I installed a 1TB MP600 NVMe drive on my Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (non-WiFi) motherboard a few days ago. This motherboard has a black rubber block (see image below) between the M.2 connector and the standoff where the drive is secured with a screw. This is designed for bare NVMe drives so that the rubber block pushes the drive up against the motherboard's heat sink for better contact.
The problem is that my MP600 drive has a heat sink already and the back plate makes the bottom about 1-2mm thicker than a bare drive. When I screw the drive in all the way it feels like the extra thickness is creating a lot of extra pressure from that black rubber block.
I tried pulling on the rubber block, but it's glued on there pretty good and seems non-removable. I know the heat sink on the MP600 is removable, but I don't want to go that route.
The extra pressure is created at the two ends of the PCB (one of them being the M.2 connector itself), because the black rubber block is actually pushing against the center of the back plate and not the PCB itself. I worry about long term damage to the drive from that pressure, especially when it gets hot under load.
Is this extra pressure normal? I chatted with ASUS support and asked about it. They said it was normal, but they didn't sound very convincing. Their replies sounded pretty generic.
I haven't actually used the drive yet (waiting for RAM sticks to arrive), but it's been sitting there screwed in for a few days now and I'm worried about damaging either the drive or the M.2 connector on the board. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks for reading!
(Image not my exact board, but same layout for M.2 drives.)