Heatspreaders

T

Tullphan

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 24, 2006
Messages
319
Do they really serve a useful purpose?
I'm looking at a set of ram (DDR3 1600...2x4GB) that doesn't come with a heatspreader.
They'd be installed in a LL V1000BW case.
Should I be concerned about the lack of heatspreaders?
Thanks.
 
Its not necessary and if they don't come with them, they don't need them. They can serve a purpose though, some heat spreaders have fins at the top that catch air flow and help cool them off. Other heat spreaders that aren't design well can hold heat and just make the ram hotter. Most DDR3 ram these days tend to run pretty cool and really don't need them. Heatspreaders look cool and help sales though. They also make ram feel sturdier.
 
The R in RAM means that the heat is already spread out anyway. They're a gimmick. Heatsinks are a different matter though.
 
I think he means that since it's random the information is spread across all chips, therefore spreading out the heat to different areas. I could be totally off in that guess though lol.
 
Yeah, that's right. Sorry, I was in a hurry when I wrote that. Attaching a flat metal plate to some flat hot chips doesn't really do much. Of course, using an actual heatsink with a high surface area (fins) makes sense.

I remember reading that there was a competing technology to RAM that was helped by heatspreaders, since it wasn't really random.
 
I have my ram overclocked a bit and every time I feel the heat spreaders they just feel around the same temperature as my case. Not including them saves on cost though.

They sell heat spreaders own their own that you can buy as well if you want.
 
I don't understand this trend of ever increasing heat spreader size, they seem to just be getting in the way of CPU heat sinks.
 
This is something I've been wondering about headspreaders that I think the OP will benefit from. If you apply heatspreaders to a RAM stick that has the serial sticker on the memory, do you remove the sticker or leave it on? If you leave it on, you wouldn't have very good performance(I assume), and if you remove it you void the warranty.

What's the plan of action in this situation?
 
I dont think the info sticker on a ram stick would affect the heat transfer very much. At least not enough to make you want to take it off.
 
limitedaccess said:
I don't understand this trend of ever increasing heat spreader size, they seem to just be getting in the way of CPU heat sinks.
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Overcompensation.

Heat spreaders of the 1950s:

1019056_article_img_large1.jpg


Why don't the modules made by chip manufacturers like Samsung come with heat spreaders?
 
Pretty much what other people said.. Unless you're severely overclocking or the RAM comes with heatspreaders you really don't need them.. I'd even go as far as to say that half of the ram with these giant heatspreaders would be 3000x better with smaller ones or none at all.
 
Funkmaster_A said:
Yeah, that's right. Sorry, I was in a hurry when I wrote that. Attaching a flat metal plate to some flat hot chips doesn't really do much. Of course, using an actual heatsink with a high surface area (fins) makes sense.
Click to expand...

it doesnt necessarily have to do with heat being produced unevenly between the individual chips. if you think about the RAM stick placement near the CPU, especially on certain boards, one end will be right next to the MOSFETS or CPU and the other will be off in the cool corner. a heat spreader evens out the temperature gradient between the hot and cold ends of the stick. this prevents thermal shock. how MUCH this helps is dependent on a bunch of things. its probably not necessary, but its probably beneficial to have a spreader. there is a reason RAM mfg's spend the extra 15 cents per stick for cost of a heat spreader. if it did nothing, they assumably wouldnt waste their money.
 
ghost6303 said:
it doesnt necessarily have to do with heat being produced unevenly between the individual chips. if you think about the RAM stick placement near the CPU, especially on certain boards, one end will be right next to the MOSFETS or CPU and the other will be off in the cool corner. a heat spreader evens out the temperature gradient between the hot and cold ends of the stick. this prevents thermal shock. how MUCH this helps is dependent on a bunch of things. its probably not necessary, but its probably beneficial to have a spreader. there is a reason RAM mfg's spend the extra 15 cents per stick for cost of a heat spreader. if it did nothing, they assumably wouldnt waste their money.
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While this is true (how much do they actually help?), I can't help but feel that as with many things, they create the "bling" to appeal to certain demographics. I mean hell, they have LEDs on some memory kits. Does that actually help? Probably not. But, it could look nice and they can charge accordingly based simply on the "bling" factor.

I hate using the car example but, it reminds me of riced out imports. Needs more flame and NOS decals! Nothing says fast like a bunch of stickers.

RAM today generally doesn't get hot enough to actually require the use of a heatspreader.
 
RAM doesn't need heatspreaders anymore. DDR ran hot sometimes. DDR2 much less so. DDR3 even less so. They're just there for pretty-shinies now, and cause gamers want xtra mega l33+ heat pipezors and shit so it looks cool through their giant plexi windows with their 18 UV cold cathodes. They might have some benefit in reducing damage from ESD, but it's unlikely.
 
ghost6303 said:
but its probably beneficial to have a spreader. there is a reason RAM mfg's spend the extra 15 cents per stick for cost of a heat spreader. if it did nothing, they assumably wouldn't waste their money.
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15 cents extra for a heatsink painted with flames and labelled Hyper Fornicator Warp Speed is cheaper than 200 cents extra for name brand memory chips.

