Aurora R11, M.2 NVMe heatsink clearance

I myself purchased the R11 with a 1TB HDD, then cloned the Dell OS install to a 970 Plus. Macrium Reflect worked great for this, with the main issues being (1) changing BIOS from RAID to AHCI, and (2) search indexing still indexing only the old HDD "C" drive instead of the new 970 Plus until the HDD was totally removed.

Anyway, it's a super tight space between the installed 970 Plus and the graphics card. You're not likely to get a heatsink in there.

The m2 slot is behind the gpu, so your clearance is the space between the motherboard and gpu.  If you wanted to use a heatsink on your m2 drive you'd need to drop the m2 drive to a pcie slot.  I have two m2 nvme drives with a heatsink installed that wsy.  It doesn't make a significant difference on temps though.

I myself bought the R11 with a 1TB HDD, at that point cloned the Dell OS introduce to a 970 Plus. Macrium Reflect worked extraordinary for this, with the primary issues being (1) changing BIOS from RAID to AHCI, and (2) search ordering actually ordering just the old HDD "C" drive rather than the new 970 Plus until the HDD was completely eliminated.

Anyway, it's an excessively restricted space between the introduced 970 Plus and the illustrations card. You're not liable to get a heatsink in there.

Hey @SleepingBeautyR11 I just ordered my R11 and I've the same intent as you, i.e. replace the Dell drive with either WD 3750 with heatsink (preferred) or Samsung 970 EV0 Plus. I can appreciate the space is tight (thanks @Anonymous for the great pics) yet I was wondering if you followed on the WD heatsink option and if so, what was the outcome?

I'll appreciate your feedback either way as Amazon have pretty good deals on both drives, and I want to pull the trigger on one of them.

@miko1aj 

"I've the same intent as you, i.e. replace the Dell drive with either WD 750 with heatsink (preferred)"

Just fyi that the wd 750 with ekwb heatsink option is a total rip, don't get it that way. The wd 750 1tb is $115. The heatsink bundle bumps the price to $150....  the kicker is if you buy the ekwb heatsink $16.25 (sans the wd black and white/design lettering) and the drive $116 individually the price comes to $132. So you get upcharged $18 for the "bundle" convenience.

This is the ekwb standalone retail equivalent of the ekwb heatsink that comes with the prepacked bundle (minus the wd black and white lettering / design):

https://www.amazon.com/EKWB-EK-M-2-NVMe-Heatsink-Black/dp/B073RHHYCM

As the WD with heatsing is only 8.1mm so super tight but should get lucky.

I personally would not mess with NVMe SSDs, especially not putting an consumer-market NVMe in an Aurora. (Dell Alienware, can you please give us properly liquid-cooled NVMe M.2 SSDs in Aurora R12? You know, the 3.5" HDD enclosure seems to be ready to be replaced by something more modern.)

If you insist, there are also such things called "laptop NVMe M.2 heatsinks". They are very thin to fit between the graphics card and the M.2 SSD on the mobo.

Thanks for your feedback @AuroraHasManyFans . Any particular reason why you wouldn't swap the drives - something related specifically to R11? The reason I ask is because I see no reason why not to touch them, other than R11 not being compatible with the WD or Samsung solutions.

Folks, after consideration I decided to keep the default 512Gb M.2 drive for OS plus music collection, and I'll use the 2TB M.2 drive to augment the overall capacity and dedicate it towards games only. The only challenge is that the mo-bo has only one M.2 port so I'm going to use one of those PCI-E adapters.

Any particular reason why you wouldn't swap the drives - something related specifically to R11? The reason I ask is because I see no reason why not to touch them, other than R11 not being compatible with the WD or Samsung solutions.

I think 2.5" SATA SSDs are still the king. They don't overheat. They have low failure rate. When they fail, data can still be recovered to a certain extend.

I have heard too many stories of M.2 NVMe SSDs overheating, shorting, failing, bricking, causing electrical fire, etc., both on this forum and on other forums. Also, when a NVMe SSD fails, the data is nearly impossible to recover, even if you are willing to pay thousands. Like the joke says, there is a "V" in NVMe, you know, and it stands for "volatile."

Currently the street wisdoms seems to be, if it's a reputable prebuild, like an Alienware, that comes with NVMe, it's likely reliable. If it's amateur built using consumer-market parts, it's hit or miss.

@miko1aj @"The trick is that I can get the WD 2TB with heatsink for £230, the same without heatsink is £350"

Nice, yeah that's a good price for the black label, it's on sale for about the same in the states too- $300 usd, but we also have the no heatsink option for $275.

You might try checking out the Samsung Evo 970 plus, which is currently on sale for $249 here, also 2tb, and pretty comparable specs to the wd black sn 750, with a good reputation. Not sure if you might also have a comparable sale over there, it would be an alternative to consider.