However, it isn't as big as first impressions may lead you to think. It is 82mm tall, 35.5mm thick, including the optional fan, and 74.5mm long, positioned along the M.2 drive's length. JuiShark provides its own 6610 fan, which you can mount on either side of the tower heatsink as best fits your PC system. This fan is just 60mm in diameter. While we are on the topic, you should know other fan specs: it spins at up to 3,000 RPM, pushes 14 CFM, and generates up to 25.4 dBa noise.

Turning our attention to the tower heatsink, it is an aluminum block with 27 fins and pre-applied thermal paste. You can see a single heat pipe threaded through the fins. This heat pipe reportedly leverages copper with a nickel coating. Where the heat pipe and aluminum heatsink make contact with the M.2 SSD, the cooler's material has been ground away by a CNC machine for better thermal conductivity.

Elsewhere in the construction of the cooler, JuiShark has used a stainless steel retainer mechanism to secure the cooling device to the SSD. It is a kind of tray design with four screws to secure everything in place. Though the whole device looks like a substantial construction, it is surprisingly and not reassuringly light at 113g in total. For reference, a budget classic tower CPU cooler like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo v2 weighs 662g.

The cooling performance chart shows the M.2 Three in active mode (fan cooled), passive (no fan) vs. a bare drive, under load. The test drive was a Samsung 980 Pro 500GB at an ambient temperature of 25 degrees Celsius. The top bar chart shows Flash NAND temperatures, and the one below shows the SSD controller temperature.

The JuiShark M.2 Three is available with either a blackened heatsink or bare aluminum. The 'graphene' blackened version costs 30 Yuan more, so its Chinese retail price is equivalent to $13.30, rather than $8.80. We might have been surprised by the light weight of the JuiShark M.2 Three, but it was pretty cheap.

Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

  • dwd999
    IDK I would want to hear some comments from the motherboard manufacturers indicating that the m.2 mounting could handle such weight and stress. And while I might use one in the passive mode on a motherboard mounted in a horizontal case I don't think I'd risk it in a vertically mounted motherboard in a tower case.
    Reply
  • leoneo.x64
    D'uh! It's like saying running your PC on the north pole can result in much lower operating temps. Ofcourse it WILL! That's not how you solve the problem though...lol!

    Most M.2 slots are between PCIe slots and anything that exceeds the SSD length and breadth is a step in the wrong direction.

    and let's not forget WHERE this fan will dump the heat: directly on GPU or RAM (based on which M.2 slot you use.

    Personally I think fully metal based, active / hybrid motherboard armour should become the norm. No one will object if the armour is even 2 times thicker.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    Let's just ignore the fact a GPU will get in the way of such cooling 90% of the time, unless you don't want a discrete GPU at all...

    I guess there's a non-zero chance someone will find a use for this non-ironically? Maybe?

    Regards.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    dwd999 said:
    would want to hear some comments from the motherboard manufacturers indicating that the m.2 mounting could handle such weight and stress.
    should be fine.

    m.2 are generally pretty secure similar to gpu's.

    its got little room to move (due to the m.2 locking mechanism/screw) so stress shouldnt be damaging at all.

    also m.2 dont need cooled just the controller itself does (wish they'd have a cooler for that andn ot rest of the m.2)
    Reply
  • pixelpusher220
    hotaru251 said:
    should be fine.

    m.2 are generally pretty secure similar to gpu's.

    its got little room to move (due to the m.2 locking mechanism/screw) so stress shouldnt be damaging at all.

    also m.2 dont need cooled just the controller itself does (wish they'd have a cooler for that andn ot rest of the m.2)
    newb question - is this only for high i/o intensive loads or does even normal disk usage require it? or will with faster speeds?
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    pcie 5 drives use a lot more power than 4.0 versions. this have made it necessary for some kind of active cooling as they run very warm and even hot at normal loads.

    i don't see this working at all since as others noted, it is either sitting right on the back of the gpu which blocks air getting to the fan or it will sit right in front of the gpu dumping it's hot air straight into the gpu.

    many m.2 slots end up underneath the triple+ slot gpu's and this heatsink would not even be mountable. they are thinking about the problem for sure but this needs a different approach ...
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    pixelpusher220 said:
    newb question - is this only for high i/o intensive loads or does even normal disk usage require it? or will with faster speeds?
    depends. many MB come with covers that act as heatsinks for at least 1 of the slots.

    4.0 would liekly only be intensive loads 5.0 might be different (again no real data for general use/testing yet) but also (afaik) not backwards compatible with current mb as they are fatter than modern ones.

    Math Geek said:
    pcie 5 drives use a lot more power than 4.0 versions. this have made it necessary for some kind of active cooling as they run very warm and even hot at normal loads.
    i could see m.2 getting small downdraft fans over a flat heatsink similar to how vrm got cooled by stock intel coolers. rather than towers.

    or MB will have to relocate where m.2 end up (seen some with em near ram slot iirc)
    Reply
  • thestryker
    We absolutely need motherboard makers to move them away from the CPU/GPU because the amount of heat being dumped into the hottest part of a PC is just getting worse. I'd be thrilled if they'd just start putting U.2 ports on every motherboard so I don't need to put the SSD on the board period.
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    i could see maybe the m.2 slot turning sideways like a ram slot. don't really need 4 ram slots anyway and it would leave space for the drive that way away from the gpu/cpu area.

    just a random thought anyway
    Reply
  • ezst036
    Why not just water-cool the M.2 SSD at that point? Adding one more device into the system with two extra tubes is surely a simple task.
    Reply