Do RAM heat spreaders really work?

Well do they work...i have them on my RAM and i feel the heat being dissapated.

The real question is...do they help with performance, i mean they can reduce heat all you want, but if it isnt helping with anything. And in that aspect i would have to say no. I have never seen anyone get better timings because of heat spreaders. I guess they can help improve the life, but thats a longshot.

But they do look cool

Sean

the thing is, I had 3 sticks of RAM in my system, 2 by kingston, 1 by crucial. One of the kingstons had a heat spreader.

Both kingstons have failed recently. I have not overclocked.
But when I pulled the one with the heat speader, it was really warm.

heat spreaders accomplish little, aside from looking cool. perhaps the fatster DDR2 modules need one, but even low latency DDR400 modules don't require them.

I guess it helps out a little......

no doubt. i have to say that UV painted spreaders look, under said light type, cool.

Hi
Unless the "heatspreader" is factory installed on mem from a reputable maker, you're simply bottling heat up in the ram chips. Same for ramsinks on vid cards. If they're installed with that sticky foam tape stuff you can bet the ram will be hotter than without sinks. Hafta use actual thermal epoxy to do it right. Airflow past bare chips is probably better at cooling than sinks/spreaders in the vast majority of most "enthusiast's" cases.

Well I have all 3 with coolers now... They look cool, but the 'pooter is inside my desk so it's hard to see.... The case tends to run a bit hot, but I have it well ventilated..... I just can't understand why 2 out of 3 rams sticks failed all of sudden and 1 of them had a speader on them. I wasn't overclocking at all. The XP3200+ CPU I have is superlocked. I am running the Memory at 202.... motherboard default.

The mems are PC3200.

In anycase I have replaced all the kingstons with crucial. The crucial stick was the only one that survived unscathed.
So I figured it was best to have all 3 the same brand.