Do I Need a Heatsink for My M.2 Drive?

In general, it depends on your usage. I'd recommend snagging a couple of heatsinks since they’re pretty affordable. You probably won’t absolutely need them, but they don’t hurt to have. Plus, it could help with thermal throttling if you're pushing the drive hard.

Having a heatsink is a good idea when your drives can hit over 5000 MB/s for sustained reads/writes, which could lead to thermal throttling at those speeds. For everyday tasks, most people don’t max out their drives, though, unless you’re downloading big games or working with large video files. If you're interested in specific models, let me know!

It really depends on what you intend to use the drive for. If it’s just for gaming, then you might not need a heatsink. But if you're handling a lot of large files regularly, then a heatsink is a smart choice since it could help with performance. I've heard that M.2 drives can get really hot, sometimes up to 120°C, but they can endure it. I've seen videos where they had to use a heat gun to affect the performance of a gen 3 drive, so 4th gen might behave similarly or not. But better safe than sorry!