We told you that SSDs would need a fan… and here's the first

For some time now we have been telling you that the next generation SSDs will be twice as fast as the current ones, but the downside is that they will get much hotter… so much so that they will need a heatsink with active cooling like the ones we use in processors or graphics cards. Well, in the end, time proves us right, and the manufacturer JONSBO has launched a heatsink for SSDs with a fan … and not just any one, as you will see below.

High temperatures are probably the number one enemy of hardware devices. The devices are designed to work in a fairly narrow range of temperatures, and also in the case of SSDs there is a protection mechanism called Thermal Throttling that reduces their performance so that the temperature drops when it reaches a certain point, ruining in many cases the user experience.

SSDs would need a fan... and here's the first

This SSD cooler has a 14,000 RPM fan.

The device is called JOBSBO M.2-20, and it is a heatsink for M.2 format SSDs made with two pieces of aluminum, one of which is in contact with the SSD made up of sheets as usual, and an upper one that is nothing more than a cover to create a tunnel effect… why? Because it also has a 20mm diameter fan on one side that will push fresh air through this tunnel and thus effectively cool the entire surface of the heatsink.

JOBSBO M.2-20 ventilador SSD

This fan works at a maximum speed of 14,000 revolutions per minute , a figure that may seem exaggerated but in reality it is not so much if we take into account its small size. According to the manufacturer, it is capable of moving 1.35 CFM of air flow with a static pressure of 4.31 mmH2O, emitting only 24 dBA of maximum noise, something that seems illogical given the speed of operation, but that is how the manufacturer defines it. maker.

As you can imagine, this set of fan and heatsink for the SSD aims to significantly reduce the operating temperature of the solid state device, and according to the manufacturer it manages to reduce it to 33ºC, so it will be ideal for the next generation PCIe 5.0 SSDs that , as we have seen several times in the past, they get very hot and make it almost mandatory to use a heatsink with a fan like this.

Temperatura

Will all new SSDs need a fan?

The short answer to this question is probably yes. We have already been seeing the evolution in the previous generations of SSD, with the first M.2 PCIe 3.0 that did not need a heatsink except for the highest range, and with the M.2 PCIe 4.0 that, almost all of them, need a passive heatsink to be able to work at a suitable temperature.

The problem is that when the temperature of the SSD is already very high, you can not rely on a passive heatsink, since this depends on the active cooling of the PC case. Adding your own fan to the equation solves this problem, and now it is possible to guarantee that the SSD works in a suitable temperature range so that Thermal Throttling does not occur or even break down.