I just bought a used/refurb Lenovo P340 mini tower PC.

It has an expansion socket that ought to hold a 2280-size M.2 NVMe SSD.

I bought a 2TB one, opened the cover of the PC case, found the available slot for it (see the first photo below), but then had a total WTF moment.

The socket is circled near the top of the photo. It is set up so that the SSD hangs over the outside of the motherboard (really? Yeah, really).

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To the right of it is the primary SSD - it has a heat sink, and it looks like it has some sort of black plastic doohicky at the bottom to support the unsupported end of the stick (and presumably is set up to accept a screw to fasten it down. See the circled area toward the bottom of this photo:

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I've probed around the inside of the PC, but as far as I can tell they have not supplied another one of those black plastic doohicky things for supporting an added-on SSD stick. (Is there a better name for those black plastic doohicky things? Are they standardized, or are they likely to be some unobtainable Lenovo part number that is different depending on not only the model number but probably also the engineering release level of the PC chassis?)

I can't just hang the new stick off of the socket and leave it unsupported, because that would likely fail in the blink of an eye.

But here it is, temporarily hanging from the socket. No, I'm not going to leave it hanging there, rather I'm going to remove it for now.

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Also - do I really need to put a heat sink on it? It was certainly nice of Lenovo to strategically place a bundle of power supply wires in just the right spot to make it difficult to install that SSD. I'm not even sure that I could squeeze a heat sink into that space if I tried, unless I somehow reroute the ps wires.

Should I just punt - and get a PCIe to M.2 NVMe converter board and give up on hanging the SSD off the side of the motherboard? It looks like those PCIe converter cards typically come with a heat sink, so I'd be killing two birbs with one card - and, at least for the moment, I have nothing planned to occupy any of the PCIe slots (but I suppose that could change in the future).

Help me, Obi-Wan Kanobi...

Looks like you're missing parts for sure. Clearly, the board is designed to accept another data drive. The mounting hardware may have come with the computer originally, probably in a bag of parts.

Merry Christmas

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A 'caddy', huh. Fancy-shmancy name for a plastic doohicky.

Thanks - it looks like it uses a piece of plastic as a 'butt plug', rather than a screw, to hold the 'ass end' of the SSD stick in place.

And it's only $9.00 (!)

But it doesn't address the heat sink or interfering cable issues - so maybe I should just get a PCIe converter instead.

Are you gonna be tossing the PC abound or going to land parties with that box? If not, I wouldn't worry about it. It clips in pretty well and will stay in no problem.

No LAN parties for me - so I don't intend to manhandle the thing - but I would be pissed if it were to move around and cause problems...

Roll up a small piece of duct tape sticky side out and stick it under the end of the NVME.

"Red Green tips and tricks #3025"

And, the saga continues...

Bought a PCIe card on which to mount the SSD.

Why oh why doesn't it come with the screw to screw down the "ass end" of the SSD?

It looks like I may need a pan-head m2 thread x 2.0mm or 3.0mm screw (but maybe the pan head will be too thick and instead I should look for a flat head - even though the U-shaped hole in the SSD for the screw is not actually countersunk to accommodate a flat-head screw, it's possible that a flat-head screw will be a better fit within the available space).

Of course, even though I have a gazillion different tiny metric screws in my hardware stash, the smallest m2 pan-head screw that I have is 4.0mm, which is too tall.

I have ordered qty 100 3.0mm stainless m2 screws from eBay, 'just because' - but in the interim I'm going to try stealing a screw from somewhere else that might or might not fit.

That will just compound the problem, because if it does fit, then I will need to get a replacement screw for the item from which I'm stealing that screw.

You don't need a heat sink.

I've wondered why some m.2 SSDs come with heat sinks - maybe it's because 'modders' like heat sinks on memory chips because they look 'cool' (sorry for the pun), regardless of whether or not they're actually needed - or I've seen some folks claim that it's the memory controller chip rather than the memory chips themselves that benefit from a heat sink.

At any rate, the PCIe converter that I bought has a heat sink, along with some thermal tape, so I will use the heat sink on the SSD, that is, if I can get the damn screw to hold it in place.

Double sided 3m foam sticky tape.   Solves many problems including this one.   Cheap too.

I work on stuff like this for a living.  Lots of folks obsess over doing things absolutely perfectly when a total redneck solution will work just fine.  For example, the PC I am typing on right now has 3 SSDs that are being supported by 2 plastic ammo trays with some of the dividers broken out.  My computer case has never had a side on it, and I have never had issues with dust or heat.  In your case OP, I would have poked a zip-tie through some of those holes so it held the drive in approximately the correct spot, and gone on with my life.

^ First 2.5" SSD I got ages ago was held in place with a zip tie and some double sided foam tape.

No moving parts who the hell cares

I do have zip ties.

I also have tape.

And Elmer's glue.

And non-conductive foam for squishing things into place.

I'm not obsessing over this.

But I am venting about vendors who will skimp on providing the 'bare necessities' to save a few cents here and there.

Some of the newer gen 4 and especially the gen 5 NVMe drives can run HOT.  Also depends how much airflow your case has.  

that issue is sort of what I went thru setting up my refrerb laptop when I added the 2nd ssd drive.

Dell did not sell the heat sink or rest of the hardware and I was
able to find it after market to get the job done.

Some of those drives when they warm up too much - they will
auto slow down based on temp of the SSD.

The corner cutting done by some OEMs boggle the mind.  How much did the company save by leaving out that extra drive retention doohickey?

Maybe I'm spoiled because when I worked in IT, we purchased business grade desktops versus desktops targeted for the home market.  The Dell Precision and Optiplex line always included extra drive caddys and clips

I've seen plenty of business grade Dell's and HP's skip stuff like that.  Dell servers are especially bad with not giving you enough drive caddies when you buy one of their servers, and then trying to extort you with their outrageous pricing to buy more.  Which is why I don't buy Dell servers any more.

That doesn't surprise me.  in general, their enterprise products used to be better than their home/ small business stuff.  One time I got in a group buy with a friend to pick up a spare desktop to play with.  After the discount they were $200 each.  The machines were bare bones.  No AGP socket, but the solder pads were on the board, and there were only two slots for RAM.