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Legion Go NVME upgrade guide

So, you have a legion go and have found the need to upgrade its NVME drive because you just dont have enough space. My goal here is to share the extensive testing I have doen and provide you with information to make a selection that will help you enjoy your Go and not risk or damage it. 

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First a bit of info. The Lenovo LEGION Go has a single NVME slot, engineered to accomodate a single sided PCIe 4 x 4 NVME m.2 drive. 2242 referes to the drive dimensions if you were unaware. 22mmx42mmm in size. Single sided means it will ony have ICs on one side of the NVME drive.The drives are wrapped in a piece of Mylar with RF shielding. The bottom side VERY effectively shields RF and Magenetic interference. Why did they choose to take this expensive and difficult step? Perhaps it was just a precaution. Perhaps early testing exposed something. The drive does sit within a few mm of, the LCD driver chip, the MIPI chip, the LCD connector, the custom Lenovo IC, battery charging, the BT Audio SOC, and the wifi RF can. Needless to say all of that can toss some RF not to mention any other RF thats reflecting inside the case. Replacement wraps can be purchased from the parts link on support.lenovo.com.

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Why did lenovo choose this drive form factor? We will never know. It has put a bit of a twist in upgrading these devices though thats for sure. A bit more background, at launch only the US had(has?) 1TB models. Every other country, 512GB only. In the retail channel at launch there were very few single sided 2242 NVME. Microcenter (the only company at launch to sell a 2Tb Modified Go) unfortunately chose a model from VisionTek that has proven to run very much over hot. How hot? My own personal high was 107c. That was while Steam, GOG, and Epic were all installing games at once. Within the constraints of the stock Go case and back the only effective way I found to cut and manage the heat was a 1.5mm thick 70mm long grid top copper heatsinks with Thermal Grizzly applied. Any other heatsink would after a short time succumb to heat seak and be worthless. If you only had very shot spikes of heat it a short length sink may help a bit. Enough history, lets get on with it.

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2242 The Easy way.
The easisest way to upgrade your space, is to find a compatible 2242 NVME and replace the drive in your Go. The WD SN740 that was stock in my Go could hit 90c. It was also capable of about 4500-5000MB/s reads. In that speed class, there are not many choices. I dont know what they all are. The Visiontek 2TB works but gets extremely hot when under heavy load. If you are coming from 512GB there are 1TB 2242 offerings like the SN740 series. There is also a 2TB version of the SN740 family. Lenovo lists it as FRU 5SS0V26483.

2230 Some Landmines
2230 Drives are the next most popular ones. Some early adopters have hit some land mines. Lets go over the diferent types of adapters.

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Passice PCB Extenders.
The can be 3d printed or a PCB with a couple of screw points. Lets cover a few things.

3d printed. Should not be PLA or any other low temp deforkming plastic. 
Screw & thumbscrew extenders. DANGER
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The screw boss on these should be well insulated or they will short to the surface mount component directly under them. Even if well insulated initally, being a portable device, movement, vibration, and shaking may increase risk. We have had people come into the discord with NVME issues related to this type of adapter. Please consider an alternative.
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B+M NGFF to M NVME Adapters. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BLHH2PBB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 These work fairly well. They will lower your connection to PCIe 3 x 4. So if you have a PCIe 4 drive it will be limited to bout 3100MB/s assuming it can get that high or higher in PCIe 4 x 4 mode. These are safe to use, and seem to function well. One of the mods in the discord uses this in their daily use Go. 
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PCIe 4 extender. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CN6R6KGR/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 These are fairly new for the Go. They work similar to the above one but maintain the PCIe 4 x 4 so no drop in bandwidth. This is the one I recommend. 100% of my vote here. If you want to go 2230 this is what I call the winner. They come long enough to be used in a 2280 location but can be broken off easily to different lengths.
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2280 Drives
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Multiple differnt options abound with some of these. 

ADT-Link PCIe 4 R44MF 3CM. This is the only one of these 3 that can be made to fit in the Go with a 3d printed case. I ran the 5CM without a back for a week and had quite a bit of problem with RF, BT drops etc. Also in order for these to not be under strain you may need to modify the battery bracket or else you will need to make 2 90deg bends that I fear will lead to broken connections on the adapter. The other issue with these is the large capcitor that leads this to 8mm thickness. I dont really reccomend these for the Go, they are more sutied to desktop applications. 
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The 90 deg adapter. This was created specifially for the Go. There are a couple ways to use this but there is a caveat. They have not retention device. So you must find a way to mount the device so it cant move and work its way free. 
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90 Deg with 3d printed back plate. This is my daily driver. With this combination I run a WD Black SN850X 4TB drive with a 1.5mm heatsink. The drive is kept stationary in the back of the device with a little bit of ailien tape. If you cant get a back or print one, this is what I would recommend, the thermals are great. Drive might hit 80c during Crystal Benchmark, but game play is usually avg of 55c.
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90 Deg with stock back. Some people have reported sucess with this method. Using a single sided 2280 NVME under the back cover, usually requiring the removal of the battery bracket. Heat could be an issue here and you will have to work that out. 

Heat

Heat kills NVME drives. Maybe not immediately, but it shortens their life. Here is an ugly truth. The Go may suck at removing heat from the NVME, but there is a lot of hysteria out there too. Plain and simple truth is, a lot of people are looking at the stats with the wrong mindset and the wrong stats. So some points.

*When looking at drive temps, only look at the 1 primary drive temp. In Hwinfo64 for example this is the first temp is what you should pay attention to. The Temp limits in the specs from the drive manufacturer reference this temp which is usually an average of the temperature sensors on the device. There are components like the ASIC that can run hotter without damage. So stick to the averaged temp. 
*When lookign at drive temps, do it while gaming. Gaming is where 90% of your drive life will be spent. Benchmarks, large file copies, installs are all the minorty of your drives life. Dont guage the drives thermal performance based solely on these things.
*Installing a heatsink with minial airflow means you are going to be at the mercy of convection, for convection to work best you need as much surface area as you can manage. That was why I did my original 70mm heatsink on the VisonTek and it helped, was not perfect. Ran the best with the kickstand and hinges out of the stock back because even a tiny bit more airflow on the low end helped.
*Heat is best conducted by conductive materals, but you dont want some coppe heatsink shorting something out. Use good non conductive thermal compounds. For nvme I like Thermal Grizzly. If you need to protect anything else, Kapton Tape.  

Avoid the garbage little sticker things for sale online. See this video https://youtu.be/OlyTHG4TgIg?si=m21a1GsGzGETj_u9