First Retail Water-Cooled DDR2 Memory Tested

Twistedmelon writes "We've all heard of water cooling for processors and even graphics processors, in today's high end PCs. However, a water cooled memory module is something that hasn't been done until now. OCZ Technology recently announced their line of Flex XLC Water-Cooled RAM, with its integrated heat-spreaders that can be connected to any standard water cooling system. The memory operates much cooler under load with tight timings at DDR2-800 speeds. For those with water-cooling setups, these DIMMs could easily be tapped into an existing system allowing for quiet and robust cooling for your system memory as well."

Comments

But how much does it really improve things?

[JoeD]

Every time I see something like this, I wonder how much real world improvement you will see.

Sure, there may be a small improvement on a benchmark, but those rarely translate into something that's noticeable to the end user.

Or is it really more about having the shiniest toys?

Re:But how much does it really improve things?

[penp]

To a lot of people, water cooling isn't only about the possible performance increase, it's also about the sound (or lack thereof). Personally, I haven't tried water cooling yet, but I would definitely like to get the sound of a buzzsaw out of my PC.

As far as performance goes, I recently upgraded from RAM that had a CAS latency of 3 (Corsair XMS) to some that had more aggressive timings (OCZ performance ram) with a CAS latency of only 2. They were running at the same speeds (DDR 400 / PC3200), but at the faster timings the improvement was vastly greater than I had expected. After reading up on it some, a difference of 1ns can mean a lot when you're talking in terms of tens of millions of data cycles.

Re:But how much does it really improve things?

[SharpFang]

These radiators add at least 1.4 inch to your e-penis length.

I love the smell of Slashvertisement in the mornin

[beavis88]

This is has been done for awhile. Yes, perhaps not DDR2 and memory/waterblock made by the same company, but in my mind, that's the least newsworthy part of this whole endeavor. Nothing to see here (except an OCZ ad), move along...

Re:zap...

[NeoThermic]

You never fill a water cooling loop with normal water anyway. The two main reasons why is that first it's conductive, and second, it is impure, meaning you'll get problems later down the line with scum forming on the pipes and on the insides of coolers. Instead, the suggested water to use is deionized water, which is non-conductive* and doesn't suffer as much from scum forming (although many still like to use an anti-algae solution to combat the scum that forms.

NeoThermic

(* ok, it still conducts, but it has a higher resistance, and in computers there's few items that'll make deionized water conduct if it leaks. Much safer than normal water)

Re:zap...

[moonbender]

You haven't heard of water cooling RAM because it's a waste of resources, even more so than water cooling other components. RAM doesn't use a whole lot of power and consequently doesn't generate a lot of heat, a quick Google says about 10W. That's comparable to hard drives - the difference being that RAM doesn't really mind running at 50 to 80C, while HDDs do. DDR2 SDRAM doesn't need special active cooling, a somewhat ventilated case is easily enough.

Not so

[Gazzonyx]

Clean (Distilled), water is an insulator. In fact, toms hardware inmersed a computer in water in their article Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil. Just used distilled water, and not tap water - as you shouldn't be using tap water, anyways since it eats away at the parts of a water cooling system.
As long as you don't have free electrons, you won't be passing current.

Re:Not so

[modecx]

Distilled water in a cooling system is no better than tap water. Sure, you won't have an amount of ions that will be signifigant to conduct electricity...for the first day, that is. The particles are still going to come off the metals that compose your system, and then you're on the path to being hosed by galvanic corossion.

The key is to not using dissimalar alloys in your system. An aluminum block and a copper radaitor are going to cause problems, unless you use some of the products out there which combat. That's the real key. Pure water is even more corrosive than tap water. Ideally, you want your alloys to be as close as possible, simply for the fact there will be little electrochemical potential.