4GB DDR3 Memory Roundup - Part 1

Thermaltake RamOrb

Manufacturer: Thermaltake
UK Price (as reviewed): ~£10-£15 each (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $24.99 (ex. Tax)

Before we proceed a little further down the memory trail, we've got to cover some cooling first. The GT1s over the page feature the Thermaltake RamOrbs, but you can still buy it separately and use it on other DIMMs. If you do fancy buying a RamOrb on its own - it comes in a box like below, with all the extras to affix it to any standard sized DIMM without heatspreaders. If your memory has existing heatspreaders, we don't recommend pulling these off as it'll likely take off the actual ICs as well.

In the box there are thermal pads, silicon paste for the heatpipe, an installation manual and an Allen key to screw it all together with.

On its own the RamOrb comes in a kit of just one, so if you have two or three naked DIMMs you'll need to up the quantity in the shopping basket. While not currently available in the UK, going by the US price of $25 we expect a UK retail of around £10-£15 and that's quite expensive. Ideally it needs to be ~£5 for a bit of a no brainer purchase, but even up to £10 could be marketable, however every performance module on the market these days has heatspreaders/heatsinks so Thermaltake is right to pursue the OEM angle.


Put on the thermal pads, squeeze out the silicon paste for the heatpipe, drop the DIMM into the middle and screw the other side on - job done. We actually did the pictures in reverse since they came pre-made, but the effect is still the same.

The advantage of the Thermaltake heatspreaders is a proper thermal contact and one that's better than OCZ's Reaper HPC in our opinion. The screw holes are in the top and securely compress the heatpipe on all sides to the two heatspreaders on the sides. While it doesn't provide super-compression for the memory ICs below, we found the four screws at the top and sticky thermal transfer pads worked perfectly well.


The heatpipe can be put in either end to prevent system incompatibility, and of a straw poll of DDR3 boards in the office it was quite surprising to find the RamOrbs fitted every board just fine. However in the most extreme case if your motherboard has very close PCI-Express and DIMM slots and the PSU or case roof sits right above the board - you could find you're out of luck.