Hi everyone, I am building a mini-ITX based pc and the motherboard I bought is Asrock B650I, which has one m.2 PCIe slot in the front and one in the back. The issue is that the back one is obviously a weird spot, that ssd will have to be the ssd that just stays there forever if I don’t want to remove the whole motherboard for it. Just needed your suggestion on which ssd you would put in the back, The 1TB WD_Black or The 2tb MSI. The back would likely not fit a heat sink.
Whichever one you think you’re going to remove less often. Probably the 2 TB if you think you might upgrade the other.
If one of them needs a heat sink, you’d probably put that one on the front. You could also put a thermal pad on the other and use the case itself as a heatsink.
I assume your case doesn’t have a removable back panel.
That’s a relief, I wasn’t sure how worried I should be about heat sink. 2TB does make more sense in the back. Thank you!
If they don’t come with a heatsink, they’re usually fine to run without a heatsink. Just check reviews for the ssd to see if they have overheating issues.
I haven’t found m2 ssds to get very hot, personally. Only when copying extremely large files or big amounts of files that take longer than 10 or so minutes I have seen temperatures in the 60s ©, but usually its down near 50 or less.
If I recall correctly, the m.2 port on the front has a faster bus speed than the one on the back for that mobo. Don’t know if that might influence your decision.