Does RAM cooling make a difference to performance?

Just what the title states. I'm looking to add a heat-spreader to my DDR3-1333 CL9 chips, and wondering whether it might make a difference ... and if so, how much

Everyone

Posted 2011-10-07T18:54:10.510

Reputation: 1 714

2When they first started putting spreaders on, I tore them off, they were doing more harm than good, because of the method of thermal transfer they were using. I concidered them "Art". The space they took up due to design with lips and ledges and artsy stickers, and the space between the slots, was a total package of neagative effect. Concidering the Controller part of the ram the spreader might be more important nowdays. I would still say adding a Bad Design into a tight space could be worse. adding increased flow of air might be a better investement when going that route. – Psycogeek – 2011-10-08T07:40:48.917

^ now i have to put in the disclaimer, tearing them off they way some are installed and made now, could result in tearing a chip off with it. but any art sticker still goes. – Psycogeek – 2011-10-08T07:47:13.683

2If they're not attached with thermoconductive epoxy, they don't belong on the chips. I had a set of Crucial's very expensive Ballistix memory boards have their head-spreaders pop loose. By the time I figured out what was going on, the machine had been trashed. In the early stages, it started with odd lockups (during the time the gaps weren't apparent during physical removal and inspection) which I attributed to the motherboard since changing the boards out didn't seemingly cure it. Then one of the spreaders came loose and the system proceeded to eat a chunk of the MFT on that thermal crash. – Fiasco Labs – 2011-10-08T07:58:41.827

Answers

At cost price from my suppliers, most memory modules only cost a few pence (usually around 20-40p) more for modules with heatsinks over ones without. However, the specification is usually the same.

The main difference is that you may be able to overclock slightly more without heat issues and as the price isn't a lot more, I always purchase them with.

This being said, the memory specification is the important factor and heat sinks will not make any difference over that.

William Hilsum

Posted 2011-10-07T18:54:10.510

Reputation: 111 572

Last time I was putting new RAM into a motherboard, I decided to remove the heat sink for better heat dissipation, as there was a visible air gap between chip case and the metal of heat sink... So... the marketing had build some impressive looking extra on the module, and the tech's took great care that it does not interfere with the cooling, I think. Nice! – Volker Siegel – 2014-06-20T22:33:52.650

@AndrejaKo "on heatspreaders the idea is that not all memory chips heat up at the same rate. Some are more used and some are less used."

Sorry, but this makes little sense. DDR3 DIMMs are 64 bits wide, as is the memory bus. One chip provides eight bits; the eight chips across the DIMM provide the 64 bits. Or you can have DIMMs that use 16 chips, each four bits wide. Either way, the processor always, only, addresses memory in eight-bit-wide chunks. So when reading or writing memory, all eight (or 16) chips on the DIMM are always active. It is not possible to use some chips and not others. – Jamie Hanrahan – 2015-04-16T01:09:04.753

In other words, a heat-sink only makes sense when overclocking? The reason I'm looking to add is because here summer temperatures go upto 47C, so now is a good time to prepare – Everyone – 2011-10-07T19:01:48.907

@William Hilsum With hearSINKS or heatSPREADERS? From what I've seen, RAM with heatsinks is rare. – AndrejaKo – 2011-10-07T19:14:10.647

1@Everyone... well ... It will be slightly cooler than one without, but, critical or even dangerous temprature is a lot higher... unless you are overclocking, I doubt you need it. I personally use them, but, I doubt they are doing anything... The hard drive or motherboard will probably go long before the memory does. – William Hilsum – 2011-10-07T19:14:13.280

@AndrejaKo I thought A passive heat sink and heat spreader are the same thing :/ – William Hilsum – 2011-10-07T19:16:19.737

@Everyone - Uh, at that temperature, you really should make sure your machine stays air-conditioned. – Shinrai – 2011-10-07T19:33:16.373

@Shinrai Can't afford air-conditioning (+: I'll try to improve airflow around the case though... perhaps put it on a stand in water – Everyone – 2011-10-07T19:39:26.597

@William Hilsum Well, they're not. The idea behind heatsinks is to sink heat, that is to say help heat dissipation into surrounding fluid. On the other hand, on heatspreaders the idea is that not all memory chips heat up at the same rate. Some are more used and some are less used. So it mitigates the problem by moving heat from hot chips to cool chips and the heat dissipation is actually just a beneficial side effect. – AndrejaKo – 2011-10-07T19:41:54.930

