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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.
IMG
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.
IMG
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.
IMG
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 SN