I got a pc that suffers from severe heating problems because of its poorly designed passive cooling case. I tried several strategies to put temperature under control, did a lot of tests with thermald, but ended up hacking a fan into the case. However, I still have problems with ssd temperatures.

Right now, as I write this, the nvme ssd is at 67ºC and easily goes beyond 80 or 90 during data transfers. I already lost 2 ssds before realizing this was the problem, because I was controlling just the cpu temperature.

There’s no physical way to force airflow where the ssd is, so I was wondering if there’s some way to throttle data transfer of something to prevent the ssd temperatures from reaching a threshold. All I could find was a vibecoded github repository. I don’t care if data transfer gets ridiculously slow, as long as the ssd remain safe, and I can’t consider getting any new hardware right now.

I’m currently running fedora 44 on that machine

Edit: I thought there was an easier software mitigation to that, but apparently, solutions will tend to the hardware side, so here are the hardware details:

  • It’s an unbranded chinese cheap mini pc with a heat dissipation case that doesn’t dissipate well
  • The ssd is mounted on the back of the motherboard. The model is a sandisk M.2 1TB 2280
    Here’s a photo of the case, for the reference (don’t judge me lol):

image

  • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    11·
    2 days ago

    You need contact in between the SSD and the case. Most cheap mini PCs like that don’t cool their drives well. You can try getting thermal pads to make good contact between the SSD and the case. Or if it’s too big and you’re stacking multiple then get a block of copper and put it in between.

    Also make sure there’s something making contact between the SSD and the motherboard.

    Also also flip than fan around so it’s blowing air into the PC and not sucking air past it.

    • morto@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Thanks. I just don’t get this part:

      Also make sure there’s something making contact between the SSD and the motherboard.

      What do you mean?

      • Coolcat1711@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        1 day ago

        They make little stick-on thermal pad squares that you put in between the bottom of M.2 SSD sticks and the top of the motherboard to help heat dissipation.

      • Luccus@feddit.org
        6·
        2 days ago

        The motherboard can actually act as a heatsink. A bunch of notebook manufaturers will stick thermalpads between the m.2 SSD and the motherboard to cool the SSD, at almost zero cost.

        You could try a glob of thermal putty and see if that helps. Thermalpads can be a bit finnicky due to the exact sizing requirements.