RAM Heat Spreaders....Are they even worth it?

[glorygunk]

The recent clearance event at SVC got me to thinking....

Can the aluminum/copper RAM heat spreaders actually be detrimental to your system RAM?

Since cooling of RAM mainly depends on airflow in the case, I would think adding heat spreaders would trap hot air over the actual chips. Also, the heat spreaders increase thickness of your ram, giving them less clearance from eachother, further inhibiting airflow. I'm thinking this can counteract the benefits the heatsink actually provides.


What do you guys think about this?

 

[Thermalrock]

i think heat spreaders keep the ram cooler until i see othewise.

 

[boyRacer]

i would think that it would dissipate the heat better... but doesn't mean that it will do miracles and squeeze out an overclock you couldn't do beforehand. just for looks.

 

[akira34]

If the memory comes with them, I trust them to do no harm and possibly some good. If the memory doesn't come with them, then I don't add any, since it could do a lot of harm.

Of course, one of the keys to a well working system is proper cooling and/or good air flow. With that, all your typical heat related issues go away (usually vented out your cases' ass).

 

[Goi]

akira34, I don't get why you think that adding heatspreaders on memory that don't come with them could do a lot of harm, when you claimed that memory that do come with them do no harm and possibly some good. Seems kinda contradictory to me.

 

[gotensan01]

From what I have heard, adding heatspreaders does not increase performance at all. Basically it just makes them look cooler (and possibly void the warranty?).

 

[glorygunk]

well for non-heatspreader ram these days, there's a product sticker right over the chips which you would have to rip off to apply the spreader.

like gotensan01, i highly doubt those spreaders have any sort of benefit. even if you buy these to overclock, you got to find that "golden mean" where 1) you don't fry your RAM, and 2) they arent just serving as pretty metallic shields

 

[gururu]

spreaders move the heat off the chips. if you up the ram voltage, the spreaders can help keep them as close to normal operating specs as possible

 

[iamtrout]

Originally posted by: glorygunk
Since cooling of RAM mainly depends on airflow in the case, I would think adding heat spreaders would trap hot air over the actual chips. Also, the heat spreaders increase thickness of your ram, giving them less clearance from eachother, further inhibiting airflow. I'm thinking this can counteract the benefits the heatsink actually provides.

Heatspreaders without any airflow would trap a bit of heat over the actual chips, but without them the heat would be stuck inside the chips. Which do you think is better?

As far as clearance goes, you can always do a 1-3 arrangement. To make it even better, angle a fan towards the direction of the RAM. I sometimes feel my DDR500 getting pretty hot, not warm, so putting airflow over them gives me peace of mind.

 

[Navid]

There is a difference between a heat sink and a heat spreader.
A heat sink has lots of fins to increase the surface area to increase the transfer of heat to air.

A heat spreader is supposed to transfer heat from a hotter memory chip to a cooler memory chip.

I don't know if in new memory modules today, the chips are at different temperatures. Basically, if you have a module in which one or two chips do most of the work and the other chips do not, you can benefit from heat spreader. It will make all the chips warm up together as opposed to some of them being cold and some of them scorchingly hot.

The spreaders do not increase surface area. So, if all the chips are at the same temperature, theoretically, you do not benefit from a heat spreader. You only degrade heat transfer due to the possible sub-optimal heat transfer from the chips to the spreader as opposed to directly from the chips to air.

 

[BW86]

ram heatspreads dont do anything for performance just looks.

 

[0roo0roo]

your ram uses very little power. theres little heat to spread around. its marketing bs.

 

[CraigRT]

I remember reading a review on heatspreaders, they took 1 degree C off the temp of the memory in this particular case. not worth it for performance, but i had them on my PC133 back in the day because they were a cool show mod.

 

[loic2003]

Delicate choice... you can either go for the looks and risk putting the heatsinks on or you can go by the age old sayings:

"if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and
"KISS: Keep it simple, stupid."

Another problem is some heatsinks are fat and will force you to place the RAM modules in the outermost memory slots, effectivly disabling the middle one.

Having said all this, I had big flat aluminium heatsinks on my previous RAM modules which made me much more confident about picking up and pulling out the RAM as it protects all the chips inside from static and your greasy hands.

