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I'm experiencing a very strange behavior with Windows 10 operating system and the SSD disk:

  • SSD: SK Hynix PC401 512GB NVMe
  • Notebook: Alienware m51 (R1)

After I boot up the Windows, the SSD is getting warmed up to 70 degrees and more (in idle mode, I can see that disk is not getting used via Task Manager performance tab). When I run, e.g. a video game, it's getting warmed up to 80 degrees and at some point Windows crashes with the BSOD. The core memory dump is not getting created (I presume due to the disk subsystem failure).

However, when I run Linux OS on the same computer, the SSD working temperature is holding around 40 degrees and no matter how hard I stress test it, it just throttles, but it's not causing the Linux or any software under it to crash. It works very stable in this environment.

Why does the SSD is getting so warmed up under Windows even in idle mode? And what could be causing Windows to crash? Could you recommend a course of action to remedy the situation?

Also, one of the observations -- after reinstalling the clean Windows distribution, I'm not getting any BSODs for some time (weeks probably).

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  • If any, update the SSD's firmware and test again.
    – ChanganAuto
    Jun 15, 2021 at 22:28
  • Also make sure you have installed all drivers for the SSD. For NVMe there are (besides the default drivers that come with Windows) often other drivers available form the SSD manufacturer.
    – Robert
    Jun 16, 2021 at 10:32

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I'd suggest to back up that SSD and format it, and then repartition it.

I had a similar issue with Ubuntu 22.04 on external SSD, for some reason it always shows 33MB prior to creating the first partition.

I did not give it much importance, so I proceeded to creating all other partitions and installing Ubuntu

But after reboot the SSD is too hot to the touch, and the system crashes after boot if I do anything, I need to wait for it to be able to use the OS.

Decided to reinstall Ubuntu, because sometimes it randomly crashes, and this time I made sure to create normal partitions (used GParted separately, insisting on the normal 1MB instead of 33MB unused space before first partition) and proceeded to installing.

Now the issue is gone.

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My laptops hynix ssd had same issue. What I did was

  1. Used Disk defragment tool to optimize it,
  2. Checked if new drivers are available.
  3. Uninstalled and then reinstalled latest AMD chipset driver package.(as my laptop had Ryzen processor)

Before temps were 60 without any usage and 75-80 with normal usage, if my cpu temps were around 80-85 then the ssd would get temps above 90c then it would cause a bsod and I had to wait for couple of minutes before I can restart laptop cause it would just bsod again if I try to start it right away cause of overheating. So technically any game I play I had to keep in check that my cpu temp do not reach about 75c or it will bsod after 10 mins.

After I did those steps ssd temp came down to 35-40 with normal load, if CPU temp is around 80-85c with medium ssd usage ssd temp reach 65c max. Without CPU load , at high ssd usage ssd temp stays under 55c without thermal throttling. If both cpu and ssd usage is high then it reaches about 75c max. I noticed that after those steps I did some ssd space got reduced about 15 mb.

In my opinion ssd smart trim function isn't working for ur ssd or maybe the firmware is corrupted. But idk for sure.

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    FINALLY found out the exact setting that is causing this issue. Just go to power option > change plan settings > change advanced power settings > PCI express > link state power management And then change it to 'maximum power savings' It will fix the overheating issue of nvme ssd in most cases. Ryzen power plan (which came with the chipset driver) used to fix this issue for me. But I still tried to find the exact setting anyway.

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      Windows 10 does not inherently cause SSD drives to get hot or overheat. My own two machines have SSD drives: one with 2 x 2TB Samsung Drive (standard SSD) both running at 30 degrees and one with 1 x 1TB Samsung NVMe drive running at 40 degrees.

      Both machines are running non-stop

      Make sure Windows is completely up to date. Then make sure ALL your drivers (including BIOS) are up to date and then run Resource Monitor.

      Open Windows Admin Tools, Resource Monitor and ensure the Disk section is open. Let it run for 30 or 40 minutes and see what is running on your own machine that is using disk at a high rate.

      Even under load (large updates) neither of my machines get warm.

      Make sure Windows 10 has enough space to work in. Windows 10 basic install with space for updates and only modest software needs 100 GB of disk space to work in.

      enter image description here

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        NVMe SSDs run hotter than other SSDs, but your findings are still too hot.

        As first step, you could download and install from Dell the
        SK Hynix PC401 256 GB/512 GB/1 TB PCIe NVMe Solid-State Drive Firmware Update.

        If that does not help, you could try to:

        • Improve the air-flow around the disk
        • If the computer has more than one NVme connector, choose one that is further away from the CPU and GPU
        • Buy a better heatsink for the disk
        • Ensure that the disk is not almost full, so read/writes always use the same cells on the disk.

        I note that I found quite a few posts relating to heat problems with SK Hynix SSDs. This seems a recurrent problem with that SSD make (at least under Windows).

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        • I am not sure if your suggestions about a heatink is that useful as we are talking about a notebook which have usually next no no free space.
          – Robert
          Jun 16, 2021 at 13:06
        • Some may not pertain to your model, or there might be a possibility of replacing the existing heatsink.
          – harrymc
          Jun 16, 2021 at 13:42

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