cheap ebay memory heat spreaders

[colm]

I bought these from just one of several sellers with them. the 4x deal (for 8 bucks or similar) The phoitos do not show that there is indeed a clever locking mechanism up top, aside from the clips!

I expected something horrible.

They fit tight, I have a tall sticks and short ones, and they center on the chips. My cpu is 2940 mhz and reportedly uses 99.9 watts at full throttle.(810mhz fsb) the ram is hyper threaded, dual channeled, totalling 3 gb from 4 sticks.
my cpu is on fire to encode my movies and animations.

the coolers really worked without the hype...just search for similar photo above.

As a comparison, right now at my place it is 100% humidity in the fall fog (heavier than a january ice storm) with that thick rotten food type feeling in the air....

I am here while encoding, touching off 143F cpu and the ram touches 116 to stay at 114. Comparitively in dry waether when things are "happy" it would still see 161 and 122 system no surprises.

There is a cactch to the coolers: As a test I touched the sticks while machine running, and fresh installed at full load. the machine rebooted. Anodized is less likely to do this, but the machine anodizes them on thier own enetually (I made my own and it did the same for a few days- "the tank" reputation comes afterwards).

Anyway. My deal for the moment.

[Olle P]

Interesting!

I've recently thought about getting some of these for my RAM as well. I question how they affect RAM temperatures with four sticks used, since the gaps between the sticks is pretty narrow even without heatsinks. With sinks it's possible that the gap become so small that it will reduce the air flow.

What's the distance between the RAM heatsinks on your rig?

(Your notion about cooler temperatures right now is no surprise. The water molecules absorb heat better than the nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air.)

Cheers
Olle

[colm]

Interesting!

I've recently thought about getting some of these for my RAM as well. I question how they affect RAM temperatures with four sticks used, since the gaps between the sticks is pretty narrow even without heatsinks. With sinks it's possible that the gap become so small that it will reduce the air flow.

What's the distance between the RAM heatsinks on your rig?

(Your notion about cooler temperatures right now is no surprise. The water molecules absorb heat better than the nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air.)

Cheers
Olle

the gap made me nervous as well, it has been a day. It went through a bizarre spell of 124F system! while encoding anamorphic (intense) video and room reached same repulsive humid temperature today with 14 degrees lower difference,(while encoding!) and cpu is back to what it always was. I have only concluded the thermal value is gained after "burn in". now air masses do not matter, it is good.

I learned heatsinks first due to outside air being bad, more than the heat it spreads safely, but the heat spreading is indeed the greater purpose.

[tehcrazybob]

Heat spreaders aren't really intended to reduce RAM temperatures, and are completely unneccessary on DDR RAM of any variety, because the heat is already spread evenly over the chips. Heatsinks reduce component temperatures by providing a much larger surface area for heat transfer, but RAM chips already provide a large surface area for heat transfer. The spreaders provide very little increase in area. The concept of heat spreaders on RAM is a relic of RDRAM, which was entirely capable of focusing their entire heat output at a single location on a single chip, which would easily burn out. The spreader moves that heat to a much larger area, preventing the chip from burning out. DDR RAM doesn't focus its heat like this, so the spreaders achieve almost nothing.

They're cheap and don't hurt anything, but aren't really necessary and make very little difference. RAM temperatures aren't an issue unless you're performing some pretty insane overclocking, and in that case you'll probably want to look at improving case ventilation before you start putting heatsinks on everything warm.

[FartingBob]

I do laugh/cry when i hear of anyone using that RAM cooler with 3 40mm fans on. I mean when your RAM makes more noise than my whole system, you are either deaf or soon will be.