While the obvious star of the MSI SPATIUM M570 PRO series is the controversially sized fin array we would argue it is the heat pipes. In typical M.2 coolers these pipes are… well… “round(ish)”. Thus, the whole ‘pipe’ in their name. Basically, what manufactures do is take an off the shelf 3/4/5/6mm heat pipe bend it and then solder part of it into the base of their M.2 cooler so that it partially sits over the hot running components. Rinse and repeat and you have the idea of how they work. Sadly, solder is a poor transmitter of heat compared to thin copper walls. MSI know this and for their video card line figured out a way to safely and consistently make square(ish) heat pipes.
Going from round to square does three things. Firstly, it massively increased the surface area that is in contact with the controller/NAND/etc. It also means that less solder is need to secure the pipe in place. Further increasing the density of the pipes in a given area. This may not sound like all that much of an advantage when dealing with a 11.5watt TDP design… but it allows the MSI SPATIUM M570 PRO the luxury of adding in a third heat pipe into the same foot-print. Lastly, it allows for a Heatpipe Direct Touch configuration with nothing (besides the heat pads) between said heat pipes and the hot running components on the PCB.
Three 6mm pipes in the same area that usually can only accept 2 and in a HDT configuration is once again overkill for handling 11.5 watts of heat output. However, this increased efficiency does pay dividends in the real world. Namely it allows owners of this Phison E26 based SSD the luxury of basically not having to worry about thermal limiting… as it is darn near impossible to make it thermal limit. Even in synthetic stress testing this high TDP M.2 SSD ran cool, ran fast, and stayed fast unlike any stock cooling solution equipped E26 we have used to date. To be blunt this one-two combination of actually properly designed fin array with highly advanced heatpipes is a game changer. One where heat is simply no longer an issue. One where things can go back to the way they were in the NVMe PCIe 2.0 days of yore.
Sadly, going firmly hand in glove with the amazing cooling potential is equally ‘amazing’ list of possible installation issues. Firstly. While it is indeed true that this is a 24mm wide M.2 series… many aftermarket cooling options also will overhang each side the designated M.2 area by ~1mm or more. We have yet to have this become a real-world issue, and instead is mostly a theoretical / unlikely potential problem. The same can no be said of the length. Many a motherboard gives you a little bit of wiggle room around the M.2 22x80mm zone but some will not give you enough to handle the oversized dimensions of these types of cooling solutions.
This known issue is why MSI recommends a M.2 22110 socket and not M.2 2280. However, in testing the MSI SPATIUM M570 PRO series does not have any noticeable additional restrictions compared to an Acidalie or ThermalRight HR-09 Pro… which make no 22110 recomendations. Instead, in the typical 2280 socket installation it is a bit of a PITA to reach in between the heatpipes and lock down the drive into position but it is doable. It also may take a bit of fiddling to get the overhanging ‘pipe on the front of the M570 Pro to not hit the M.2 port itself during installation… but that too is par for the course for all oversized M.2 heatsinks. This issue just underscores how bad the M.2 standard is for enthusiast class SSDs.
That however brings us to the deal-breaker for some builds. The z-height. Standing a full 72 millimeters (or a whopping 2.84 hamburger units) up and off the motherboard… ooof. That makes small Form-Factor builds a no go as there will simply not be enough room for it. Even in Full Tower E-ATX builds you are basically going to be limited to the top-most M.2 port on the motherboard. As for M.2 to PCIe Add In Card adapters… fuggedaboutit. 72mm means it will take up about as much room as the typical NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 class cards. So please put a pin in any hopes/dreams/desires of having even two of these cooling monsters installed inside your PC gaming build. It is firmly a ‘one and done’ type deal with this series. Which is not all that bad considering the fact that motherboards typically only come with one PCIe 5.0 port to begin with and using this class of SSD in compatibility mode is a suboptimal use of your money.
If one so chooses, for whatever reason, to void their warranty and tear down the MSI SPATIUM M570 PRO you will find no secrets nor mysteries. Instead, you will simply find the best components available on the market today. That is to say two excellent heat pads (one above the PCB and one below it) covering a Phison E26 controller, cutting edge Micron 232-layer Replacement Gate NAND, and 4GB of RAM. All on a pretty much standard Phison E26 2280 form-factor PCB running standard(ish) Phison E26 firmware.
On the positive side since it is just four Philips #0 screws holding that wonderful cooling solution together… when you do upgrade to say a PCIe 6.0 generation device you can easily reuse the cooling solution that MSI has unleashed on the marketplace… and that too is a Good Thing™.
