SilverStone Launches SST-ECM23 Riser Card for M.2 SSDs
by Anton Shilov on September 17, 2018 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- SSDs
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- SilverStone
- M.2
SilverStone has introduced its new PCIe x16 riser card for M.2 SSDs. The SST-ECM23 risers are aimed at those who want to maximize the efficiency of their SSD cooling, or just install more SSDs into spare PCIe x16 slots.
As SSDs have transitioned from 2.5-inch drives to M.2 sticks, cooling high-end drives has been a sometimes uneasy prospect. The M.2 form factor along with NAND die stacking allows for a rather dense collection of electronics, and as high-end SSD controllers get more sophisticated, their heat dissipation has been increasing as well. To that end a number of companies (including ADATA, Cryorig, EKWB, and SilverStone, just to name a few) have released heat spreaders and even active cooling systems for M.2 drives over the past few quarters, and now SilverStone is ready with a yet another solution that promises to be more efficient than usual passive coolers for modular SSDs.
SilverStone's SST-ECM23 riser card can house a single PCIe M.2- 2230, 2242, 2260, or 2280 drive. The adapter come with two heat spreaders, a thermal pad, and is outfitted with two LEDs to monitor activity of an installed SSD. It is noteworthy that PCB design of the adapter is optimized for heat dissipation, as it has an additional copper mesh just to transfer heat form the back of an SSD to the rear heat spreader. As for specified thermal conductivity, SilverStone says it is around 1.5 W/mK.
An added benefit of SilverStone’s ECM23 riser card for owners of AMD X399 and Intel X299-based HEDT platforms is ability to install a larger number of M.2 SSDs into their systems. For those who need a high-capacity high-performance storage subsystem, such adapters may make a great sense.
Finally, it's worth pointing out that since the SST-ECM23 adapter is designed for PCIe x16 slots, it can only be used with AHCI or NVMe SSDs that use a PCIe bus, as it doesn't offer a means to support SATA M.2 drives.
SilverStone did not announce ETA and MSRP of the upcoming SST-ECM23 riser card.
Related Reading:
- SilverStone Launches SST-TP01-M.2 Thermal Pads for M.2 SSDs
- Cryorig Set to Reveal the Dual Heatpipe Frostbit M.2 SSD Cooler
- ADATA Announces XPG Storm: A Cooler for M.2 SSDs with a 16500 RPM Fan
- Alphacool Releases Two New SSD Coolers: Passive HDX-2 and Watercooled HDX-3
- EKWB Launches Aftermarket EK-M.2 Aluminum Heatsink for M.2 SSDs
Source: SilverStone
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austinsguitar - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
pretty nice stuffVorl - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
Seems kind of pointless. You give up a 16x slot for something that only uses 4x. If they had made it a card that could take 4 m.2 drives, that would have made much more sense and been cool, but most boards that could give up a full 16x slot without worry are already going to have m.2 slots onboard and not need this.stuffwhy - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
It's true, only 4 lanes would be used. Hopefully this adapter is designed to use the lanes properly if plugged into a 16x physical, 4x electrical slot.PeachNCream - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
Eh, even the majority of the games I play these days run at max settings on my HD 4000. Thanks to Optimus giving me the choice, I just use the fact that my laptop has the cooling necessary to handle its dGPU as a means to keep fan speed, heat, and system noise down. With Skylake+ iGPUs being lots faster than my old HD 4000, I can see a reason why there are a lot of empty 16x slots out there in the desktop space. We may as well stick SSDs in them since they're otherwise unused.vbigdeli - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
No it's not useless..I have two systems with z97 mainboard and they just support M.2 in 1GBPS so I have to use such adapters to take full advatanges of m.2 nvme ssdsfroheweihnachten - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
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Death666Angel - Tuesday, September 18, 2018 - link
I use a generic adapter like this with a x4 NVME slot and a SATA slot in my H87 mainboard which I BIOS modded to boot from NVME drives. Works like a charm in one of the PCIex16 (electrically x4) slots. And I know tons of other non enthusiast motherboards that have physical x16 slots that are wired x4 (either 2.0 or 3,0) and the NVME in there is still faster and more convenient than a SATA drive. Nothing pointless about it, especially since DDR4 prices are high enough to deter me upgrading at the moment, when my CPU performance is good enough.lightningz71 - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
While I've been looking at parts like this one, I feel that it misses the point and badly. No M.2 NVME drive is going to use more than 4 lanes on this thing. Why, oh why, did they design it to fully involve a x16 slot? They should have used a shorter connector to enable it to more easily be used on boards that have only x8 slots open. I kind of wish more processors supported bifurcation and they could have made this a two slot M.2 adapter, with one on the low 4 channels, and the next on the second four channels. That would have made much more sense to me.This thing better be cheap.
dogie - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
Who even has an 8x slot? Should have done a 4x slot card.Santoval - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
Er, nope, I would never waste 12 PCIe lanes just for better cooling and less/no throttling to my M.2 SSD. Whoever decided on and approved that design at Silverstone must be quite insane. Who would choose to waste a x16 PCIe slot on a single M.2 SSD with no throttling instead of 2 to 4 SSDs, even if they throttled?Even if someone cannot afford more than one M.2 SSD it still does not make sense : they could use their M.2 clot along with a heat spreader to reduce (rather than eliminate) throttling, along with maybe a more powerful fan, and they would be left with one free x16 PCIe slot to employ for other uses.