does heat spreader on ram sticks help?

do they? im getting a dell xps m1530 soon along with 4 gig of memory and im not sure if i should get one with a heat spreader.

i have two choices:

Kingston (2 x 2Gb) without a heatspreader
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134605

and a G. SKill (2 x 2Gb) with a heatspreader.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231165

should i go for the name brand without a heatspreader or a lesser known brand with a heatspreader?

 

In this situation "Heat Spreaders" do not matter. You should get the cheapest, that is it. And I might add the "name brand" does not matter also.

 

G.Skill might not own as large a market share as Kingston, but it is not a lesser known brand in the memory market. G.Skill's Extreme series RAM are of very high quality, used widely by professionals and experts.

But yeah, you should not have to worry about heat with your laptop, especially heat coming from the RAM modules.

 

Plus a lot of the times the heat spreader adds thickness to the modules and will not fit in the confines of a notebook.

So take that into account.

 

I would add one caveat to the "name brand" bit (I agree that heat spreaders on notebook ram is very pointless). That caveat has little to do with the quality of the RAM but everything to do with the warranty. Major manufacturers usually warranty their memory for life. As someone who has had to RMA Crucial and Kingston memory, they have had great service and been easy to work with. I'd also trust the other large manufacturers (Corsair, OCZ, Patriot, G.Skill, and there are probably some more).

 

Hi all,

I know this is a older thread, but I stumbled across it , and had to reply.

I feel that Heat Spreaders, do make a difference, on my notebooks.
Since the RAM is on the bottom, and many people use notebook coolers, they could have notebook RAM that is up to 20C cooler, depending on the situation. Heat slows down all components, including RAM

IF your notebook RAM fits with heat sinks on them, go for it!

Cooler MEM, runs better, no matter what the type. The faster the MEM, the hotter it gets, even in notebooks.

I almost bought 2 sticks of the Geil DDR2 800

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820144082

at $119 a piece, for my Studio 17 notebook. Dell wanted $400 for 4GB of DDR2 800, so I bought the, 2x2 GB kit for 64.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231156

and one set of sunbeam heat spreaders for $9.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835207003

So I got the dual-channel kit for $79.99 instead of $240 Geil wants for the same MEM with yellow HS...nobody sees them anyway, so who cares if they are yellow or copper.
You could spray them with Krylon engine(high heat) spray paint, if you want to

I installed them, and they just fit.

When I noticed the RAM was running 14-20C cooler then the DDR2 667Mhz which came with it, I thought wow, what a difference, it makes, on performance. At first I thought, well it is another 133Mhz double-data rate more or 266Mhz. Still it seemed faster or something, it was just more responsivewhen apps using MEM were being used!

I needed something, to prove my point, so I took the heat Spreaders off, and the temp on the Geil sticks went up to 49C, from 34C. The notebook, also posted 600+ point lower scores on 3dmark 06,
(on 3 different passes) something I found to be of interest.
With them back on, I got back the 600 points I'd lost.

I decided to get sunbeam copper heat spreaders, for all my other notebooks:
Inspiron 6400/E1505 and my main gamer Toshiba Qosmio 18.4" P7350 upgraded to T9600 C2D
with Toshiba Quad Core HD Processor; Plus the tablets M400 & M200 Tablets!

They all run better, with the heat spreaders, then without, and on the tablet
notebooks, it makes it easier to hold them, while writing on them, as the copper, dissapates the heat, making it cooler on the under arm, of my right
as I'm left-handed


In all fairness, this might not be a problem with any notebook, that stays cool
already. I had a Dell XPS 1530, it was hot, not faster then my Qosmio, for games, nor Video encoding
(but the Qosmio has a Quad-core Cell CPU onboard, that speeds up encoding a DVD down to 10 mins) so I sent it back, for the Studio 17, as I like having 640GB on hand...It bugs me, that Dell wouldn't sell me the 7200RPM HDD's for it, at time of build, so I bought them, & installed them myself. I hate their Restore Partition
anyway, it just slows a drive down more.




Dejavu

 

Glad you dug this up and yes it is old. Old enough to maybe not dig up. Your post stands up fine on it's own. It did not need the back drop of this thread. You made your points. You gave some testing info you have compiled.

I disagree with the basic premise of yours but am not in a position argue. So I will consider and who knows maybe I will change my mind with more knowledge.

Welcome to NBR. Hope you enjoy yourself here. And in the future when you have something interesting to say like your post. Feel free to start a thread. It would of attracted plenty of comment without unnecessary baggage.

But, well good first post.

 

I did something very similar on my laptop, except I noticed that the memory spreaders did not do very much. I already had active cooling for the memory, so memory temps never rose above 98F, and after instaling heatspreaders, the same temperatures were recorded.
Its good that you went out and tried this. I am glad you had a large drop in memory temperatures.
The problem with memory spreaders, is that in most laptops they will not fit, cause of the organization of the memory slots in relation to each other, or in relation to the shell of the laptop.

K-TRON

 

Hi,

Thanks for the warm welcome. I'll admit I should have started a new thread.
I happened to come across this, and wanted to, show how it worked for me.


I will start new threads, from now on, especially when I notice a dated thread!


Kind Regards,

DejaVu

 

DejaVu, if you desire, you can PM a moderator (anyone with a green title) and they can simply move these last few posts into a new thread.

I saw this cause cross posting is not allowed, so just send a Personal Message to a moderator and it will happen

K-TRON

 

G.Skill RAM is great, I'm using 2gigs of the stuff in my desktop.