Temperature Performance

We took temperature readings as close to the BGA memory ICs as possible, as well as centrally on the heatsink or heatspreader to determine two things:

1. What the overall cooling performance is at a reference standard of 1,600MHz at 1.7V, and their overclocked and overvolted values. This will see how well the cooling technologies perform for the job they're tasked with.
   
   
2. What the difference in temperature is between the heat producing parts and heat dissipating parts - regardless of actual temperature this should be as uniform as possible to highlight the actual efficiency of the heatsink or heatspreader.

In the table below we've included greyed out DDR2 numbers of other cooling solutions for an indirect comparison - the voltages maybe higher, but the clock frequencies are lower.


Generally the Patriot memory on the level field of 1.7V performs quite poorly - at 42-44'C, it's significantly hotter than the Corsair DHX and G.Skill Pi Series and Thermaltake GT1s. It feels hotter all over - we even tested both DIMMs and in multiple places on both boards to see if there was a difference but the heatspreaders just tend to hold more heat. We suspect this is due to the aluminium-copper hybrid, where the specific heat capacity of copper is higher so it absorbs more, while the thin layer of paint does its best to further hold it in.

At the high rated voltage of 2.0V these Vipers emit a lot more power than the competitors and as such are consequently hotter. At 44'C they're even hotter than the OCZ DDR2 at 2.32V, and only the basic Crucial Ballistix with its very basic heatspreaders is hotter than it. The difference between fin and near the memory chips is also a considerable 3'C, and it's not exactly that hot in our office in the winter.

On the other hand the very low voltage Elixir runs at a nominal 37'C directly on the memory chips - heatspreaders that will eventually be bundled on it will make some difference, but essentially it's up the high end of the table without needing any cooling whatsoever! Fantastic.