Gigabyte has teased the AORUS thermal guard on Twitter recently. It shows a cooling solution specifically designed for cooling M.2 SSDs installed on the motherboard M.2 port. Gigabyte is not the first to offer such a solution, MSI and Biostar actually have previously introduced it with their 200-series motherboard launch. Gigabyte’s AORUS thermal guard however, appears to be a more substantial heatsink. Those motherboard-bundled solutions are basically just metal strips. Some publications have even criticized such solutions as more detrimental rather than helpful.
Gigabyte’s AORUS Thermal guard is thicker. It has airflow pathways that align with the chipset airflow pathways above the slot. This is intended so it can “catch” ventilating air from the bottom. This can also help disperse some of the heat that the metal heatsink is absorbing. Other solutions such as the Aqua Computer Kryo M.2 offer a backplate, a brace and thermal pads aside from the top heatsink. It is difficult to assess from the teaser photo whether Gigabyte provides these as well for their thermal guard although you can see that the base of the M.2 slot is different aside from the metal shielding.
Bundled or available separately?
The motherboard is also different from previously released AORUS motherboards. It looks like we have to wait for Computex for more details. The motherboard pictured with the thermal guard could be part of Intel’s Coffee Lake or Basin Lake platforms.
