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No ram sinks needed (x1900xt)

F

Fidget

n00b
Joined
Feb 3, 2006
Messages
10
Thanks Plywood for the advice. Since I wasnt getting a lot of input on weather or not I needed to cool the memory on my watercooled X1900XT I decided to test myself. Using a thermal temperature monitor and a buddies left over OCZ Ramsink here are the results I got. Idle was taken after sitting on the windows desktop for an hour. Load was taken after running 3dmark 2006 for 30min

Without Ramsink
Idle 35C
load 48C-50C

With Ramsink
Idle 45C
load 59c

oops I forgot to put some cooling on the sink. Now lets see what happens (80mm slot fan)

With Ramsink(added air)
idle 35C
load 50c

Im not a scientest so my numbers could be a tad off. But I am certain that the ramsinks make little to no difference. Actually without lots or air circulating over them they seem to make things hotter. Then after I added air they were the same temperature as without the ramsinks. After reading samsungs spec sheet on their website on the memory that these cards use.....Im not to worried. The memory has a thermal threshold of 125c At this point Im more concerned about keeping the GPU cool then adding copper bling to the memory. Thanks to Plywood for giving me the idea to test the memory temps. I hope this helps others out. And to the people that want to argue my findings.....please test it out for yourself first before flaming me. I bet you come up with the same conclusions.
 
This is interesting, you got me thinking.

You didn't state if you had air flowing over the naked RAM IC's, but I'll presume you did. Without good airflow on those your temps may have been higher.

I'm going to investigate this a bit further me thinks!
 
Nope. I didnt have a fan on the naked ram. So it might have been cooler. But Im not to concerned about shaving off 1c or 2c. These things can go up to 125c. So I doubt they are breaking a sweat at 48c.
 
Problem is if you don't have heat dissipated from the ram actively, it builds up around the PCB and stays in that area. This leads to components actually popping off and card faliure, at least according to Viper John. I decided to put 2 80mm fans underneath the card + OCZ ramsinks.
 
Nice research there Fidget. Wish more folks around here would do that instead of listening to hype and other nonsense. Ramsinks can help but it is marginal at most. More troubling than ram sinks is the tim joint between sink and memory chip. The double sided tape used for almost all sinks acts more like an insulator.

It's the same thing for standard system memory too. Those flashy memory sinks do nothing but cause your memory to run hotter.

All that is needed is a small fan blowing over the video card to cool the ram and mosfets...
 
5150Joker said:
Problem is if you don't have heat dissipated from the ram actively, it builds up around the PCB and stays in that area. This leads to components actually popping off and card faliure, at least according to Viper John. I decided to put 2 80mm fans underneath the card + OCZ ramsinks.
Click to expand...


Lol, that would be in extreme situations. All that is needed is just a little airflow...
 
Hmm, I just recently did a little test of my own (without heat probe). I took an Arctic Cooling NV-5 rev 3 (indended for a nvidia card), and put it on my x1800xl. it fits perfectly on the core, but the ram layout is totally different... so i left the themal pads off (nothing between ram and heatsink.

at normal speeds, the card works fine, the ram barely gets warm to the touch... but once you start overclocking, increases the speed, bumping up the voltage, the ram can get pretty damn hot... so much that it artifacts at speeds it would normally have no problems at. I also put a fan blowing in between the gap of the heatsink and ram, and it cooled that ram, and prevented the artifacting at said speed.

I thought the ram sinks wouldn't make much of a difference, but in my testing it really does.
 
Makes sense that once you start pushing devices beyond their original specs things start to heat up. Especially if you turn up the voltage. At that point some sort of cooling is probably required. I just wanted to know if it was safe to run the video memory without passive cooling. I guess overclocking is a different. I remember back in the days when no cooling was required for CPUs in PCs.
 
So you have your card vmem modded? I just got my card yesterday. Your raising the voltage with a pot or is there some easy way?

Edit: Wow just ATi tool? cool.
 
Damn, nice post Fidget. I just ordered some OCZ ramsinks for my 1900XT too :( . Oh well, maybe I can use them for something else.
 
There looks to be another set of components the heatsink covers toward the right side. No, not that separate strip right over power compents, but very well may be more power components. I'll know when I take it apart.

That should cover the last of my concerns. You just got a block straight on the core and that's everything? What else other than the ram had the crappy tape on it intended to create a thermal interface with the sink?

Maybe my eyes deceive me.
 
Fidget said:
Using a thermal temperature monitor and a buddies left over OCZ Ramsink here are the results I got.
Click to expand...

What exactly did you use to measure the temps? Did you use a k-type? Where did you put the sensor?

Your results make no sense, it is like saying heatsinks don't work...
 
Right, Im curious too see how these are running for you guys w/o ram sinks- and have you ocd them at all?
 
Fellas you have to remember cooling ram is not the same as cooling a cpu or gpu. As an example, look at how ram sinks are attatched. With double sided tape or maybe a concoction of thermal goo and epoxy.

Try putting double sided tape between your cpu and heatsink for a tim and see what kind of results you get. Bet the computer wont even make it to the bios.

Also believe it or not, thermal pastes are very poor heat conductors, even AS5. That is one reason why a heatsink needs to apply so much pressure to the cpu, tim joint will be less thick. Ever put on too much thermal paste on your cpu? Temps are crap.

So when using thermal paste and epoxy together to attach ram sinks the joint is going to be quite a bit thicker than it would on a cpu, because there is nothing to apply ample pressure.

Think about this, when you look at pictures of people whith phase change and dry ice and other forms of extreme cooling on their cpu's and gpu's, why is the mobo ram and the gpu ram not being cooled in some extreme fashion also? Simple, the benifits are neglegible, notta, zip, not worth the hassle.

So when you see Ram with those fancy heat spredders and such on them guess what. It is pure marketing hype, propaganda, bull doodoo.

As has been mentioned repeatedly before, all that is needed is decent airflow around your gpu ram. Just a small 80mm or some such fan will do the ticket...
 
You asked J-Mag so here it is.

I used a Omega HH501DK Type-K

To measure the ram with the sink on I had drilled a 1/16 hole into the sink so I could measure the temp of the ram with a tiny handled probe. That was the most acurate way I could think of.
 
Bumping too see what speeds you guys are getting out of your ram. Still going w/o the sinks?
 
I have my ram running at 900mhz using no sinks. This is with Atitool not the AtiOverclocker which loosens memory timings.
 
Nice OC for sure. Did you flash to the xtx bios? Also can you post your voltages? Sorry to be a pest- but you seem to know your ATI's ;)
 
Spirals said:
Nice OC for sure. Did you flash to the xtx bios? Also can you post your voltages? Sorry to be a pest- but you seem to know your ATI's ;)
Click to expand...

Got better results using the stock bios over a xtx bios.
here are my voltages in the order showed by ati tool.
1.5
2.274
1.949
1.580

Best voltages vary from card to card. Active cooling a must when using high voltages on ram. The stock cooler is not always the best for ram, but depends on the card. Some folks have better results with lower ram voltages on the stock heatsink. Helps ram not to overheat...
 
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