2In cases where large amounts of memory are heavily used, there may not be enough unused cold chips for heatspreaders to use to dump heat onto. In that case, a real heatsinks may be needed. The problem however is that due to motherboard design, standard heatsink designs usually won't work or may block other memory slots, so RAM with well-designed hetsinks is rare. – AndrejaKo – 2011-10-07T19:45:03.757

I recall Tom's Hardware did an article about this a while ago. The verdict: you can overclock your RAM about 1-3MHz more (don't remember exactly, but it was an insignificant amount) with a heatspreader than without... And this was already running at ludicrous settings way beyond spec. – Bigbio2002 – 2011-10-14T17:41:45.460

It will only make a difference if the RAM is actually overheating. Modern DDR3 RAM does have thermal throttling, which will cause it to slow down drastically if it overheats. Unless something is seriously wrong with your cooling setup, your RAM shouldn't be overheating. So the answer should be no.

There are a few special cases where RAM can overheat. One is if you're overvoltaging and/or overclocking your RAM. Another is if you're water cooling your CPU and don't have good airflow over that part of the motherboard. (Normally, the air moved by the CPU heatsink fan contributes significantly to keeping the RAM cool.)

RAM heatsinks should extend the life of your RAM, though it is quite rare for RAM to fail in normal use. It should also allow you to overclock or overvoltage further. IMO, the best reason to add cooling to RAM is to increase the safety margin between the operating conditions and the failure conditions, which should improve reliability.

David Schwartz

Posted 2011-10-07T18:54:10.510

Reputation: 58 310

Another cause of RAM overheating is excessive dust build-up. Easily avoided, but I've seen it many times causing problems. – RockPaperLizard – 2015-04-16T02:33:59.120

Modern RAM, in spite of its higher clock rates, require less cooling, since RAM temperature is a function of its operating voltage and power consumption.

The article Tech Primer: DDR4 RAM has this comparison table :

The lower voltage and power requirements of newer generations of RAM means that they run much cooler than older generations.

This was tested and reported in the article Technology Primer: Low Voltage RAM where three DDR3-1600 memory sticks of different voltages were tested, similar in voltage to these of DDR2, DDR3 and DDR4 :

Patriot Viper Xtreme : 1.65V
Kingston HyperX Lovo : 1.35V
G.SKILL Sniper Low Voltage Series : 1.25V

The results were :

Power Draw

low voltage RAM reduced the overall system power draw by a decent amount when under full load. The 11 and 13 wattage reduction from the Kingston and G.SKILL sticks works out to be about 2-3 Watts per sticks, for a total system power reduction of 3.65% and 4.32% respectively.

Thermal Performance

low voltage ram definitely runs cooler than the Patriot Viper Xtreme. Specifically, if you look at the bottom portion of the RAM and the motherboard to the right of the RAM you can see that the low voltage RAM is running about 5 °C cooler. Between the Kingston Lovo and the G.SKill Sniper Low Voltage, the G.SKill is does run slightly cooler, but the difference is much less noticeable than the difference between the low voltage and the standard RAM.

harrymc

Posted 2011-10-07T18:54:10.510

Reputation: 306 093

Though the temperature of the RAM is less important than its spec, there is another factor to consider when evaluating heatsinks on RAM: Case Temperature.

RAM with a heatsink can help to reduce the overall temp of your case and help prevent component degradation/damage and help make it easier to overclock other components.

Christopher Rayl

Posted 2011-10-07T18:54:10.510

Reputation: 127

Unless the RAM heat sink is outside the case, it cannot lower case temperature. Think about it--each RAM module produces a certain amount of heat, and all a heat sink does is conduct it away from the actual RAM chips. – CarlF – 2011-10-07T19:18:36.723

2...which is on the motherboard, near the CPU. A heatsink allows the heat to radiate into the cavity of the chassis (as opposed right next to your processor) to where your casefans can do the cleanup. – Christopher Rayl – 2011-10-07T19:22:24.270

Certainly a heatsink is designed to carry heat away from the processor, but in your answer you say it lowers "the overall temp of your case". This is simply not true. – CarlF – 2011-10-10T12:26:34.383