Heatspreaders

[TheFro]

How much do heatsperaders really help keeping ram cool as opposed to using ramsinks? Also, can thermal paste be used to make contact between the ram chips and the heatspreader with something non-conductive like Arctic Alumina or Ceramique? (I don't trust myself with conductive pastes)

 

[amdskip]

Truthfully you don't need any ram cooling at all. It mainly just looks cool.

 

[s2kpacifist]

yeah I agree they are proven to have almost no benefit besides looking good. Unless of course you're talking about those "active" heatspreaders (the ones with fans attached to the top), which might do something.

 

[Vape]

Guys, have a quick search on the Giel PC3200 ram reviews - you will see that these come with heatspreaders. Upon further investigation by the reviewers, they removed the heatspreaders to find out that the chips on the pcb where ddr266 rated. Yet, the Giel sticker on the heatspreaders said pc3200. So it is believable that heatspreaders can assist in running faster clocks more stably, I have samsung pc3200 with the thermaltake heatspreaders on them and can hit ddr420 fine - although the pc is not too stable due to southbridge chipset voltage problems (asus a7n8x rev1.04)

But you will find that apart from looking nice, they can offer some assistance - run ddr266 with heatspreaders and run them at ddr333... should work fine without additional voltage.

Cheer,

Vape.

 

[screw3d]

OR the heatspreaders do a good job of hiding the fact that the chips are actually overclocked PC2700 instead of true PC3200?

 

[OulOat]

Yeah, many shady dealers use heatspreaders to cover over the real speed of the ram

 

[chocoruacal]

They help about as much as case windows and neon lights.

 

[Cerb]

They might give the RAM an extra 10MHz max or so...on a good day. Overall, you gotta admit, the XMS and HyperX ones look cool, and that's about it . But for RAM that's 30-100% more $ than it's value competition, at least you get something extra!

 

[RudeBoie]

I've used that and they didn't make any neglibible difference, even as low as 1 mhz. They probably do slightly cool the RAM, but I would get them to dress up your ram and tell people it cools your RAM

 

[RudeBoie]

Originally posted by: TheFro
How much do heatsperaders really help keeping ram cool as opposed to using ramsinks? Also, can thermal paste be used to make contact between the ram chips and the heatspreader with something non-conductive like Arctic Alumina or Ceramique? (I don't trust myself with conductive pastes)

I didn't use thermal paste, so I'm not sure. I used the thermal tape that came with mine.