If heatsinks helped, why don't any of Micron's OEM and industrial DIMMs have them?

http://www.micron.com/partscatalog.html?categoryPath=products/parametric/dram_modules/udimm

OTOH Micron's Crucial Ballistix modules do have them, and they've been Micron's least reliable RAM, by far.
 
skizzled said:
While this is true (how much do they actually help?), I can't help but feel that as with many things, they create the "bling" to appeal to certain demographics.
[...]
RAM today generally doesn't get hot enough to actually require the use of a heatspreader.
Click to expand...

i certainly agree there is a lot of unnecessary "bling" out there. from a marketing standpoint though, that sells product and i cant blame the manufacturer for wanting to do that. if people didnt buy it, they wouldnt make it. blame the idiot consumer for voting with their dollars.

i beleive in function over form, myself; i dont like LEDs and crap all over my case. but a flashy heat spreader design catches attention more than a blank green PCB and some chips does, there is no question about it. for those people who dont know better, who dont know what the specs mean, they have to fall back on something to help them choose between product A and B. if nothing else is available, they choose based on visual appeal.

If heatsinks helped, why don't any of Micron's OEM and industrial DIMMs have them?
Click to expand...
heatspreaders arent necessary with modern RAM, but they do help in the ways i mentioned before. OEMs are not trying to sell product to idiot retail consumers based on visual appeal. they sell to big system manufacturers in large qiuantities, and those buyers dont care about what it looks like. also most packaged consumer PCs (think average consumer Dell, HP systems) arent the "power users" that need high power RAM, so heatspreaders are safely scrapped to save that 15 cents (times 20 million sticks = $3million).
 
touch your heatspreaders...do they get hot?

none of mine do...that's proof enough for me that they're not really required. the bare ram modules barely get warm to the touch
 
my 3x2GB set of corsair dominator GT's (DDR3) are running 70mhz under rated spec and at stock voltage and run between 120 and 140 degrees F, all while having large spreaders and integrated heatsinks. if they were bare chips i bet it would burn you to touch them. not all RAM is the same, and each application is different.
 
ghost6303 said:
my 3x2GB set of corsair dominator GT's (DDR3) are running 70mhz under rated spec and at stock voltage and run between 120 and 140 degrees F, all while having large spreaders and integrated heatsinks. if they were bare chips i bet it would burn you to touch them. not all RAM is the same, and each application is different.
Click to expand...

What are they "rated" for though? I imagine you're going by what Corsair said they'll do, not what Samsung or whoever really made the modules originally said the chips would do. This might just be semantics, but I'd say you're going by what they've been binned for (by a third party), not what they were rated for. So yeah, they run hot, cause they're heavily OCed out of the box.
 
a valid point, and i couldnt find anywhere that lists the specific chips used in my sticks (CMP6GX3M3A1600C7) , but either way it still demonstrates that in some situations a heat spreader or other RAM cooling is beneficial, or even sometimes- necessary. even if you are not going over the stick manufacturers' rated speed.
 
One thing often overlooked is that spreaders offer physical protection for the ICs and the PCB.
 
silent-circuit said:
They might have some benefit in reducing damage from ESD, but it's unlikely.
Click to expand...

Mike Clements said:
One thing often overlooked is that spreaders offer physical protection for the ICs and the PCB.
Click to expand...

this right here, i know i have saved a few sticks from ESD because they had heat spreaders.

And one stick (some time ago) got stepped on. it fell, i knew it fell. but i didnt see where it landed, moved slowly and took a step back to find it under foot.. not much pressure, but still, might have damaged an otherwise unprotected stick
 
Here's an older article on the effectiveness of heatspreaders on RAM. Even with hot running DDR it didn't make a huge difference IMO.
 
that article rates them on 'overclockability', which i really dont think is an accurate measurement. there are just way too many other variables to be able to attribute a sticks' 'overclockability' directly to its heatspreader. also the speed difference between spreader and no-spreader is so small i would call it statistically insignificant.
 
EDIT: Nevermind, actually reading the article and not just the conclusion page helps...

Same modules, different heatspreaders. Of course, pulling the spreaders off one and sticking them on another (either reusing tape or different tape) is going to mess with efficiency a bit, but even then there's little to no change here, OCing differences are well within the margin of error.
 
that article rates them on 'overclockability', which i really dont think is an accurate measurement. there are just way too many other variables to be able to attribute a sticks' 'overclockability' directly to its heatspreader. also the speed difference between spreader and no-spreader is so small i would call it statistically insignificant.
Click to expand...

The main argument I've heard people use FOR heatspreaders is "they cool the ram so you can OC them better."

I agree with you that heatspreaders make an insignificant difference and that the results of those tests could've been from other factors. That's the only article I've found to really test this sort of stuff however, and I use it to show how useless heatspreaders are.
 
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