Is an active heatsink needed for Samsung 9100 PRO 4TB?
Watching 4TB of data fly through a PCIe 5.0 lane is exhilarating, but the Samsung 9100 PRO hits 82 - 88℃ almost instantly. This triggers hardware thermal throttling, crashing the read speed from 12000 MB/s down to 3000 MB/s, which causes those annoying momentary freezes in-game. I tried capping the link speed to PCIe 4.0 in the BIOS, but losing 50% of my speed was a compromise I couldn't live with. I ended up installing an active M.2 heatsink with a fan locked at 3000 RPM and enabled the low-power cooling mode in the driver. AIDA64 tests show the sustained read/write temps are now clamped at 55 - 62℃, and the throttling has completely stopped. The fan was loud as hell at first, but tweaking the PWM curve made it whisper-quiet. The drive now stays around 58℃ with peak throughput. The monitoring panel confirms the speed is back to normal.
