Introduction

Several years ago I ran an experiment on a set of Samsung PC-100 memory to find the effects of cooling memory and if it would benefit overclock performance. The processor used was an Intel Pentium III running at 500 MHz with plenty of potential for overclocking. At the time memory did not come with any type of heatsink or heat shield; the concept wasn't even thought of and Mushkin had not yet released their heatsink which later became the industry standard.

To cool the memory, which at the time wasn't much warmer than ambient air I used a government surplus heatsink that was shipped to me in a two foot section. The aluminum bar was cut down to size with a hack saw and held in place with several rubber bands and standard silicon thermal paste as was the standard at the time. The appearance wasn't pretty and neither were the test results, I concluded that additional cooling to the sample PC 100 memory did not gain a performance advantage over the bare modules, even when pushed to 150 FSB.

Times have certainly changed and even budget memory comes with a heatsink these days. Memory now runs much warmer than the ambient air surrounding it and companies are spending a great deal of time and effort to cool their products. While early coolers were held in place with what amounted to double sided tape from 3M and the coolers were more for appearance than performance, a few companies have invested in thermal transfer material to effectively transfer heat away from the RAM and pass it to the cooler.

Thermaltake is now taking the idea of the cooling RAM to a new level and incorporating one of their most popular product lines. The new Thermaltake RamOrb (PN: CL-R0029) is now shipping to retail and e-tail locations and will be available in the coming weeks.