High-end M.2-2280 solid-state drives are small and fast, but some of them tend to get hot and require cooling. Some suppliers of enthusiast-grade SSDs have introduced drives with rather large heat spreaders, and even active cooling, and there are similar aftermarket cooling solutions too. But RaidSonic wants to beat them all both in terms of performance and in terms of… dimensions.
Raid Sonic’s Icy Box IB-M2HSF-702 features a large ‘big block’ aluminum heat sink that features nine 0.5-mm fins with 2-mm air gaps, two 4-mm heat pipes that are in direct contact with the SSD, and a 30-mm fan. The cooling solution comes with a thermal pad to maximize performance and ensure compatibility with different M.2-2280 SSDs that tend to have slightly different design configurations.
The manufacturer says that its Icy Box IB-M2HSF-702 cooling system can reduce M.2 SSD temperatures by up to 50% under high loads when compared to regular coolers without heat pipes and a fan.
Based on the numbers provided by RaidSonic, the cooler can reduce a temperature of an SSD (equipped with a regular heat spreader) from around 60ºC to around 30ºC. SSD controllers do not usually throttle performance at 60ºC, but lower thermals are certainly good for longer-term longevity of SSDs.
But performance comes at a price. The Icy Box IB-M2HSF-702 cooling solution is rather big and is hardly light. While RaidSonic says that the 30-mm fan it uses is silent, this is something that has to be put to a test, but typically small fans produce rather unpleasant noises.
RaidSonic’s Icy Box IB-M2HSF-702 ‘big block’ active cooling system for M.2-2280 SSD are already available. Depending on the retailer, the product costs from €30 to €35 in mainland Europe.
