Make My Own Memory Heatspreaders?

[TheGreatSatan]

Can I buy RAM with heatspreaders, keep the clips and use my own metal spreader? I want to use diamond plate steel instead.

[OvRiDe]

I think its possible.. in some cases I have seen heat spreaders attached only with thermal adhesive. I am not sure how well diamond plate will work as a heat spreader, but it is aluminum. It might work out just fine.

[Kayin]

It'll work, and there is a thin thermal tape that is made for just these applications. Should be fine for RAM, and perform about on par with regular sinked RAM.

Be sure to do the thinnest AL diamondplate possible if you're doing all 4 slots.

[Twigsoffury]

last time i tried peeling off a heatspreader from a ram stick



The ram chips came off with the heat spreader.

yea not such a good idea.

[RogueOpportunist]

A few things to consider are...

1) Even with heat spreaders ram runs hot so any adhesive used is going to need to stand up to some pretty high temps without "melting"

2) Considering #1 it's likely the manufacturer used some high temp adhesive and as such even with a heat gun the temperature you might need to hit to weaken the adhesive enough to remove the heatsink could damage the ram

3) Steel isn't the best heat spreader material to begin with, while I'm sure it wouldn't make "that" much of a difference I've never tried it myself and there is the slight possibility of the heat being generated from the ram faster than the steel can transfer it to air thus creating a miniature heat element right by your CPU... Again I highly doubt it would be that severe but if the ram is going to be overclocked the temps can get up there, I'm not sure if steel would be able to transfer that heat fast enough.

4) If as per #3 the steel being used does retain too much heat you could end up with a heat spreader "heating element" that has an ever increasing temperature which might cause your ram to run hotter when the computer is left on longer than it would without the spreader and require the use of a fan to keep the spreader from making the ram too hot... which seems kinda backwards.


Personally in your position I would aim for one of 2 things, the first being to buy ram sticks without heat spreaders attached but if you're aiming for some high clocks cheap ram might not be that desirable... Or buy something with smaller heat spreaders attached like say the Mushkin Silverline's then fabricate your heat spreader to attach to the existing spreader... Or since you're using a suboptimal material for it anyways just make the spreader cosmetic... Or even better don't make spreaders at all and instead make some fancy looking fan mount with gnarly fins and stuff that sort of looks like a series of spreaders but is actually blowing air directly on the memory with a channel that blows the air to the top of the case instead of spreading it around.