Why is my RAM so hot?

Fun Guy

Golden Member
Oct 25, 1999
1,210
5
81
Running prime95 on my rig and the two 1Ghz CPUs are just lukewarm. Meanwhile, the RAM is hot enough to fry an egg on. What gives?
 

erikiksaz

Diamond Member
Nov 3, 1999
5,486
0
76
I take it that you probably didn't touch the actual surface of the CPU? If you did, your finger would probably have been burnt right onto the silicon.
 

Jerboy

Banned
Oct 27, 2001
5,190
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<< Running prime95 on my rig and the two 1Ghz CPUs are just lukewarm. Meanwhile, the RAM is hot enough to fry an egg on. What gives? >>



RAM shouldn't get much hotter than our body temp. Mine doesn't even feel warm. Are you overclocking it?
 

VBboy

Diamond Member
Nov 12, 2000
5,793
0
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Is your FSB severely overclocked? ;)

Also, it could just be that the CPU coolers blow hot air away from the CPU but onto the RAM, warming it up.
 

KEV1N

Platinum Member
Jan 15, 2000
2,932
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Dude, maybe the fan on your cpu heatsink is blowing hot air onto your ram.
 

Fun Guy

Golden Member
Oct 25, 1999
1,210
5
81
Nothing is overclocked. FSB is 133Mhz. Didn't even know I could change voltage on RAM, so it must be default. No cover on the box yet, so no hot air coming from anywhere.

Anyone else? This is troubling me.
 

sharkeeper

Lifer
Jan 13, 2001
10,886
2
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As long as you're not getting memory errors, I wouldn't worry about it. The memory on a RADEON 8500 was measured with an IR thermometer at over 55°C! This was default speed, no overclocking! I have a machine with 2048 MB of Corsair registered ECC DDR memory running at 2.52 volts and 133 MHz and the chips are also quite hot. (45°C)

Cheers!
 

Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
3,012
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If you are that worried buy some thermaltake ram coolers. They stopped 2 of my memory chips from overheating when I had mistakenly set the voltage at 3.0v (ddr memory).
 

RazeOrc

Senior member
Nov 16, 2001
269
0
0
Hot?? you DDR users are so lucky, RDRAM runs 50+Cish STANDARD and under load with no cooling can reach 65+C, NOW THAT's HOT. Currently mine runs much cooler by about 10+C cause i have a fan blowing on them, if you're worried about head buy a $13 ramsink+fan for those sticks from Newegg