cypea15c202e4
New member
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2025
- Messages
- 2
hello everyone.
this is my first post here—until now, Ii've mainly been reading and not posting anything; i was glad that i never had any major problems with stability or anything else.
but today I had to register because I'm simply disappointed with one of the advertised features—in this case, the m.2 cooling (“shield frozr”).
for a while, I had two samsung 990 pro ssd's in my rig – 1TB in slot m2_2 and 2TB in slot m2_3. (the mounting solution for M.2 drives in 2280 format in these slots is rather “suboptimal” – i'll come back to that in a moment ...)
the temperatures with these drives were never really bad, but never particularly good either. i never gave it much thought, as these M2 slots are located directly under the gpu cooler of my kfa2 rtx4080s, so i figured that was the reason. it's not ideal, but it worked, so why worry...
yesterday, I had time to install a wd black sn8100 4TB ssd in the m2_1 slot (which is suitable for pcie 5.0 ssd) – this is to replace the 2TB samsung ssd (which is needed in another rig...).
so i installed the wd black, put everything back together and copied my data from the samsung to the wd black (the temperatures were definitely not great on either drive during this 4–5 GB/s transfer, but they were still fast).
after copying the data, I removed the gpu again, took the “shield frozr” off the samsung drives, and noticed that although the heat sink was properly installed (i even double-checked! and of course, the protective film was removed from the thermal pads before anyone asks!), but the thermal pads had hardly any contact with the ssd surface!
only at ends of the thermal pad were slightly visible traces of contact between the pad and the ssd surface! (see green markings in picture below)
the next issue: the mounting solution for this heatsink.
the manual (page 33) says in step 5. "for 2280 ssd, secure the m.2 ssd in place with the supplied m.2 screw.[...]
in step 7 it says "put the m.2 shield frozr heatsink back in place and secure it.
well, that won't work, because two of the four screws on this heat sink are located in the same holes where the m.2 screw mentioned in step 5 would be fastened.(see red arrows in picture above)
this means that when attaching the heat sink, you have to fiddle around quite a bit with the ssd's in those two slots, as one end of the ssd's is pushed away from the board by the m.2 slot. (pic below)
as for the m2_1, in which the new wd black was installed: the thermal pad has the same problem; contact was only made at one end of the ssd (see green marking in picture below); the other end of the ssd with the controller was not touched by the thermal pad at all!
the thermal pad on the back also has no contact with the ssd at all, as it apparently only works with double-sided ssd models, which is not the case with mine. (has msi forgotten about single-sided ssd's?)
so i replaced all the m.2 thermal pads with slightly thicker ones (i estimate about 0.30mm thicker and also slightly softer) and the temperatures are much better now.
so i wonder if the folks at msi have even tested their “shield frozr” heat sinks... It's a shame that as a user i can't rely on such basic things as ssd heatsinks/thermal pads... or am I missing something here?
but i would like to explicitly mention that I have had _no_ damage to my hardware; all ssd's continue to function normally. however, i would also like to explicitly note that the mechanical design of the “shield frozr” on my board (x670e tomahawk) is really bad!
at the very least, spring screws could have been used to ensure even, gentle contact pressure from the heat sinks.
i don't know if this is better solved on boards with the 800 series chipsets, but i really hope so...
this is my first post here—until now, Ii've mainly been reading and not posting anything; i was glad that i never had any major problems with stability or anything else.
but today I had to register because I'm simply disappointed with one of the advertised features—in this case, the m.2 cooling (“shield frozr”).
for a while, I had two samsung 990 pro ssd's in my rig – 1TB in slot m2_2 and 2TB in slot m2_3. (the mounting solution for M.2 drives in 2280 format in these slots is rather “suboptimal” – i'll come back to that in a moment ...)
the temperatures with these drives were never really bad, but never particularly good either. i never gave it much thought, as these M2 slots are located directly under the gpu cooler of my kfa2 rtx4080s, so i figured that was the reason. it's not ideal, but it worked, so why worry...
yesterday, I had time to install a wd black sn8100 4TB ssd in the m2_1 slot (which is suitable for pcie 5.0 ssd) – this is to replace the 2TB samsung ssd (which is needed in another rig...).
so i installed the wd black, put everything back together and copied my data from the samsung to the wd black (the temperatures were definitely not great on either drive during this 4–5 GB/s transfer, but they were still fast).
after copying the data, I removed the gpu again, took the “shield frozr” off the samsung drives, and noticed that although the heat sink was properly installed (i even double-checked! and of course, the protective film was removed from the thermal pads before anyone asks!), but the thermal pads had hardly any contact with the ssd surface!
only at ends of the thermal pad were slightly visible traces of contact between the pad and the ssd surface! (see green markings in picture below)
the next issue: the mounting solution for this heatsink.
the manual (page 33) says in step 5. "for 2280 ssd, secure the m.2 ssd in place with the supplied m.2 screw.[...]
in step 7 it says "put the m.2 shield frozr heatsink back in place and secure it.
well, that won't work, because two of the four screws on this heat sink are located in the same holes where the m.2 screw mentioned in step 5 would be fastened.(see red arrows in picture above)
this means that when attaching the heat sink, you have to fiddle around quite a bit with the ssd's in those two slots, as one end of the ssd's is pushed away from the board by the m.2 slot. (pic below)
as for the m2_1, in which the new wd black was installed: the thermal pad has the same problem; contact was only made at one end of the ssd (see green marking in picture below); the other end of the ssd with the controller was not touched by the thermal pad at all!
the thermal pad on the back also has no contact with the ssd at all, as it apparently only works with double-sided ssd models, which is not the case with mine. (has msi forgotten about single-sided ssd's?)
so i replaced all the m.2 thermal pads with slightly thicker ones (i estimate about 0.30mm thicker and also slightly softer) and the temperatures are much better now.
so i wonder if the folks at msi have even tested their “shield frozr” heat sinks... It's a shame that as a user i can't rely on such basic things as ssd heatsinks/thermal pads... or am I missing something here?
but i would like to explicitly mention that I have had _no_ damage to my hardware; all ssd's continue to function normally. however, i would also like to explicitly note that the mechanical design of the “shield frozr” on my board (x670e tomahawk) is really bad!
at the very least, spring screws could have been used to ensure even, gentle contact pressure from the heat sinks.
i don't know if this is better solved on boards with the 800 series chipsets, but i really hope so...
