I'm really confused about what Drive Temperature 2 means for my M.2 SSD in HWinfo64. I have all four M.2 slots filled, but only the first slot is showing multiple temperature readings, and Drive Temperature 2 is running super hot at 75°C while Temperature 1 is only at 39°C idle. I've looked online and it seems like many people are puzzled by the same issue, but all I find are snarky remarks about overheating due to airflow issues, which isn't the case for me. My setup has good airflow with six intake fans and four exhaust fans. The GPU is below the M.2, and I've got thermal pads installed. I've even tried swapping different M.2 drives from Gen 3 to Gen 5, but they all show that high temperature. M.2 slots 2, 3, and 4 don't display the same temperature readings, just this confusing spike on the first one. I'm hoping someone can shed some light on what this is all about!
2 Answers
Temperature readings can vary a lot between different SSD models. The 'Drive Temperature 2' you see might be a hotspot or specifically the controller temp, which typically runs much hotter than the others. My own Samsung 980 Pro hits the 60°C range too, especially during benchmarks. Have you tried running any benchmarks on your SSDs? If they’re thermal throttling, you'd likely see slower speeds. Monitoring those speeds during stress tests could give better insights on whether these temps are actually problematic.
Drive Temperature 2 usually refers to the temperature of the controller chip on the SSD, which can run hotter than the actual NAND chips. It's common for these chips to hit higher temps, especially under load. If it's at 75°C, that might be on the edge of thermal throttling, but SSDs can often handle high temps temporarily without major issues. You might want to try some benchmarking to see if there's any performance drop when it heats up. That's usually a big indicator of whether it's a problem or not!
But why is it showing red and is 75°C too hot? I've checked my other PC and it hits the same temp. CrystalDiskInfo shows no warnings, so I’m kind of lost here.
I haven’t benchmarked, I've just been watching idle temps. It's weird because normal temps on my other drives are much lower, but this Temperature 2 is consistently high. It's like a mystery that even the HWinfo devs don’t have answers to!