Aftermarket ramsink/heatspreader?

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Oct 29, 2000
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Hey everyone,

I am in the planning phases for rebuilding the better halfs machine into a compact Fractal Design Terra case.

I tend to be a "bigger is better" kind of guy, so I don't have a ton of experience with these fiddly little things.

Her RAM is this T-Force Dark Pro stuff:

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The problem is, it is 45mm tall, and I'm going to need to shave at least 10mm off of it in order to get it to fit under the low profile cooler this build is going to require (I went with a Noctua NH-L12s)

Anyone know if there are any generic aftermarket heatspreaders/ramsinks for these things?

I mean, I'm not afraid to take the old bandsaw to them and lop the top off, but before I do, I figured I'd ask if there is a less janky solution.

Appreciate any input.
 
Another thought...

Any reason I shouldn't just run them "naked?"

Back in the day when RAM first got heatspreaders, we used to all make fun of the heatspreaders as "fauxspreaders" and shit like that, because RAM wasn't a significant source of heat.

I understand with DDR5 that may no longer be the case.

But this stuff is DDR4-3466.

It's fairly simple to just pull off the ram spreaders. Might not be any reason to put any back on.
 
3466 is relatively fast, but I would try one with prime95 and see how hot you can get it. If its 2 dimms its better than 4, especially if they're double sided...

Yes you can get aftermarket heat spreaders too. Even water blocks, though I haven't done that since a triple channel x58 build. I would start by trying to take the extra top piece off, a lot of them are just filler crap.
 
rhkcommander959 said:
3466 is relatively fast, but I would try one with prime95 and see how hot you can get it. If its 2 dimms its better than 4, especially if they're double sided...

Yes you can get aftermarket heat spreaders too. Even water blocks, though I haven't done that since a triple channel x58 build. I would start by trying to take the extra top piece off, a lot of them are just filler crap.
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2 dimms, one sided, but since it is a Mini-ITX board they are going to sit side by side.

The Noctua NH-L12S cooler should be drawing air right across them though, so I'm thinking they will likely stay pretty cool.

Since she doesn't really play games, I might actually under-clock them to 3200 in order to keep everything in spec for the sake of stability.


Zarathustra[H] said:
I understand with DDR5 that may no longer be the case.
Click to expand...

I did a little bit more reading on this, and it has nothing to do with DDR5 RAM itself, but it is rather because with DDR5 they moved the voltage controllers for the RAM onto the memory modules. This would suggest that DDR4 should still be relatively cool like the old stuff.

I'll have to do a test.

I can't even remember. Does modern RAM have readable thermal sensors on it, or do I have to point my laser temperature thingie at them?
 
Dremel baby, Dremel 🤣

But seriously, there may not be any issue running them naked, but you would need to do some temp testing to be sure, and yes, there are many lower-profile aftermarket sinks/coolers available too if need be...

Good luck & please post back with your results !
 
TheSlySyl said:
If you're leaving the fan on the noctua and its going to be creating airflow through the RAM, then naked shouldn't be a problem at all.
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That's what I would do as well. DDR4 doesn't need much airflow until you start overvolting into the 1.5v range. Just be careful pulling the heatsinks off. Its really easy to pull a module off with the tape. I learned that the hard way :(
 
Temps will be fine probably only a few c above the air blowing over them.
The issue may be how the HS are attached as when they are glued on with thermal tape sometimes the memory chips come off the stick with the tape.
Make sure you get the sticks nice and warm before removing them to reduce the chance of this.
 
there's some thin wire and metal devices that are good for the tape, I used them originally for removing glass from LCD screens... I'll try to remember the name
 
dasa said:
Temps will be fine probably only a few c above the air blowing over them.
The issue may be how the HS are attached as when they are glued on with thermal tape sometimes the memory chips come off the stick with the tape.
Make sure you get the sticks nice and warm before removing them to reduce the chance of this.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the warning, but I had already pried them off. Luckily no damage.

The thermal tape on the front side of the sticks (with the chips) was pretty forgiving and came off easily. The tape on the rear was some serious mounting tape and didn't want to come off at all. I was lucky I didn't snap the sticks in half.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Thanks for the warning, but I had already pried them off. Luckily no damage.

