Ram heatsinks --- better overclocking?

[merlocka]

I picked up 8 small ram heatsinks (I was bored) and I was considering putting them on my GTS. I was planning to use thermal epoxy so I'd have to have my PC down for a day to get them on properly.

Does anyone have any before / after OC data so I can determine if it's actually worth putting these on...?

thx

 

[SiliconVandal]

My Guillemot came with RAMSinks and it overclocks incredibly well. They aren't as good as the kind you buy (the kind you buy stick out, which cools better because air blows accros them), but they sure work. I built an "extreme PC" for a client, which included a GeForce 2 GTS Ultra, and I tried it with and without RAMsinks, and it helped about 10Mhz of OC power.

 

[merlocka]

Well, the epoxy set up fairly quickly. So far, I've gone from max 390 to 415. More than I expected.

 

[Coki]

The RAM heatsink do absolutely NOTHING.

There were tests done by a few websites. They don't help you overclock. Because the ram does not generate that much heat. It's the graphics chip that does all the work.

Dont' waste your time and money on this. It has been done and it doesn't work.

People who claim that it works also believe in the snow man.

 

[Shmorq]

I'm with Coki on this... Has anybody even checked to see how hot RAM gets? It's not that hot at all meaning it's cool enough to touch. It's nothing like a CPU or Graphics chip.

Speaking of snowmen... is anybody in the NorthEast? It looks like we're about to be pummeled...

 

[merlocka]

Well, at 395 without them I would get artifacts in Q3demo after a few seconds. I played RA3 for about 3 hours last night / today at 415 and there were no artifacts. 420 gets me some snow right away.

Although I agree that ram doesn't generate a significant amount of heat, there is conducted heat from the GPU that heats the chips up. Like I said, I'm pretty suprised that I saw any improvement at all.

Below are a few articles (I have never read these pages before so I don't know their reliability) which show other slight improvements.

article1

article2

Which sites posted no improvement?

p.s. there's no snowman?

 

[XGamer]

Coki is right. If you read any professional reviews done on Geforce2 cards. It tells and shows you that the heatsinks for the Herc G2 card, do absolutly nothing. Its there to make you think it might be better for overclocking, One word...Marketing.

 

[Regalk]

Test it out yourself. I tried it with my own homemade Ram sinks (cut up from the removed HS from the video core) and does nothing special that a good fan on the core cannot do.

 

[merlocka]

If you read any professional reviews done on Geforce2 cards.

OK, do you have these links?

In Anand's Hercules Geforce2 review they say the sinks do nothing, but they provide no data. From the review of the Ultra, he states that the sinks make a difference and they provide temperature data.

Test it out yourself.

My results are posted above. (edit - I started seeing snow at 415 after a few hours of rocketarena, so I'll call 410 my new max speed)

 

[Packet]

What I want to know,

is if RAMsinks are so useless, then why are they put on GF Ultra's and Pro's by the manufacture?

I find it odd that the company is going to up production cost $5 a unit for no reason.

Ram doesn't get that hot, its true, but it is tempature sensitive. Maybe more-so than processors/core.

 

[Motero]

Shmorq: I am and we got about 2 inches. These forecasters suck.

 

[XGamer]

Packet, Its because of what I stated in my previous post. Its called "Marketing"

 

[cool]

<< Ram heatsinks --- better overclocking? >>



Sure it does! Place a fan (e.g. from a good ol' 486-CPU) which blows 'fresh' air to the RAM heatsinks and watch your fps fly!!!

 

[Packet]

XGamer:

Marketing really doesn't make sense from the manufacture side. The cost of these model cards are extremely high as of right now, and its not because they are in high demand (compaired to other video cards on the market). So obviously, production costs must be very high, were they have to charge an arm and a leg per videocard in order to make a profit. Thus, spending another $5-15 per card to boost sales really wouldn't make sense, if it didn't have a use. I doubt anyone buys a $400 card because it has heatsinks on the ram.

If it is a marketing trick, why not put them on normal GF2's? and not the MX's, thus making the GF2's look more appealing.

I beleave that maybe the heatsinks don't do a WHOLE lot, but they may provide slightly higher clock speeds, or even slightly increased stability.

 

[0div0]

Weren't the heatsinks on the Herc taped on with thremal tape? If so the epoxy that merlocka used probably gives better heat transfer to the heatsink and maybe thats why he noticed a difference.

 

[Coki]

Yes. Good point. The heatsinks on the Hercules GeForce 2 video cards were taped not glued. So that's the reason there was no improvement.

I tried putting a fan on top and the bottom of my GeForce 2 GTS card and I could not overclock it above 360 otherwise I would get lockups and artifacts.

But test this yourself the heatsinks will do nothing. After heavy use of 3D in games. touch the ram in the card its only warm. They do not heat up.

And yes those heatsinks from the ram probably were used just for marketing and people fell for it.

 

[PliotronX]

My sinks with Arctic Silver epoxy are on their way from 2cooltek, so I'll let you know what my results are. As of now, the 6ns memory tops out at 360Mhz, and the core must be at 220Mhz or else I have to bring the memory down to 350Mhz. The core will go up to 270Mhz with the memory at 350Mhz. I have a CardCooler blowing over my video card, so this may help the RAMsinks dissipate heat even more efficiently. This is also on just a BH6 mobo, so the default I/O voltage of 3.3v is the only one being used.

 

[merlocka]

But test this yourself the heatsinks will do nothing. After heavy use of 3D in games. touch the ram in the card its only warm. They do not heat up.

From Anandtech article on the Ultra... (see my earlier post)

During our tests, the memory reached temperatures as high as 109F (42.8C); this was measured by placing a thermistor on the opposite side of the PCB, directly behind a memory chip. We compared this to the operating temperature of memory on a 64MB GeForce2 GTS, which turned out to be 102.8F (39.3C). The small difference in temperature can be accounted for by the heatsinks on the memory actually doing their job. So what happens when we take off the heatsinks?

Without the heatsinks, the back of the memory reached 112.4F (44.7C) which isn?t much warmer than with the heatsinks, so are they necessary? After approximately 20 minutes of running a Quake III Arena loop with only one heatsink off (there are two, one on each set of 4 SDRAM devices), there were quite a bit of artifacts on the screen; eventually the demo loop crashed.

So it seems as if, at least on our board, the heatsinks were necessary for stable operation at such a high frequency.

I can't reliably measure a delta of 3.4 degrees F with my fingers.

Again, the improvements are minimal but I believe my results to be accurate. I'm sure as heck not gonna rip these things off and double check