Are RAM heatsinks normally GLUED on?

[glugglug]

I recently added 2GB of low latency memory to my PC. I was curious why my old DDR500 never ran with low latency timings even at 400MHz (it defaults to 3-3-3-8, anything faster than about 2.5-3-3-7 crashes almost immediately). So I decided to find out what kind of chips are actually on there. After going thru the difficult process of prying off the 2 metal clamps that hold the heatsink halves together with knives (they are super-tight), I try to separate the 2 heatsink halves and still can't, even with tools. There is a layer of superglue between the metal heatsinks & the chips themselves. When prying them apart bit by bit, you can actually hear the glue ripping. The amount of force required makes me think the chips will probably be separated from the DIMMs first. This seems rather odd to me. Is glue even thermally conductive?

 

[The Pentium Guy]

They don't want you to take out the heatsinks to find that it's really CAS3 RAM!!
RMA the sticks (bfeore you screw em up )

 

[mwmorph]

for a while, many people have been mixing glue and thermal compound to attach ramsinks to video cards. probably same with your ram. besides, why does your ram have a heatspreader? it doesn nothing to improve oc ability or performance, just adds weight and price

 

[furballi]

Any big scam by hardware vendors.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Normally glued.

 

[glugglug]

Originally posted by: mwmorph
why does your ram have a heatspreader? it doesn nothing to improve oc ability or performance, just adds weight and price

Another surprising thing to me is that the RAM heatspreaders actually get hot. The RAM is hotter to the touch than the CPU in fact.

 

[TSCrv]

mixing glue and hs grease? hmm.. not a bad idea, maybe i do have a use for all those cards that ive knocked the heatsinks off of..... any1 know what glue and what ratio works best (i use 3M industrial HS grease... used in PLCs that control newspaper printeng presses, normal operatin temp is enough to take your fingerprint off, basicalyl a pr with no heatsink... also have some "DOW 340" laying around, that stuff any good?)

or would i be better off going and looking for pre mixed thermal epoxy, or jsut regular epoxy and use a LOT of compression to get a very thin layer

 

[glugglug]

I got the heatspreader off. On the DIMM itself it says PC3200, even though it was sold as PC4000 by 1stchoicememory.com.

 

[Concillian]

There is no 'official' spec for anything above PC3200. Chip manufacturers only sell PC3200 RAM chips, for example, but people like Mushkin, OCZ, Corsair, etc... test them at higher speeds to come up with these PC3500, PC4000, etc... specifications.

 

[Rock Hydra]

Originally posted by: glugglug
I got the heatspreader off. On the DIMM itself it says PC3200, even though it was sold as PC4000 by 1stchoicememory.com.

Nice, you just voded your warranty.

 

[Mrvile]

Don't they make thermal epoxy? I think Arctic Silver does...

 

[formulav8]

I would use Thermal Epoxy. Artic Silver makes it. I got mine at svc.com. You can mix it to where if you want it to never come off or to make it alittle softer so you can get it off at a later time but it will not fall off or anything. I think I paid $8 plus shipping for it. It was definitely worth it. But I guess glue will work?? Seems like a very cheap route but most likely not the best one.



Jason