The thermal tape on the front side of the sticks (with the chips) was pretty forgiving and came off easily. The tape on the rear was some serious mounting tape and didn't want to come off at all. I was lucky I didn't snap the sticks in half.
Click to expand...

Using a heat gun is recommended for removing them. I would just run them naked in an ITX build, as long as there is airflow somewhere it will run 20C cooler than with the "heatsinks" on. My Klevv modules are bareback and they OC to the moon and never go over 50C, the same A-dies with an RGB "heat jacket" hit 70C in the same configuration.
 
Well, I'm just going to replace this RAM.

It's 98% stable, but in a 16 thread RAM intensive Prime 95, I regularly lose one thread after about 25 minutes.

I could have damaged it when I took it off, but I doubt it. Physical damage would be much quicker to tease out than that.

This system has had random intermitted freexing issues from day one. It used to have a Ryzen 5 2400G in it. At the time I chucked it up to poor early Ryzen Linux kernel compatribility or ZEN1's RAM sensitivity, and lived with it, hoping BIOS or kernel patches would address it. (They never did).

I figured with the newer Zen chips being a lot less ram sensitive, now that I was dropping a 5800x3D it might just work, but no such luck. No random feezes as in the past, but general light stability testing issues...

I decided to stop fighting this RAM and just replace it. 16GB of DDR4 isn't all that expensive these days anyway.

Sadly, nothing on the QVL seems to be in stock anywhere anymore, so I wound up ordering these.

Ramsink is low profile, so I won't have to mess with that, and it says "AMD compatible" right in the title, so they had better work, or I'm returning them :p

Wish me luck :p
 
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LigTasm said:
Using a heat gun is recommended for removing them. I would just run them naked in an ITX build, as long as there is airflow somewhere it will run 20C cooler than with the "heatsinks" on. My Klevv modules are bareback and they OC to the moon and never go over 50C, the same A-dies with an RGB "heat jacket" hit 70C in the same configuration.
Click to expand...
Interesting. Runs cooler without the heatsinks and 20c lower naked? Lol so the heatsinks are making them actually hotter?
 
xDiVolatilX said:
Interesting. Runs cooler without the heatsinks and 20c lower naked? Lol so the heatsinks are making them actually hotter?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure anymore, as I have not done any testing, but I used to be under the impression the heat spreaders on RAM were more about protecting the RAM from ESD damage than they were about reducing heat. I mean, just look at the design, most of them don't have any fins or anything, and just have flat sides. They wouldn't necessarily make for good heatsinks.
 
They're heat spreaders, not sinks. Heat sinks have more mass, for heat to "drain" into (and then maybe be dissipated to somewhere else). Heat spreaders simply spread the heat, so there is no major hot spots (and in some cases, to allow a larger heatsink to pull heat away more efficiently, like the one your CPU likely has).
 
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xDiVolatilX said:
Interesting. Runs cooler without the heatsinks and 20c lower naked? Lol so the heatsinks are making them actually hotter?
Click to expand...

They’re mostly decorations, compare what you get now to the old DDR2 Dom Plats for example. There are heatsink that work, mainly made for attaching a water block. The problem is the thick foam pads, it’s better to just have direct airflow over the bare sticks. If you’re going to push a lot of voltage to try for 7600+ you need a real heatsink and probably a fan on top.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Sadly, nothing on the QVL seems to be in stock anywhere anymore, so I wound up ordering these.
Click to expand...

God damnit.

Amazon's "fuzzy logic" search got me again. I intended to buy a 2x8GB kit, instead I got a 1x16GB kit.

I really wish Amazon would offer a "precise search" option that showed only exact hits for what I am searching for, and nothing "similar".

It's been a few years since this happened to me, but it is a huge pain in the ass when it does. Details matter. Maybe not when you are searching for a "pink sweater", but when you are searching for technical things, they do.

Like, for fucks sake, allow me to search like on google with quotation marks or something.

This has been a real problem on Amazon for ages.

Anyway, return requested, and ordered these (which is what I thought I was ordering the first time) instead.
 
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I slapped some RAM heatsinks / spreaders on my EEC DDR4 3600 CL18 and it dropped the temps by a few Cs.
Under stress tests they will go above 50C even with the heatsinks. 🤷‍♂️
This is in a CM H500 case which has good air flow.
 
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