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Do heatspreaders work?

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Da_Beeblebrox

Da_Beeblebrox

Member
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Joined
Oct 16, 2002
I found a heatspreader in my dad's file cabinet, and i was thinking about borrowing it for my memory. Do they work? I was talking to "The Frag" about it and he told me they do nothing but get all hot....

If someone could lay down the facts about heat spreaders, that would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Beeblebrox
 
if it actually fits the ram (which i kinda doubt if you justfoun it sitting around) it would help out. There is a reason that almost all high end ram has a heatspreader- they do help.
 
they dont do any thing but get all hot... but they are supposed to increase the surface area that is allowd to cool... so it gets all hot and then cools off faster:D
 
yea you wont get any benifit from it but if your running high voltage and fast speeds the ram does get damn hot. no evidence that it will burn out, but taking that heat away cant hurt weather it be heat spreaders or better case air flow over the ram

my answer for everything cooling related:
try aiming a large house fan on high at your memory. if that helps your stable overclock top speed then take the next step
 
nealric said:
if it actually fits the ram (which i kinda doubt if you justfoun it sitting around) it would help out. There is a reason that almost all high end ram has a heatspreader- they do help.
Click to expand...

are you sure? What is that reason? The only heatspreaders I can see working would be the ones with fans on em that TT makes, but I doubt that is what you have. It really doesnt do anything but look pretty. My Corsair XMS has it, I would take it off but, it feels less flimsy when putting it in :eek:

I still stand by the point that heatspreaders on RAM are useless. If you have em, put em on and see if you see a difference, which you wont. I almost garuntee it. Then you will say it di djust to **** me off lol
 
try aiming a large house fan on high at your memory. if that helps your stable overclock top speed then take the next step
Click to expand...

I do that on hot nights. If my system is locking up due to high temps i open the door on my case and put a housefan in there =D

It seriously makes a difference.

You can close this thread, its just taking up space since their isnt any non appinionated information here.
 
ya there is, my info. I would go on aim and talk to u beeble, but Cstrike is open downloading a map i cant find online. It is the best map EVER! the_get_away 0wnz j00z!!!1111

I do believe that active cooling makes a difference, as the heated metal would be getting cooled, not just put onto a hot peice of metal against the ram, therefore still warming it
 
the reason RDRAM used heatspreaders is because where hte memory is active - its hotter than SDRAM, but it has sleep states where is cooler...so all this does is cause a more equal dissipation - although some heat would be lost from its surface - its not designed as a heatsink so its primary goal is to move it around...so thats why im more astranged to why DDR would use it, surely this has an already all over heat caused by a constant wake state SDRAM lives in thus the heatspreader would be useless on it
 
well i have been using heat spreaders from TT with the fan and i have noticed more stable overclocks than before i got without the heatspreaders. but each person gets its own performance difference like in all things nothing is constant accept maybe air.
 
IF you run insanely high voltage on them & IF they get hot becuase of this then it would be helpful to have heatspreaders on them as long as there is sufficient flow of air going through the case. It also depends on what kind of chips they are. Try running TinyBGA chips at 3.0V+ without any form of cooling & you get stability problems because they will get hot & eventualy die on you. Most types of memory dont even heatup so it would make them useless in most cases.
 
SpyderMatrix said:
well i have been using heat spreaders from TT with the fan and i have noticed more stable overclocks than before i got without the heatspreaders. but each person gets its own performance difference like in all things nothing is constant accept maybe air.
Click to expand...

I already stated that I think active cooling is a different story. You see, you have the ones with a fan.
 
whether it makes a difference or not for performance or temps, it does prevent damage from screwdrivers and such in which i know about several cases where ram has met sudden death when messing with heatsinks
 
i got my spreaders off on my corsair. it is hard. the sticky stuff is the same they used to hold on those crapy chipset heatsinks.

to remove it you can pry the same way you do to remove a vid card heatsink to start. then you can carfully peal it back after it gets started. take good care where you place your hands to prevent the ram stick from bending. if you peal it like a banans the ram will flex and bend badly.
 
I had the TT actice cooler, but when I got my XMS2700 I put the fan part on the XMS, just cut a slot wide eniugh to fit on, and some superglugel to hold it there. Runs like a champ, pushing 3.0v the the ram now. 204x8.5.

XMSwithfan-2.jpg
 
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