Passive quick RAM cooling - hack heatsinks

[spworley]

My system is working well but using a temp gun I see that my RAM is by far the hottest part of my system.. 55C at idle and 80C at load! And that's the surface heat spreader temp.. who knows what the actual RAM is at! These are 6 sticks of 2GB DDR3. (i7 930 system, P6T motherboard)

The minimum voltage the BIOS allows for RAM is 1.5 V, and the RAM works great even at that voltage.. I wish I could undervolt them even more.


My RAM is generic Corsair.. no heatsinks on it though, and that's what I'm regretting. Even though I've seen no issues, those temps can't be good. (Kudos to Corsair for the good behavior!)

I looked at newegg and so on where they do sell aftermarket RAM heatsinks and fans.. all expensive and not clearly useful.

I'm thinking of a quick dumb hack.. maybe a little ugly but I don't see why not. Would it be insane to use simple office supply binder clips, or metal alligator clips and just clip a bunch to each DIMM? As long as they fit well (no tension or sideways forcing on the DIMM mechanically) and are secure, I don't see the downside. Obviously with an alligator clip you want one with smooth jaws, not serrated ones, for better heat conduction. But even office binder clips may work (if staggered so they don't hit each other..)
Some clips like these, perhaps: http://www.amazon.com/Sparco-Products-B ... d_sbs_op_7

The other idea is to get more airflow, but it may be awkward to get another fan in there pointed in the right direction. (P183 case, D12U Noctuna tower CPU cooler)

I'd love advice on quick and dirty RAM heatsink alternatives. I'm likely going to try my Office Depot binder clip hack first, but I'd love to hear other ideas too.

[danimal]

have you looked at the factory heat tolerances? i'd guess that your operating temps are well within spec, and corsair has a lifetime warranty on most all of their ram sticks.

you can mount a 120mm fan inside the p183, pointing down at the motherboard... there should be a couple of pre-existing holes in front of the black plastic blockoff plate that connects the upper chamber to the power supply chamber... you can thread a standard pc case screw right into the hole, it'll be self-tapping, but it works great.

it may not be pointing directly at the ram, but it'll get enough air moving around in there to help do some ram cooling.

[lodestar]

my RAM is by far the hottest part of my system.. 55C at idle and 80C at load!

Unless your system is unstable, and you say that is not the case then I would say you have nothing to be concerned about. RAM can operate at much higher temperatures than CPUs. To quote Corsair themselves ".... Memory will run much hotter than your system can stand, and there is normally no need to check the memory (temperature) but the MB and CPU temp would be way more critical. Inside case temp should not be above about 40 Deg C Max with MB and CPU Temps at no more than 50-60 Deg C under max load. And the memory will be able to run way more than this so I would not worry about the memory worry about the rest of your system....".

It could certainly do more harm than good attempting to rig up some sort of RAM heatsink. If it helps, I bought Corsair RAM with the extended heatsinks, and initially I was concerned about how hot the heatsinks were getting. It didn't seem to have any adverse effect on the system, so after a while I just ignored it.

[Vicotnik]

This is the first time I've heard about hot RAM. Have I been living under a rock or what? I thought the heatsink on some RAM was mostly just bling and maybe a kind of ESD protection. Same with heatsinks on graphic card memory.

Do RAM usually get hot? I'm pretty sure that none of my RAM sticks have been running even close to those temperatures, no matter if it's DDR, DDR2 or DDR3.

[swivelguy2]

Even though I've seen no issues, those temps can't be good.

I have to agree with the other posters. Seeing no issues is exactly a sign that those temps are good.