PCIe 5.0 SSDs are coming and Thermalright has big coolers for them

New, properly oversized Thermalright SSD coolers – HR-09 2280 Pro and HR-09 2280

Are the SSD heatsinks that come with motherboards not enough? For such situations, Thermalight now has alternative solutions that don’t seem to lack cooling performance even for SSDs supporting PCI Express 5.0. The HR-09 2280 and HR-09 2280 Pro coolers are characterized by a more segmented design even compared to designs used for cooling CPUs in laptops or minicomputers.

If a cooler, then a proper one. This is certainly what the developers of the new SSD heatsinks called HR-09 2280 and HR-09 2280 Pro followed. These are somewhat reminiscent of the unconventional coolers that Thermalright once had for chipsets and graphics card VRMs. Here too, the large radiating surface of the fins with heatpipes is the basis, the task of which is to distribute the heat loss from the chips as evenly as possible. In the case of the HR-09 2280 (Pro) from the controller and memory.

Thermalright HR-09 2280 Pro

The larger of the pair of new HR-09 2280 coolers with the “Pro” attribute is 90 grams. By comparison, that’s also the weight of Intel’s older coolers, which are commonly used with 65-watt processors and cool them well even at lower noise levels. Of course, here the situation is a bit different – the HR-09 2280 doesn’t have a fan and its mounting isn’t even counted on much. Although an 80 mm fan could be mounted on the heatsink with the help of pull-tabs. However, given the relatively low power draw of SSDs (even the most powerful NVMe models with PCIe 4.0 support do not exceed 8 W), it would be rather unnecessary in builds with active system cooling. The passive is also large enough to keep the SSD at low temperatures without the need for a fan, even on SSDs with PCI Express 5.0 support. These should gradually arrive during this year and if their performance is doubled, theoretically their power draw can also be doubled (and we are now talking about 15-18 W).

The heatsink body consists of 0.4 mm thick aluminium fins. The HR-09 2280 Pro has up to 33 such fins and considering the height of the radiator (74 mm), the total area of the heatsink is really above standard. The air of the system fans will circulate the heatsink body through 1.8 mm wide gaps.

For even use of the heatsink’s fins there are two C-shaped heatpipes (one is rotated 180 degrees, so from the profile you can see more like a “G” or flat 6). The cooler exclusively supports 80 mm SSDs and includes a backplate. It also cools the memory on double-sided SSDs from underneath, so typically on higher capacity models.

By the way, the width of the cooler is 24 mm. With these in this axis, the SSD itself does not protrude too much. Still, in the M.2 slot closest to the CPU socket (so usually above the first PCI Express ×16 slot) this will determine how far the fins of the CPU cooler can extend. Models with long fins will not avoid horizontal mounting on many motherboards. Naturally, this worsens compatibility on AMD platforms, where often the vertical orientation of the CPU cooler is the only possible one.

Thermalright HR-09 2280 Pro cooler installed on an SSD. Its dominant dimension is height (74 mm)

Thermalright HR-09 2280

The smaller variant HR-09 2280 (without the “Pro” in the designation) is mainly lower. That is roughly by 26 to 27 mm. Thermalright puts the height in the range of 47–48 mm. You can actually adjust it a bit. It depends on whether you tighten the screws in the bottom or top position of the short rails. But of the two new Thermalright coolers, this one is always lower.

Installation is therefore also possible in slim or lower cases. Cooling performance will still be beyond the needs of the most powerful SSDs. The weight (80g) is only 11 % less compared to the Pro variant, although much of that is made up of the copper heatspreader. The difference in fin area is certainly more significant. Apart from having one less fin, the HR-09 2280’s fins are all almost half the height. Only one heatpipe is used within this design.

Thermalright hasn’t published recommended prices and we don’t have information about the availability of these coolers yet.

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš


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