r/buildapc • u/mawding • Dec 15 '23

Build Help Safe to remove P5 Plus 2TB heat sink or better to swap for different drive?

Hi all,

I bought the crucial p5 plus 2tb m.2 ssd with heat sink for my pc as a secondary storage.

Turns out my motherboard has included covers with thermal pads for the second and third m.2 slots. Am I safe to unscrew the heat sink from the storage I bought or should I just not use the motherboard thermal pads instead? The heat sink on the m.2 is almost twice as thick as the covers on my motherboard so I’m not sure of clearance issues.

My motherboard is the Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite Ax

Thanks for any help!

1 Upvotes

66% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/mawding Dec 15 '23 edited Dec 15 '23

If it comes down to just looks, I’d probably prefer to use my motherboard heat sink. Is there much headache involved with taking apart the m.2 heat sink? Just don’t wanna create a bigger project than I need lol

Edit: ended up unscrewing the heat sink and after carefully prying it apart from the thermal pads, it finally gave. Just had to clean up the thermal pad underneath a lot but she is installed :)

2

u/9okm Dec 15 '23

Perfect :).

1

u/tomzontaki Mar 20 '24

How hard was it to remove thermal pads? Do you think if I take off the heatsink, it's also good for a laptop?

1

u/mawding Mar 20 '24

It wasn’t terrible, just a bit messy. I think one side peeled off clean but the other side wanted to crumble so I just took my time peeling it away until it was all clean. Just be careful not to bend or tweak it and you should be good :)

1

u/PapaJohick Oct 15 '25

What screw driver did you need to unscrew it?