Moding the shroud on X570 Phantom Gaming X

threadzipper1957 wrote: Maybe find a defective identical board, and get the heatsinks from there.

I haven't changed anything on my MB. This model has the same style of combination chipset heatsink, chipset fan shroud, and heatsink covers for the M.2 slots as does the X570 Taichi. I've put a 2TB WD Black SN850 on it as my main drive and I am mildly concerned that the built-in heatsink isn't all that good. But it seems that my only option is to take the shroud off and cut away the M.2 slot cover to give me enough room to install a real SSD cooler with heatpipes and even an exhaust fan.

The issue with any such surgery is the loss of one shroud mounting point. Because the entire shroud has only three mounting screws it seems that shroud stability would be gone, at least in a regular tower case. But I have this computer in a Thermaltake Core X9 cube-style case so the motherboard mounts horizontally. I don't think the shroud would move about much or at all even if I didn't put any of the screws back in. I was just wondering if anyone had already tried modding it or if I shouldn't bother.

The one-piece chipset/M.2 metal heatsink/shroud is a bit of an issue for me. I'd like to put a real heatsink on my SSDs but can't see a way to do that short of cutting the shroud apart. Then I would have to figure a way to safely fasten the fan shroud portion back onto the motherboard. Has anyone already attempted this mod?