One Year Later: Intel Adds Heatsink To M.2 Optane 905P SSD

According to a recent product notice,Intel has added a heatsink to its Optane SSD 905P SSDs. The company first released the M.2 variant of its speedy Intel Optane 905P SSD a year ago, but a handful of concerns were raised about its ability to dissipate heat. This was only a natural response from the market because the other forms of Intel Optane 905P SSDs, such as the U.2-connected model and the more-common PCIe add-in-card, all had metal heatsinks. Yet the M.2 model lacked this particular feature when it came out roughly one year ago.

(Image credit: Intel)

At the time, third-party cooler-maker EKWB introduced a passive heatsink that you could add on to the SSD to handle cooling. This was great, except that it cost an additional $20 plus shipping – and a lot of people weren’t amused by the apparent necessity for a third-party cooler, or the hassle of the extra effort. Consequently, we doubt many buyers opted to take this route.

(Image credit: Intel)

It appears that Intel has listened to those concerns. It might have taken almost a year, but the chipmaker has come out with its own cooling solution for the 380GB Optane 905P M.2 SSD. It consists of an Optane-branded metal plate for each side of the unit.

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Row 0 - Cell 0 Intel Optane SSD 905P M.2 SSD
Capacity (GB)22x110mm, M.2, 380GB
Memory MediaIntel 3D XPoint Memory Media
Sustained Sequential Read/Write3Up to 2,700 / 2,200 MB/s
Random 4KB Random Read/Write3Up to 575,000 / 550,000 IOPS
Read/Write Latency<10 µs / < 11 µs
InterfacePCIe 3.0 X 4, NVMe
Form Factors, Height, and WeightM.2 22mm / 110mm / 3.88mm / up to 13 grams
Life Expectancy1.6 million hours Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
Lifetime Endurance410 Drive Writes per Day (DWPD)
Power Consumption TypicalActive Sequential Read: 6.5W / Active Write: 11.7W / Idle: 2.7W
Operating Temperature50° C to 85° C

The cooling solution will be shipped with all new units of the Intel Optane 905P M.2 SSD, although some current inventory might still ship without it. As noted by Computerbase, if you already own one of these SSDs, you can request a free heatsink at www.intel.com/ssdmodulesupport.

Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

  • derekullo
    Any word on a hopefully adequately cooled PCIE 4.0 x4 Optane?
    Reply
  • TheFace
    My guess is that with Intel stating that they're going to jump to PCI-E gen 5 in 2021, they'll just skip 4.
    Reply
  • JayNor
    Intel provides pcie4 in Stratix 10 and Agilex FPGAs and has announced it in their Ice Lake Server chips for 2020. Its use is also documented for their eyeq5 chip.
    Reply