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Water Cooling RAM Usefull? You Bet! Here are my Test Results

Henkenator68NL
Level 13
Hello ROG Community,

I have been Tweaking my System for as long as i can Remember. Water Cooling is one of my favorite ways to keep it Cool! Most Water Cooled Systems comprise CPU, GPU and motherboard. But RAM Coolers I did not see a lot of it.

But since I was curious to know if there was any point to Water Cooling your RAM, I put it to the Test.

I got myself 4 RAM Coolers from: Alphacool, the Alphacool NexXxos RXP-1 Ram Coolers. I picked those Coolers because you can individually cool each Ram Stick.

So I ran a series of tests with my system while the RAM was still passivly cooled and after mounting the RAM Coolers I ran the same Tests. The first trick was hoe to measure the temperature of the RAM Sticks: so I carefully placed a Thermal Sensor between RAM stick 2 and 3.

I Ran HWINFO64 and logged temperatures of:
- The Cores
- The CPU
- The Motherboard
- The North- and SouthBridge
- The Temp of the 2 Cores from my GPU (6990 dual core with 4 Gb DDR5)

I logged all Temps because I wanted to see if there was any influence on the other Temperatures by adding the RAM Stick to the Water Loop.

Before Water Cooling the RAM I Currently Cooled on Water: The CPU and the GPU.

This is the Ram Cooler:
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It was kind of Tricky to get it to fit with 4 RAM Modules seated directly next to eachother, but I got it to fit (see Youtube video on How-to Install the Sticks).

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The Test Results where to my suprise very good!

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The average Temperature of the RAM Sticks dropped from 53° to 37° Celsius !! A 30% Drop.
The maximum Temperature (under Heavy Load) dropped from 87° to 49 ° Celsius, a 45% Drop!!

There was hardly any negative result on the Temperatures of other key compenents.

So Water Cooling your Memory does pay off!! The only down side was that the Flow Rate of the Cooling Liquid dropped quite a bit; but this did not seem to influance the Temperatures of the Components.

Thought I share this with you all!



Greetings Henk
84,537 Views
12 REPLIES 12

Zka17
Level 16
Very interesting experiment, mate!

I just missing the effect of that temp drop... I mean, it's clear that the memories are running at lower temps, but one would ask "so, what?!"... Is your system more stable? Can you OC higher?

BTW, what do you mean by "heavy load" on the memory, what application? What were the memory settings?

Hi,

I did indeed forget to mention the reasons why ...

  • When you are overclocking your system, you want to keep temperatures down to: prevent damage, enhance stability
  • All things count when achieving lowest possible temperature like:


  • The Air Flow in your Case
  • The Amount, quality and arrangement of the Fans
  • The Quality of your cooling equipment
  • The ambient temperature

  • So when searching for improvement I noticed that the memory modules felt hot, they are radiating heath in the case (very close to the CPU). So I searched for ways to get the Temperature Down. This I achieved by Water Cooling the Memory.
  • The final reason was overclocking capability of the RAM.
  • I just finished testing and I managed to overclock the RAM to never before reached levels (by me). I now have the RAM running at 1800 MHz from 1333 MHz so that’s a huge improvement. Temperatures did not get over 54 ° .
I have added the picture of a stress test and all settings in CPU-Z, GPU-Z, HWINFO64 and AIDA64.

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As for the question about the Heavy Load, I did several things to get the memory underload:
- Stress Test AIDA64 for min. 3 hrs
- Render a Movie (software mode)
- Run PCMARK07
- Play Battlefield 3 for at least 3 hrs online

So what do you think?

Greetings
Henk

Zka17
Level 16
I see... it's nice, no doubt!

But, you didn't share anything regarding the airflow in your case... just persisting on this because I can push my memories very close to 3GHz just simply having a fan blowing on them (of course, that depends very much on the memories and IMC)... and I assume, their temps is not going over 40-45C - just assume, as didn't measure by a temp probe, just by touching them (and they felt just slightly warmer than my hands)...

Raja
Level 13
You need to drop temps down to freezing point to see a sizeable change in DRAM overclocking ability. Even then it comes down to the IC.

You might be able to run tRFC a little tighter, as cell leakage can vary with temperature - lower temps generally leads to less leakage. The performance change would be negligible of course.

Zka17
Level 16
Thanks, Raja, this really clears up things in my head... 🙂

Now, considering the worse, when the airflow in the case is very bad and hot spots are forming - let's say - around the memory modules, causing them to run hot - would that reduce their performance/overclockability significantly? Also, let's just assume that the CPU's temps are OK by WC'ing...

Henkenator68NL
Level 13
Adding to Zka17's question:

Does radiating heat from hot mem modules affect the temperature of the CPU. If so does that influence the CPU performance and or overclocking abbility??

Does overclocking RAM boost any performance at all?? Does faster RAM bring you any performance boost?

Hmmmm I think this needs more reseach, I am planning on buiding a Benchmark and Test System from scratch and I think I will look into this ....

ps I am not as well educated into this matter at all, so I can only draw from self learned experiences !

Henkenator68NL wrote:
Adding to Zka17's question:

Does radiating heat from hot mem modules affect the temperature of the CPU. If so does that influence the CPU performance and or overclocking abbility??

Does overclocking RAM boost any performance at all?? Does faster RAM bring you any performance boost?

Hmmmm I think this needs more reseach, I am planning on buiding a Benchmark and Test System from scratch and I think I will look into this ....

ps I am not as well educated into this matter at all, so I can only draw from self learned experiences !


hi there, i would like to share someone's post regarding that!

CLICKY HERE
Mobo : Asus Maximus VI Impact || CPU : i5-4670k || Cooling : H100
GPU : MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G || PSU : Corsair RM 650 || Rams : G Skill Trident X 4GBx2 2400 CL10
Monitor : 2x Asus VX239h + 1x HP w2207h || Chassis : Bitfenix Prodigy Red || OS : WIN8.1 x64
Periphirals : Corsair K95, Logitech g402, Edifier 3350

Zka17
Level 16
Self learned experiences are the best! :cool:

If you can not cool off the CPU for whatever reason, then yes, it will affect the overall performance of the system... OC'ing the RAM will benefit mostly in benchmarks though, in everyday use the amount of it may be more important (but that also depends on the used applications)...

Granger
Level 10
Have you tried ram coolers like the G-Skill Turbulence fan cooler (or Corsair equivelent)?
Because until now, everything I have read about watercooling RAM said that it was less efficient than the RAM Fans and put a lot of resistence in the loop.

Seeing your test, proves (at least for your system) that these water blocks work well to cool the RAM, I am now going to try and find a test waterblocks against Fans for cooling RAM (if one has been done) because I have only been going on heresay until now concerning the RAM and WC.

edit: I'm using the Turbulence II on my RAM at the moment. Need to find a probe to test the temperatures with an without 😉