Up to you. They provide no real advantage, but they look cool and do remove some heat which theoretically would reduce resistance by a minute fraction...

 

[iamtrout]

Ok, I suspect the reason why everyone says heatspreaders don't do anything is that people do not put AIRFLOW over them. If you don't have airflow over them of course they're not going to do sheeit except act as extra volume for heat to be stored in. Heck, even if you put airflow over naked chips that would still be better than having bling bling heatspreaders with no airflow.

 

[loic2003]

Originally posted by: glorygunk
I would think adding heat spreaders would trap hot air over the actual chips. Also, the heat spreaders increase thickness of your ram, giving them less clearance from eachother, further inhibiting airflow. I'm thinking this can counteract the benefits the heatsink actually provides.
What do you guys think about this?

Because the air is hotter it'll move upwards towards the top of your case rather than getting stuck, much like houshold radiators. A small convection current will be created, pulling up cooler air from below.

 

[HardWarrior]

Conventional wisdom says they aren't needed. The only clinical reason I've heard for using them is to evenly spread thermal energy among all chips prevent runaway. Beyond that, they just look good.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: loic2003
Because the air is hotter it'll move upwards towards the top of your case rather than getting stuck, much like houshold radiators. A small convection current will be created, pulling up cooler air from below.

Except that the radiator is made such that it has a large surface it contact with air. Like a heat sink. It is meant to transfer as much heat to the air as possible.
A heat spreader is not made that way. A heat spreader does not increase the surface area like a heat sink does.

 

[Thermalrock]

does increase alil surface tho. rams are just traditionally too close on a standard motherboard to have heatsinks on em im sure if this werent the case theyd use em instead of the spreaders.

 

[drpootums]

Originally posted by: gotensan01
From what I have heard, adding heatspreaders does not increase performance at all. Basically it just makes them look cooler (and possibly void the warranty?).

If it comes stock on the ram then the warrenty is still good (obviously)

Otherwise, if u play or oc for hours and hours ram will usually never be warm to the touch. Pretty much what gotensan said, it just makes them look cooler...

 

[klah]

No type of memory cooling has been shown to increase its ability by even 1MHz.

dansdata has a good writeup on the subject if you want to search for it.

 

[glorygunk]

darned straight everybody

iamtrout, i am not so keen on positioning another fan over my RAM. more noise, more wiring, disrupted airflow...u just have to stop somewhere with this, u know? heatspreaders do indeed seem to be a marketing ploy to get more money from the consumer

 

[loic2003]

Originally posted by: Navid

Except that the radiator is made such that it has a large surface it contact with air. Like a heat sink. It is meant to transfer as much heat to the air as possible.
A heat spreader is not made that way. A heat spreader does not increase the surface area like a heat sink does.

It's not the surface area of the radiator that causes convection, it's the heat of the thing. Even the most inefficiently shaped heat spreader will cause the air around it to warm and rise. The heat spreader also increases the surface area compared to the RAM chips that it covers thus making the dissipation of heat more effective than without a heat spreader.

The question of whether the reduction in temperature by a few degrees actually makes any difference to performance still remains, however!

 

[TStep]

I believe for RDRAM, it was a requirement, but not too beneficial for DDR. I am more for well thought out and tested case air flow rather than a magical heatspreader addition. There are usually four TSOPs covered by a piece of paper with the manufacturer's info on it anyway. Try sticking a piece of paper between your heatsink and brand new FX55 and see what happens. On the other hand, I won't remove them if they come stock. Also add a little protection to the DDR I suppose.

Now if they were a heatsink applied with AS5 and a dab of superglue, some marginal improvements have been shown w/ video cards in this method. Something like that would make me reconsider using a heatsink/heatspreader solution

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: glorygunkiamtrout, i am not so keen on positioning another fan over my RAM. more noise, more wiring, disrupted airflow...u just have to stop somewhere with this, u know?

How about just getting a HSF that cool surrounding components, such as the XP120 or the upcoming Zalman 7700? Your Northbridge would get cooling, your mosfets, RAM, everything else around the CPU would have a 120mm fan blowing down on it for good air flow.