even if you get ones with a heatsink, your graphics card blocks all of them from airflow. it seems like, if anything, the heat sink would make heat problems worse because it can go both ways
i know gravis did a post on this but i
- just installed TWO m.2
- and
- had to prioritize which slot the only one with a heatsink was going into
Frankly all of modern motherboard design is so fucked.
We need a new layout, but capitalism prioritizes momentum for mass production and cost reduction, so people are going to keep using ATX until the sun burns out. Meanwhile, GPUs are getting so big they practically need their own table, hanging out of a slot meant for something less than 1/4 their weight, ready to snap off because their entire design is borderline psychopathic, and THEN you have things like m.2 slots getting blocked by the chonky fuckers because there's no more goddamn room.
Something's going to have to break - either GPUs will need their own stands, presumably with bus cables back to the PCIe ports, or we're going to have to invent new cases to support the bastards. And m.2 is going to have to adapt - I virtually guarantee we'll see new form factors or adapter types for them sooner rather than later, because they need heat sink room for ideal performance but dear god are they too useful/good not to have.