Will a 2Tb Samsung 980Pro V.nand NVME m.2 PCiE4 SSD as a documents drive require a heatsink on Z420

[SDH]

Hopefully Banhien will let us know if he used one of the Samsung 980PRO M.2 SSDs on a Z Turbo Drive G1 and how that worked for him...

That is a label you show, and not a heatsink. Some people claim that the label also may serve as a "heatspreader" by having some thermal conductivity capabilities. I showed you my favorite HP heatsink including its top and bottom halves, above. That one and the one shown below both work with the ZTD G1 PCIe cards fine and maintain that card's "single slot width" form factor so you don't end up wasting access to an adjacent PCIe slot. If you look carefully at this one there are fewer and shorter protrusions than on the one I like better (so less surface area for cooling):

Fits in tighter places...

For the one I like best it is easiest to put it together before you use the little HP brass screw/black plastic machined hold-down device to mount it in the ZTD.

The Samsung 980PRO M.2 stick with attached Samsung heatsink fits also onto the ZTD G1 and works but does not seem to have as much surface area for cooling. Some people bought those thinking they could just slip the heatsink off and harvest the bare M.2 drive from inside. I looked that issue up and found it was not an easy or particularly safe thing to do. Here's more of what those look like from above and below, locked together:

Locked together...

Supposedly Samsung initially designed these for very tight spaces such as for use in the PlayStation 5.

[Rhothgar]

Finally got around to a bit of reading up.  It's surprising how fast one can forget things.

It is BambiBoomz that works in Architecture.  He was very detailed in prior posts about the performance of several different iterations of their workstations.

I've now had a little more time to look at Z820 specs.  It's really nice that they don't use a riser board but I guess in terms of performance any improvement would be nominal because of the reduction in amount of copper traces on the PCB as opposed to the riser board.  I may be wrong.

Interestingly, I can see it could be a rabbit hole of learning looking to move to either a Z820 or a Z640.

I agree with you about moving forwards and perhaps I won't be as confused as I got over ZTurbo Drives as last time.  That seemed like a minefield to me but I got there in the end.

I can see that it could be a can of worms trying to get information from some sellers regarding whether the riser board on a Z640 dual CPU set up has the optional RAM fans installed because most people selling them never show a photo of the inside of the riser board cowling/saddle.

I can see what a "BEAST" the Z820/Z840 can be.  It's nearly double the weight of the Z420!!!  But why? The case is only nominally bigger.  Is it lead lined? 😂

Be interested to see what I can find from DGroves about cooling on them as the standard cooling appears to be passive.  I'll have to try and dig up his workstation with the water tank of anti-freeze on it. Sheer brilliance.

I have visions of me ending up building some behemoth that I'll never be able to stretch (with Z420 AIO coolers, custom made copper heatsinks and piped to a 50% antifreeze header tank stored in a home refridgerator...).  NO! I'm just being daft but I imagine you could really ramp up the overclocking if running XTU on Windows 7.

Wise word about telling the seller what you're looking for.  I am awaiting a high res photo from one at the moment.  Lots of watchers appearing on his listing on a daily basis but not sold as yet.  Maybe it's priced a bit high for the current market.

I am currently running the AHCI without a heatsink.  Must try it with one!

[Rhothgar]

Maybe banhien presumed that I was buying a brand new unit and the heatsink ones are the only ones available now?  I don't know.

[SDH]

Yes, this can get complicated!

The Z820/Z840 are quite a bit bigger in volume than you'd think, but no lead inside. Built like a tank. No, they're not passive cooled. It is just that the fans are not attached to the processor heatsink. Instead, the fans are mounted in the black plastic removable housing that covers that whole area. These aren't the computers you drag around to the neighborhood gaming get-together.

DGroves has these mastered, including their water cooling options which are demanded by the motherboard automatically with certain hot memory/processor configurations. He's in the enterprise level IT world where the power and capabilities they provide are truly needed and benefit from his advanced expertise. However, I don't think he has a bathtub full of glycol.