RAM Cooling

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PPGMD
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RAM Cooling

Post by PPGMD » Sat Oct 22, 2005 10:40 am

Since I couldn't find any place for it in the other forums I figured I would ask here.

Recently I have been getting RAM errors since I switched over to my P180, I didn't get these in my SLK3700AMB, I figure it might be from the RAM overheating, so I was looking at ways to cool the ram.

First a brief overview of my system,

Athlon 64 3800
Asus K8N
Zalman 7700ALcu
Gigabyte 6800GT card that uses the heatpipe cooling (will be switching the cooling in the next month)
P180
2 Sticks of Corsair Value Select PC-3200 RAM 1GB Each

I was thinking about getting two of these

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835110105

First they look small, so I don't think that they would obstruct the other RAM slots, and they look easy to install.

Any advice?

vertigo
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Post by vertigo » Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:59 pm

The ram is getting hot because the 7700 is blowing hot air directly onto it. This is one of the main reasons I use a sucking fan configuration.

~El~Jefe~
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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Sat Oct 22, 2005 1:10 pm

well. I guess this could be the case. ram temps are something that is not at all discussed.

however, I can tell you that corsair value select and the one up from that, i think it is silver or something is not that great. i was shocked at how it failed i n my friends 939 setup on a MSI board, did ram tests, faulty ram.

Anyone else know about temps and ram and what is good or bad?

Straker
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Post by Straker » Sat Oct 22, 2005 6:38 pm

heat spreaders do just that, spread, they're not very useful as heat sinks alone. RAM doesn't use much power though, a fan over your slots can help a lot, would at least be a free way of checking whether that's the problem.

snowman59
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Post by snowman59 » Sat Oct 22, 2005 9:09 pm

I don't have facts regarding the max temps of RAM but I can say for sure that I have seen my RAM at 41º C. My ran is situated in slot 1&2 (closest 2 slots) almost directly under my heatsink; a thermalright XP-90C. I haven't tried moving the RAM to slots 3 & 4 but it runs stable even at those temperatures. My ambient is around 24º C and the max temperature was attained after about 45 minutes of Prime95 but my machine continuted to be stable 23+ hours later.

Also, on a side note to that you should definitely run Memtest86 to check out your RAM. If its faulty RAM this series of tests should find out and let you know...or at least rule out a memory problem. A good measure is if it passes 5 iterations of the standard test battery then its good to go. If pressed for time I have also heard that 5 iterations of test 5 is good enough.

vertigo
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Post by vertigo » Sun Oct 23, 2005 3:32 am

In my experience, ram either starts out faulty or works. I have hardly seen any occasions where a ram stick that worked went faulty.

There's an easy way to test if the ram is overheating, run the pc for a while, then open it up and feel how hot the memory is.

Straker
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Post by Straker » Sun Oct 23, 2005 4:11 pm

vertigo wrote:In my experience, ram either starts out faulty or works. I have hardly seen any occasions where a ram stick that worked went faulty.
Right, but if you find the best oc and tightest timings you can run with stably, then make them warmer, they're not gonna work. heh.

edit: on that note, PPGMD, relaxing your timings a bit might be worth a try to see if that's the problem, even easier than a fan.

dragmor
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Post by dragmor » Sun Oct 23, 2005 6:43 pm

I'm running Geil UltraX @2.8v and it came with a temperature sticker on the side. Currently the lowest band (45c) is lightly coloured. The highest band is 60c and the ram is rated up to 2.95v so I assume that anything below 55c is ok without active cooling (assuming the ram is good in the first place).

Piccie of the temp sticker
http://www.geilusa.com/proddetail.asp?linenumber=46


As for the errors, make sure the connectors are clean and the ram is in tight. If the ram was working before its probably one of the above causing the issue.

If your using a differnet power supply check to see if the new one is undervolting the ram slightly.

darthan
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Post by darthan » Sun Oct 23, 2005 7:06 pm

It is very unlikely that your RAM is overheating. RAM uses very very little power spread over a very large area (for a piece of silicon) and its heat tolerances will be at least as good as a CPU's tolerances (ie at least 60C with no problems). The biggest problem for RAM is that it is susceptible to electrostatic damage. If you took the RAM out of the motherboard or even just handled it during the case switch there is a chance you accidentally gave it a static electricity shock and damaged it. Run Memtest86 and maybe Prime95 to check for memory errors.

Lastly, what do you mean you have been getting RAM errors? Windows doesn't exactly report component failures, what makes you think the problems you are having are RAM errors?

PPGMD
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Post by PPGMD » Tue Oct 25, 2005 6:51 am

I highly doubt that it was a static discharge, since I did my switch out on my work bench at work, which has full static protections because it's used for client servers (last thing my company needs is to have to pay $2,000 for replacements parts because some tech was stupid and zaped it).

But I will be doing a Ramtest later this week and see whats up.

Anyways I suspect it's RAM errors because I am getting almost random Access Violations.

I will be doing a powersupply switch out later this week (decided to go for the Neopower HE 430). So I will be able to test the PSU.

BenW
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Post by BenW » Wed Oct 26, 2005 8:44 am

Would the first thing not be to check its seated properly in the slots?

Just take them out then put them back in again. Could be that you never got them in properly when you changed case

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