While M.2 SSDs are the best new thing in storage segment, offering impressive transfer speeds, it appears that throttling is a big issue so it actually matters where you place it on your motherboard.

While most motherboard makers place the main M.2 slot between two main PCI-Express slots, this appears to be a rather bad place, especially if you run a dual-slot high-end graphics card, forcing the M.2 SSD to throttle rather badly.

According to the test run by Puget Systems on Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD and three different ASUS motherboards, including the Z170-WS, X99 Deluxe/USB 3.1 and H170I-Plus D3. The best position is the upright M.2 slot on the X99 motherboard due to the air circulating around the SSD while the worst place is definitely be under a high-end dual-slot graphics card.

The tested Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD does not come with any heatsink so it might be good to attach a custom heatsink. This also means that SSD manufacturers should certainly include a heatsink as a PCIe SSD performance can be significantly reduced when it gets too hot.

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Source: Pugetsystems.com.