980 Strix. No heatsinks on RAM. Need advice on upgrade.

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[H]ard|Gawd
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Have a Radeon 7970 and have a 3440x1440 21:9 monitor coming. 7970 is already too loud and too slow for a handful of things I throw at it with 2560x1440 resolution. However, I'm not convinced 780TI / 980 would be a big jump in FPS. I've been eyeballing the 980 STRIX cards.

I noticed in ASUS's product video that they removed the STRIX / Direct CU heatsink and there was nothing on the RAM modules. I get that there are large fans constantly passing air through the heatsink down onto the RAM. But, I thought this was always a point of failure for a lot of graphics cards--RAM dieing. I would have figured some sort of cheap-but-effective heatsinks would have been good for the longevity of the card. Are we now beyond needing to have heatsinks on GPU memory modules?

I know, "You'll upgrade before it matters." I'm getting more and more distant from gaming. I expect I'll be buying my last "high end" video card sometime within the next 5 years.
 
GDDR5 runs cool. You really don't need heatsinks on them.

The point of failure on most cards isn't the RAM modules themselves. It's either the VRMs, especially on bad aftermarket designs that do not cool the VRMs as well as the stock reference ones, or the integrated memory controller on the GPU itself. In both cases, overclocking and high voltages are usually the cause of the failure.

I wouldn't really be concerned about GDDR5 without a heatsink but I would closely examine the design of that heatsink to make sure it is actively cooling the VRMs.
 
Well for the 970, thus far only Gigabyte has true active cooling for the VRMs, as in there's actually a thermal pad that bridges the VRMs to the main heatsink.

Both Asus and MSI have semi-passive cooling in that there's a small secondary heatsink on the VRMs, but that secondary heatsink isn't directly connected to anything, and is only passively cooled by the fan blowing air over it.
 
n=1 said:
Well for the 970, thus far only Gigabyte has true active cooling for the VRMs, as in there's actually a thermal pad that bridges the VRMs to the main heatsink.

Both Asus and MSI have semi-passive cooling in that there's a small secondary heatsink on the VRMs, but that secondary heatsink isn't directly connected to anything, and is only passively cooled by the fan blowing air over it.
Click to expand...
As long as there is a heatsink attached to the VRMs that is appropriately sized and has a decent amount of airflow over it, it should be okay. It's not as good as having the VRMs physically contacting the main heatsink (in most cases) but when I used an Accelero Xtreme 3 which had the same design (smaller heatsinks on the VRMs, cooled by the main fans) the VRM temperatures were safe.
 
Well if the temps weren't safe that would be a design flaw wouldn't it. ;)

But yeah if you're not doing anything unreasonable the default cooling solution is fine. Although I would like to point out the difference between active and semi-passive cooling is 20C or more.
 
n=1 said:
Well for the 970, thus far only Gigabyte has true active cooling for the VRMs, as in there's actually a thermal pad that bridges the VRMs to the main heatsink.

Both Asus and MSI have semi-passive cooling in that there's a small secondary heatsink on the VRMs, but that secondary heatsink isn't directly connected to anything, and is only passively cooled by the fan blowing air over it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have given thought to the Gigabyte cards as well.

The way I'm looking at it, I've owned mostly reference design video cards. GTX 8880, 280, 480, and AMD 7970. All have had massive coil whine, and loud ass fans...Didn't bother me at the time. But these days, I'm ready for a quiet computer. Seems like a non-reference video card is the way to go in that regard.
 
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