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Hi, I installed an SSD in my laptop two days ago, however the old HDD of my laptop was 9.5mm in height and the new SSD is 7mm in height. I couldn’t seem to find a spacer in any of my local electronics shops but I did see thermal pads. I was thinking I could paste a 1mm and 1.5mm thermal pads one on top of the other and make a spacer of my own. However I don’t want anything to burn or cause disturbances of any kind and I was wondering if thermal pads are a safe material to paste to my SSD. Could anyone please share their thought on this? Thanks in advance for your help!!

You don’t need the spacer with how Asus mounts the hard drive in these laptops. The connector is soldered upside down so even if you use a SSD that’s sold as a 7mm drive (which is pretty much all of them today), you do not need an adapter to make it work like some other brands which do it the opposite way and aren’t designed with thinner drives in mind. I know this about the system because I have an X53E that’s totaled economically I used through high school for ~3 years before it started to wear out, so I keep it around for parts. The X53E is the K53E without the GPU (2nd gen Core i series). Yours is very similar other then the chassis colors and inclusion of a PCH not found on the 2nd gen version of the machine I own. The other major difference is the USB3 controller is ASMEDIA instead of the native Intel controller found on the Ivy systems. Try installing it WITHOUT the adapter and see - more then likely it’ll work since the K55a bay looks very similar to the K/X53E. I would be very surprised if you need it with how the drive mount is configured. It won’t hurt to have it, but you do not need it. If the SATA connector was soldered on the bottom (Ex: Toshiba), you would have had to have it.

The Crucial MX500 SSD drives actually ship with a full sized rectangular spacer. Since I don’t need it for the MacBook Pro installation, I have a couple that I have not used. Click on my icon and get my email address, email me your shipping address and I’ll be happy to send one to you.

Is this what you are looking for? 7mm to 9.5mm SSD Spacer Adapter for 2.5" Drives