[Advice] Re: Advantage of Heat Spreaders on System Memory

[Al the Octopus]

I just had a new rig built last October, and with it, I bought some very basic 4gb Transcend DDR2 800 RAM modules (2 x 2GB). Obviously not ultra high-performance, though they've worked decently well for me.

Lately I've been looking at upgrading these modules, in favor of some higher performance gear - most likely something with heat spreaders (for reference, I have had my eye on a set of GSkill 2 x 2GB DDR2 800). Admittedly, I'm not that familiar with high performance RAM. So, those of you who do use it - have you really noticed any performance increases with RAM that has built-in heat spreaders? Do they actually work, or do they just look cool?

Thanks in advance

[ConstanceJill]

What exactly do you call heat spreaders ?
If that's heatsinks, well, they're not supposed to increase performance in any way, they're just designed to help heat going down, to prevent damage that may occur due to excessive heat.
That means either those RAM chips are heating too much compared with others ( ) or the designers were careful, thinking you (probably ?) would like to overclock, thus generating more heat, and it would be wise to have something to help cooling down, even though not required in normal use.

[Mr. Pedantic]

I think he means these as compared to these.

Unless you're overclocking, then I don't think that the upgrade is worth it, really. Spend it on something else.

[kow_ciller]

Heatspreaders really dont do too much. They're more for people that dont have any airflow in their case. If you have good airflow it doesn't matter if you have headspreaders or not. If anything most people with really high-end ram will remove the heatspreaders and put a 120mm fan to blow on the ram instead.

[>Omen<]

Yeah they're typically called heatspreaders vs sinks on RAM Jill. RAM is fairly durable, but it's also designed to run at certain timings. OCing it can create much more of a need to dissipate the resulting heat to help keep it stable, so RAM heatspreaders have evolved quite a bit as OCing is becoming huge anymore. There are now models that come with fans and/or water cooling fittings. Mushkin even has a very high end spreader that uses bimetal technology, but it's pretty expensive.

The above are obviously technologies for the elite crowd that have money to burn and want to OC their gear as high as possible. For the most part I find heatspreaders don't have to add a lot of cost to be effective. For instance OCZ's old honeycomb spreaders are quite effective and can be seen on well priced modules.

That is not to say I think all modern advances in this tech are absurd and elitist. Just the fact that many manufacturers are now lapping the RAM chips to more effectively conduct heat to the spreaders is a nice change IMO, and not unlike the lapping many do on their custom CPU sinks before installing them.

G. Skill is a very good RAM manufacturer btw, and currently my pick for best value in affordable high end memory based products. They were one of the first to offer low latency 3x2GB PC3 16000 kits for X58 MBs using the highly acclaimed Elpida chips at an incredible 2000+MHz capability. In fact they and OCZ are still the only ones on Newegg offering such a kit and G. Skill's is $50 cheaper.

I'm not saying you need to spend a lot on RAM like the above models, it's just to point out that companies like G. Skill are there for you if you want great RAM at low prices, and they're there for you if you want the elite stuff at the best prices too.

[*The.Doctor]

For instance OCZ's old honeycomb spreaders are quite effective and can be seen on well priced modules.

Yeah, i like OCZ. My OCZ Platinum 2GB kits was $35 each, all with their XTC heatspreaders. Hell, my ram is overclocked and over volted and they still barely even get warm.

If you have good airflow in your case, they are not really needed. There is no denying that they do look much better than your average plain old ram stick though.