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.

@SleepingBeautyR11    Do you have an actual measure,ent for the motherboard-gpu clearance?

I do not have the exact measurement in nano-meters, but this is the best photo angle I have and you can see the clearance is effectively "zero".

. . . which is why I moved my M.2 SSD to a heat sink in a PCIe slot.

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

I think 9.90mm will fit behind the graphics card.

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.