CoolIt RAM Fan review by jonnyguru

[funnyperson1]

http://www.jonnyguru.com/review_deta...118&page_num=1

Great review, that things looks really nice and really dropped the temps (I was a bit surprised that the CPU temps also dropped as well.

Just one thing I wanted to point out, in the review you said you weren't sure that ram needed active cooling.

Here are a lot of good reasons to actively cool your ram (especially D9 highly volted):
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=139544
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=124399
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=140870
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=131244

[jonnyGURU]

It was a rhetorical statement. Like I was asking the question for the reader, "why do I need active cooling?"

I have a lot more air cooling in my PC than most water coolers. And I do believe in memory cooling. I've had that Thermaltake Spirit RS passive cooler on my D9 memory in my air-cooled machine for a long time prior to doing this review.

I wasn't really surprised the CPU temps went down. I'm sure you've touched a water block in a running PC. Despite the water, the block is still hot to the touch. Adding a fan is only going to help coool that block even more.

[funnyperson1]

Ah I guess I misinterpreted this part:

I've never actually thought that RAM ran hot enough to actually require active cooling

When you say passive cooling I'm thinking more along the lines of plain heatspreaders than heatpipe coolers. And of course not that many people pump 2.4V through their DDR2 to require extra cooling.

I understand how the airflow might help cool the block, but a flat peice of copper with no fins isn't the best for radiating heat into the air, the magnitude of the drop was impressive to me. Perhaps blocks would be better off with some fins on the outside as well to take advantage of ambient air.

[jonnyGURU]

Yeah... in that sentence you quoted, I meant the need of a big fan clamped to the DIMM slots. I've never run RAM without some sort of passive cooling.

Have you see the Thermaltake Spirit RS?.....

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/produc...6/cl-r0026.asp

The heatpipe and radiator on this thing really works well. And you can twist the radiator into position too, so if you have a large upright cooler like the Thermalright Ultra 120, you leave it up right so the fan on the CPU cooler sucks cool air right across the radiator. You can tilt it down over the CPU cooler if you have a downdraft cooler like an Ultra X-Wind.

It just happens to be useless for water cooled PC's because it doesn't move any air. It needs air to be moving.

I never bothered to review it because there's no way to really gage how cool the RAM runs when compared to just flat copper spreaders. Probably the best way would to be to show the delta between the spreader and the heatpipe, but... I dunno....

[Super Nade]

I have 2 80mm fans blowing on my BH. It can get a bit toasty at 3.7V. Jon, I'm not sure if the CPU temps will drop in an air cooled config, simply because the CPU fans these days are a lot more powerful than the memory cooler's fan. So I'm not sure if the added benefits would show up on an all air rig like mine.

[jonnyGURU]

I never said that an air-cooled CPU's temperatures would drop when using an air-cooled memory-cooler, did I?

In fact, I believe my argument was that if I had an air-cooled CPU, I would be more likely to choose a passive memory-cooling option. Is that where the confusion is coming from because I feel like I'm speaking Chinese to a bunch of Sweeds now.

[Super Nade]

You misunderstood me, I did not say you did say the saying being said in the previous post.
I was merely making a general observation.

Unfortunately, super ultra massive tower heatsinks can be a problem. I've yet to find a memory cooling solution that works for my setup.

[funnyperson1]

Originally Posted by jonnyGURU

Yeah... in that sentence you quoted, I meant the need of a big fan clamped to the DIMM slots. I've never run RAM without some sort of passive cooling.

Have you see the Thermaltake Spirit RS?.....

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/produc...6/cl-r0026.asp

The heatpipe and radiator on this thing really works well. And you can twist the radiator into position too, so if you have a large upright cooler like the Thermalright Ultra 120, you leave it up right so the fan on the CPU cooler sucks cool air right across the radiator. You can tilt it down over the CPU cooler if you have a downdraft cooler like an Ultra X-Wind.

It just happens to be useless for water cooled PC's because it doesn't move any air. It needs air to be moving.

I never bothered to review it because there's no way to really gage how cool the RAM runs when compared to just flat copper spreaders. Probably the best way would to be to show the delta between the spreader and the heatpipe, but... I dunno....

Yea, the major downside of the passive coolers like the TT Spirit and the TR HR07 is that you have to take off the heatspreaders from most ram and that adds the risk of ripping a chip off. Of course the warranty is also history at that point.

I guess the temp of the heatspreader would give some insight as to how warm the chips are but beyond that you're right, it would be quite difficult to measure how well those heatpipe coolers do.

I'm considering getting something like this CoolIt, but the price is enough for me to justify trying to rig something up from the tons of 80mm fans I have lying around, if I can't figure something out then I'll probably hook this up, but I'm not in a real hurry I only run my ram at 2.1V and there is some airflow from my CPU heatsink pulling air over them.

[MC FLMJIG]

i just have a 92mm vmodded on top of my ram... even o slow 70mm wouldnt be too bad

[LC_STiK]

OCZ makes a good mem cooler. I used to have a spare 60mm fan rigged up on my RAM, but the clip on OCZ makes a huge difference. It got me up to 245mhz and still cool. Unfortunately that's where those particular sticks max at, in dual channel anyways so it might be the mobo.