Here is a graph of the system running the same test (fio, 4K sequential read/write at a 50/50 mix). Both times I attempted to start the system when it was room temperature, which was around 23 C, (73F).
As you can seen the temperature of the NVMe device is significantly cooler with the thermal pad. With out it the device hit 55 C, and with the pad the worst case was around 36C.
If I re-run the test while system is “heat saturated”, I get the following, note the time between runs was about 2 minutes.
As expected both runs start warmer, and get warmer…the non-thermal pad hits 60C, and the thermal pad hits 40C.
For those that are wondering here are the CPU temps:
Let me know if there is anything anyone else wants tested. The NVMe Drive is a Western Digital Black, WDS500G2X0C-00L350… Because I have 15 or so…