Here atComputex 2024, we’ve seen no shortage of peculiar sights, but the innovations in SSD cooling being showcased by Teamgroup have raised particular interest. They will certainly vary in installation viability depending on the specifications of your case, particularly inMini ITX casesand HTPC/SFF builds in general. Though considering the width of some modern 2-slot and 3-slot GPUs, some of these should still work in those more confined PC builds.
So, the most immediately striking of the SSD coolers on display definitely has to be T-Force GD120S, which takes a typical NVMe cooling shroud and turns it into a watercooling pump attached to a full 120mm radiator and fan. This is obviously somewhat ridiculous, but our prior NVMebenchmarkingwith TeamGroup’s ownT-Force Dark Airflowcooler showed that these enhanced designs are making more sense in an era where uncooled SSDs can actually reach GPU temperatures (80C+).
Most of the other designs look like they should more feasibly fit inside modern SFF PC builds, or at least a moderately thick Micro ATX PC build. Since the height of these coolers from the board seems to roughly fall in line with modern GPUs, any PC case that can fit those GPUs and has an open NVMe slot above them shouldn’t have too much issue with these, though it will certainly make cable management a bigger headache in confined builds.
In my opinion, the most viable design is probably theTeamgroup T-Force AF06, since it uses a highly-compact design and even has a mini fan built in. While this still won’t fit in something like a laptop, it should work in virtually any actual HTPC/SFF PC build, perhaps even modding projects on other existing enclosures. The others all use fans as well, but are tall enough that they’re a guaranteed hassle to cable management. RAM and CPU cooler clearance could also be a concern in some builds.
Another wildly creative design here is the T-Force WF-01, which more or less functions as a full AIO liquid cooler unit with a fan and radiator integrated as one in unholy fusion. It’s almost certainly overkill, but it’s still pretty cool, and harkens back tohybrid AIO GPU coolers. The T-Force AF04, AF05, and AF03 also look kind of cool, but are pretty standard heatsink-and-fan designs in comparison.
We don’t have any benchmarks for these to remark on, so the statements on cooling performance enhancements introduced by these new SSD heatsink and cooler designs will have to be tested to be trusted. However, considering Teamgroup’s existing SSD cooling track record… there is certainly promise here. TheGPU-shaped RAM coolermight be a little sillier, though.
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Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.
