How hot should memory get?

[zerok66]

Hi Guys,

My setup is as follows:

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI Board (nForce 4) passively cooled n/b
Athlon 3000+ (Soon to be upgraded to 4200 x 2 w/ Thermalright SI128 + 120mm fan)
Gigabyte GF 8800GTS 256MB Passively cooled card
Silverstone Nightjar ST-30NF passively cooled PSU

All fitted into my OrigenAE X11 case. I have 2 x 80mm exhaust fans + 1 fan at the front blowing up into the case over the HDDs. Now this case is not known for great cooling/airflow, but seems to do alright with me.

Now the graphics card is hotish to the touch after gaming, but not too bad, acceptable I think. My northbridge gets red hot... I recently fitted a Zalman passive cooler, but I think it is too small and will be replacing it with the Thermalright SLI cooler. The HDD, CPU, PSU all are very cool.

The only thing that is concerning me (apart from the northbridge) is the memory. Now I have never noticed memory getting hot. I have 4 x 1GB corsair ECC Reg memory TWINX2048RE-3200PT.



As you can see these have a heatsink on them already... and I am not trying to over clock them or anything, but OMG they are really really hot. Is this normal for memory? I cant keep my hand on the memory for longer than a couple seconds or so after gaming.

[mr. poopyhead]

my corsair XMS PC3200 RAM gets pretty hot after playing games. i've never had a problem with them though. i can touch them for about 5 seconds or so before it gets painful...

but then again, i may just have a low tolerance for pain...

[Mr Evil]

Interesting. No RAM I've ever had becomes more than a bit warm to the touch. Some of the stuff on graphics cards can get hot, but not enough to cause pain on touching it.

[jhhoffma]

Told you you'd have to be careful with that case! It's notorious for hotspots.

Are you covering the vent in front of the PSU? If not, maybe you need another fan in that area; you may not be getting recycling warm air in that area.

[derekchinese]

For sure ram will get hot. I know with my DDR2 ram at only 2.1V, they will get hot if they don't have any airflow. Add some airflow, and they are COLD!!!

I see how you are trying for the quietest system possible, so I am not sure how you can achieve this. You might have to make an exception here and use a 120mm fan at 5v providing airflow to the ram.

Derek

[jhhoffma]

For sure ram will get hot. I know with my DDR2 ram at only 2.1V, they will get hot if they don't have any airflow. Add some airflow, and they are COLD!!!

I see how you are trying for the quietest system possible, so I am not sure how you can achieve this. You might have to make an exception here and use a 120mm fan at 5v providing airflow to the ram.

Derek

If you look at the case he's using, you'll notice it's an HTPC case, so there isn't a lot of room. There really isn't enough room for a 120mm in the case. I'd know, as I have the same case.

[derekchinese]

wow, I didn't notice that.

I already have a hard enough time in a full size case (antec sonata) it must be difficult in an HTPC case

[zerok66]

To be fair it is a pretty large HTPC case.

I will sort out some airflow in that area. I have a thermalright 128 cooler now with a 120mm fan coolind downward... hopfully produce some airflow near the memory, failing that I will get another 80 or 120mm fan blowing towards the rear over the memory.

I must say my system is dead silent now bar the HDD noise! That is annoying.

[GentleGiant]

If your board is like all the other A64 boards I've known, the RAM slots are all packed right next to each other, and even if you have just two DIMMs they use adjacent slots. "High performance" RAM with large heatsinks block two of four sides because there's no airspace between the inner heatsinks.

I swapped out some Patriot DDR400 2-2-2-5 memory for Corsair ValueSelect with no heatsinks and RAM temperatures dropped dramatically -- I could now hold my finger on the chips -- before the heatsinks were too hot to touch for long, especially the inner ones. Performance drop on Folding at Home was ~5%.

So it's a possible solution if you can't get enough airflow and have any extra memory around. I don't know what voltage your XMS runs at, but if you can get memory running at 2.5V it will generally be cooler than the stuff that runs at 2.7 or higher. Can your underclock/undervolt your current memory? Drop back to DDR333 and drop the voltage .1V or so...

[psiu]

If your board is like all the other A64 boards I've known, the RAM slots are all packed right next to each other, and even if you have just two DIMMs they use adjacent slots. "High performance" RAM with large heatsinks block two of four sides because there's no airspace between the inner heatsinks.

I swapped out some Patriot DDR400 2-2-2-5 memory for Corsair ValueSelect with no heatsinks and RAM temperatures dropped dramatically -- I could now hold my finger on the chips -- before the heatsinks were too hot to touch for long, especially the inner ones. Performance drop on Folding at Home was ~5%.

So it's a possible solution if you can't get enough airflow and have any extra memory around. I don't know what voltage your XMS runs at, but if you can get memory running at 2.5V it will generally be cooler than the stuff that runs at 2.7 or higher. Can your underclock/undervolt your current memory? Drop back to DDR333 and drop the voltage .1V or so...

I noticed with my Athlon 64 system the same kind of problem. 4 sticks of RAM with heatspreaders on them, all mashed up into one little block--had some unexplainable crashes with Company of Heroes until I decided to try ramping up the fan on the Zalman 7700 to get a bit more air over the RAM (CPU temps were fine, mind you). No more problems after that. Definitely not a good design I think.