Liquid Cooled Memory is FASTER - $#!T Manufacturers Say
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,255 words · ~6 min read
0:00
frankly i'm not even 100 sure where to start with this one meet
0:04
a data's spectrex d80 ddr4 memory as
0:10
they're calling it the world's first RGB ddr4 memory with
0:16
hybrid liquid air cooling system
0:20
using a combination of a liquid heatsink and an aluminum heatsink to deliver
0:25
effective thermal cooling water cooled memory
0:32
welcome my friends to [ __ ] manufacturers
0:35
say this
0:38
this is water-cooled memory
0:42
throughout this video Linus will refer to the liquid as water this is
0:45
inaccurate the liquid is in fact 3m novak however Linus is having some
0:50
well-deserved time off making a vocal correction impossible so here i am rock
0:55
you like a hurricane here i
1:04
origin pc offers beautiful custom laptops and desktops including their evo
1:08
15s that weighs only 4.3 pounds is under
1:11
an inch thick and features up to a smooth 144hz display with a gtx 1070
1:17
max-q be sure to check out their latest offerings at the link in the video
1:20
description well we're off to a good start the shutdown button doesn't work
1:24
brilliant who needs to shut down their computer anyway
1:29
what am i supposed to do
1:32
now i could just chart all over this stuff based on
1:36
pure principles of cooling theory because i
1:40
actually don't need to plug them in in order to know that the water cooling on
1:45
them is really not doing anything but i
1:48
at least try to take manufacturers claims somewhat seriously i want to give
1:53
them every opportunity to prove me wrong
1:56
here so what i'm going to do is devise an experiment one thing's for sure they
2:01
look pretty cool other than that they have a red heat spreader on an RGB RAM module on a more
2:07
positive note this is hours of fun
2:11
look there's a little bubble oh this is interesting
2:15
it makes no meaningful thermal contact
2:19
outside of it looks like this part of the spreader might go under there
2:24
with the actual memory chips let's start i guess with the standard stuff then or
2:29
no let's make sure this stuff even boots up first show me the post yes
2:34
all right now that we're booted up let's go ahead and
2:38
press start on a stress system memory test hopefully
2:43
our fleer camera will tell us some interesting things about what's going on
2:48
here we can see the heat is clearly concentrated directly over the actual
2:54
dram modules the second thing that we can see is that my suspicion
2:59
that there was some kind of contact between
3:03
this medallion here and the water cooling at the top was
3:08
probably not correct it looks like the only places
3:12
where heat is being transferred up into the top chamber
3:16
are kind of over here and i'm not sure why
3:20
and then kind of over here so those are almost the same temperature
3:24
as the spot directly over the chips so you can see if we look directly over top
3:28
of it the water cooling portion is still quite
3:32
cool okay so after a few minutes of testing our thermals have stabilized anywhere
3:36
from around 47 to 50 degrees depending on where exactly we're looking on the
3:41
spreader here but that's not that interesting we were expecting that what
3:44
we did figure out that is interesting is why we're seeing those little
3:49
centers of activity of thermal movement up here
3:53
that actually came from perusing a data it's very optimistic by the way diagram
3:59
of how these modules work so
4:02
heat gets generated by these uh dram packages right here
4:07
with you so far then it gets
4:10
like i don't know it goes through these holes i'm not sure what they're talking about but there's there's a heat
4:14
spreader here that then somehow theoretically heat up
4:18
or something anyway the point is once the assembly is put together there's an
4:23
actual heat spreader portion here and here that's causing those hot zones on
4:28
these sides the reason this one doesn't work is because on a standard ddr4
4:32
memory module there is no chip in the middle so there's
4:37
no heat for this to carry away this is more efficient than this chunk of metal
4:42
so we're going to go ahead and throw my regular test bench memory back in here
4:45
and we'll compare against that so we still need a few more minutes with
4:49
our other memory modules here but it looks like we're going to end up
4:52
somewhere in the 40 to 40 something mid
4:57
range so it took a little longer thanks to the
5:00
additional thermal mass of these trident z modules but we are back up to
5:05
anywhere between about 50 degrees and 47
5:08
degrees just like last time so
5:12
the rules of the game have not in fact changed RAM doesn't really need cooling
5:18
unless you're you know extreme overclocking it to break records and
5:23
heat spreaders don't really do a whole lot for it regardless of the design of
5:28
them so what conclusion can we draw about this thing then i guess the best
5:33
way i could describe it would be this
5:36
the water on the top of these RAM modules
5:39
it's not hurting anything it's like homeopathic pills where they just
5:44
contain basically nothing
5:47
but it's not helping anything and as much as we love our friends over
5:52
at adata to say that it is water cooled
5:56
is about like it would be for me to say that this CPU with a bubble of water on
6:00
the middle of it is water cooled water does not inherently cool anything
6:07
you have to have surface area that's why water cooling
6:10
still needs radiators that's why heat sinks need fins and not just heat pipes
6:17
well that whole thing was enlightening isn't learning fun
6:21
brilliant.org sure thinks so brilliant
6:24
is a problem-solving website that teaches you to think like a computer
6:27
scientist by diving in and doing things for yourself rather than just trying to
6:32
passively learn from lectures and videos they believe that a great education
6:37
shows you how to solve new and unfamiliar problems by using critical
6:41
reasoning skills with that said you do need a toolkit and a framework in order
6:46
to work through things fortunately they also provide you with that so they'll
6:51
take learning concepts break them up into bite-sized pieces present clear
6:56
thinking in each part and then build back up to an interesting conclusion
7:00
head over to brilliant.org forward slash Linus tech tips and try it you get 20
7:05
off at the link in the video description so thanks for watching guys if you
7:09
disliked this video then um
7:13
you know i'm sorry to hear that it's a sad time for all of us but if you
7:17
liked it hit like get subscribed and maybe consider checking out where to buy
7:20
the stuff we featured at the link in the video description
7:24
i mean to be very clear you guys it's not like it's bad memory you could still
7:27
buy it if you're into just like RGB memory with a cool bar on the top
7:32
also linked in the description is our merch store which has cool shirts like
7:36
this one and our community forum which you should totally join