| Thermalright HR-07 Memory Module Cooler
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Operation:
To test the performance of the Thermalright HR-07 Memory Module Cooler, a pair of the coolers were installed into a test system with the following components...
» Intel Pentium D805 Dual-Core CPU
» 2x 512MB OCZ GX XTC Gold PC25400 DDR2 EL Dual Channel Memory
» 2x BFG GeForce 6600GT OC 128MB Graphics Cards
» 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA 1.5 Gbps Hard Drives (RAID 0)
» Gigabyte G-Power Pro CPU Cooler
» Ultra Products 2nd Generation X-Finity 600W Power Supply
» Buslink DVD R/RW Optical Drive
Two thermal probes were attached to the memory in the slot farthest from the CPU cooler (slot 4) in order to monitor the maximum sustained temperatures achieved in various states during testing. One thermal probe was attached as close to the memory chip on one end of the module, while the other thermal probe was attached in between the two memory chips at the other end of the module.
A digital display was then used to observe the temperatures of the two probes as SiSoft Sandra 2007's Burn-In Wizard was run in a continuous loop while only executing the memory benchmark portion. The Burn-In Wizard was allowed to loop for no less than 120 cycles, and at that point the maximum sustained temperature was recorded for the four different stages of testing.
The four stages of testing included:
» The memory with the stock heatspreader installed
» The memory with no heatspreader installed
» The memory with the HR-07 installed without a fan
» The memory with the HR-07 installed with a fan
The chart below summarizes the results, and the final values were quite surprising...
The first big surprise was that the memory was better off without a heatspreader than it was with the fancy OCZ XTC heatspreader. The next surprise was just how effective the HR-07 really was! Keeping your memory cool is an excellent way to insure stability at default speeds, and is absolutely necessary if you are interested in extreme overclocks.
Using the HR-07 passively (no fan) cuts about 20 degrees off the temperature as compared to the stock configuration, and adding a low speed 80mm fan makes the differential almost 30 degrees! I was expecting a drop in temperature, but nothing that extreme.
After several days of use, including hours of stress testing, I was also pleased to see that the HR-07 coolers did not come loose from the memory modules. I assumed the weight of the cooler would help them work their way off the memory because there is nothing holding them in place other than friction. I will keep my eyes on them for a downward migration, but so far, so good.
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